Hello, I am writing to find out if anyone has had experience moving to Raiser's Edge from Benefactor, a Datatel product. We currently use both Benefactor and Colleague at our university, but will be getting rid of Benefactor and replacing it with Raiser's Edge. We are looking into ways to keep our unique IDs in synch between Raiser's Edge and Colleague. Has anyone implemented an interface (or even a procedure) for keeping the two in synch? Thanks, George

George, If you want to send me your email address, I know someone who dealt with this at The University of Charleston in Charleston, WV. They switched from Benefactor to RE. I can forward your question and email address to her. Maybe she can help you. Cindy [Email Removed] Cindy American Civil War Center

We converted from Benefactor to Raiser's Edge. We went live in May of this year. I'm not familiar with Colleague, though. We stored the Benefactor ID in several different places, mostly based on our consultants suggestions: 1) Import ID 2) Constituent ID 3) Attribute 4) Alias The alias was really helpful in looking up racords based on their Benefactor ID. Some things that I would change: 1) Use the straight Benefactor ID. Blackbaud prefixed all of the Benefactor IDs with "B-". This made it more difficult for us to validate, because we couldn't do a SQL join based on the ID. 2) Use the Benefactor TXA ID as the gift ID. We had a problem with some of our imports. 3) Blackbaud does not understand how Benefactor campaigns are set up. Do not let them force you into converting all Benefactor campaigns as RE Appeals. This will mean more work on your part, but it will be worth it in the long run. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me. My email is in my signature. Your best bet for staying in sync with Colleague is probably through an attribute. Drew J. Drew Allen Children's Hospital of Philadelphia [Email Removed]

I would love to speak with anyone who has converted from Datatel Benefactor to Raiser's Edge. I am particularly interested in what drove your decision and what additional benefits Raiser's Edge has provided you. Please email me at [Email Removed]. Thanks, Barbara.

We converted from Benefactor to Raiser's Edge in September of 2008, however, the rest of the college is still using Colleague and I have been unable to get updated data from their system to import into The Raiser's Edge......Is there anyone that has information on how to get data from Colleague when IT doesn't have the resourses to help at this time?

Thank you

Danielle

 

 HI Daniellle,

Do you have access to Colleague?  If you know what info you are looking for, you could run a query and export it to a text file and go from there to import it into RE. We have both Colleague & RE (I work in IT) and we have a script that is run 3 times a year to pull the lastest batch of graduates. The data that is pulled is passed onto Institutional Advancement and they do the necessary work to get it into RE. That is the only info that we pass to RE from Colleague so 3 times a year is enough.

If you don't know what fields you need and/or don't have access to Colleague, can IT make time for a one time meeting to sort this out? If you need stuff on a daily basis, that may be more problematic.

 

laura