Hello All,

 Although SOWA has had RE for several years, we feel as though we are not using it to its full capability.  We are beginning to analyse this and came up with a question:

 How many members of your staff are directly involved in using RE on a daily basis?  What are the roles and responsibilities of each of these staff members?

Thanks!

-Steve

Hi there,

My office, which is the Development Office, uses the system on a daily basis. We have a Grants Manager, who uses it for housing research on funding sources and proposal management, Our Associate Director, uses the event module to manage special events, following up on outstanding tickets purchases, contributions, pledges, general look up when managing gifts that have come in, the Development Director, who is relatively new to the system, looks at possible major donors, records meetings with foundations or individual prospects in the action tab, runs reports daily to see where we are, the Development Assistant, runs gift receipts, helps with data clean up projects (especially conversion clean up). And then there is myself, who manages the database.  I work on it everyday, for analysis on gifts from Individuals and Board, tracking gifts and pledges, entering data, running queries for purposes of mailing lists, annual reports, and financial reports for our Fiscal Department (Finance), monitoring how data is entered into the system etc. 

We’ve had some changes in our office, and we are taking a different direction in terms of our fundraising, such as the cultivation of major donors, planned giving and so on. I have been researching and planning some ways to coincide with these new developments, using Raiser’s Edge. That would be moves management. Raiser's Edge is almost like my life line. And I realize that with everyone in my office, especially if our for some reason we have a crash, or maintenance has to be done, how there is a kind of protest for getting out of the system.  Hope this was helpful. 

Thanks Elizabeth!

What you described is the type of model that I'm looking toward - something that can be integrated into the day to day tasks of all of our development staff.  This is how it was at my previous job.  Unfortunately, we are no where near this type of system at the moment.

So I need to plan how we're going to get there.  Wish me luck!

 -Steve

There is a pretty good article on moves management in RE on our website...its called Embracing Technology for Moves Management® Success.  Its a bit dry, but makes some good points about putting The Raiser's Edge to work to cultivate giving.  You'll find the article at http://www.blackbaud.com/company/resources/whitepapers/whitepapers.aspx. 

I'd love to hear from other state programs about their moves management/donor development tactics.

-Jeff

I just stumbled onto another great resource for starting a moves management program.  Check out the prospect management screencast at http://resolvedllc.com/screencast.html.