Evaluating Your Raiser S Edge System

Evaluating Your Raiser’s Edge® System

Overview

Is your Raiser’s Edge working perfectly for you? Can you get everything you need at the touch of a button? Is every piece of information in it relevant, trustworthy and easy to locate? These are, of course, trick questions. No one can answer “yes” to all of them, or even to any of them. Everyone’s Raiser’s Edge system is in a continuous state of change and development, which makes sense because every organization’s fundraising strategies, operational practices, and staffing are changing as well. In this dynamic environment, the appropriate goal is not “the perfect database,” but the appropriate system to meet your current needs and situation.

So how can you get there? There are three fundamental steps:

1. Clarify what you need from Raiser’s Edge – the data you need to record, and the information you need to retrieve. 2. Identify what’s working well, and what isn’t, with your system. 3. For those items that aren’t working well, prioritize the importance of addressing them.

Clarifying what you need from Raiser’s Edge can be a difficult process. It helps to start with an understanding of what you already receive from the system, in the form of reports and lists. The following page, “Our Reports – A Summary” can help. Each person on your development team can use it to record what reports and lists they receive or generate. You can then meet together to discuss:

 Which of the outputs are most valuable?  What about them works or needs improving?  What outputs you need but don’t have?  Which outputs might be discarded to make room for producing ones you’re not currently getting?

These discussions can orient you to your primary needs from Raiser’s Edge. It’s then time to look at your system itself. To support your investigation, we recommend the following steps:

1. One person fills out the page entitled “Our Raiser’s Edge System – A Summary.” 2. Copies of this and the “RE Evaluation Worksheets” are distributed to each team member. 3. Everyone on the team fills out their individual Evaluation Worksheets. 4. Optional: While waiting for team members to return their Worksheets, download and run the reports from another of the Free Resources on our website “Getting to Know Your RE Database.” These reports give you a clear

Evaluating Your Raiser’s Edge System picture of the detailed codes in your system and can be quite a useful reference in the conversations that follow. 5. Optional: Evaluation Worksheets are returned to one person who aggregates the scores and comments from individual worksheets. 6. The group meets to review the results. During this meeting you can discuss: a. What are we already doing well? Pat yourself on the back for these! b. Which issues are the most pressing (i.e. scored the highest)? c. For those issues, which do we feel we can resolve most easily, and which will require more substantive time, knowledge, or external help?

This process can help you determine your priorities for streamlining your Raiser’s Edge system. As you discuss the issues and how you’d like to move forward, use the included “Raiser’s Edge Streamlining Plan” page to record your decisions. Print additional pages if needed, but try and keep your initial goals to a single page. It’s particularly important to set reasonable deadlines and workload expectations for this first stage. Not only do you want to streamline your Raiser’s Edge in the short- term, you also want to set a successful precedent so that you can continue to work effectively with your system.

As you determine your priorities, we encourage you to look at some of the other Free Resources available on our website. They may help you meet your goals as well. They include:

Organizing Your Data

 Raiser's Edge coding best practices  Your financial goals and RE codes

Streamlining Business Processes

 Constituent data flowchart  Gift processing steps  Donation workflow  How many gifts can someone process in a week?  Clarifying communication between Development and Finance

Supporting Fundraising

 Top ten Raiser's Edge reports  Managing fundraising mailings  Creating segmented prospect lists and our segmentation spreadsheet  Major gifts income transmittal

Let us help you with your Raiser’s Edge System!

Through our experience at over 600 organizations across the nation, we've developed a clear, sound process for optimizing our clients' use of the Raiser's Edge software. Our services include system assessments, data conversions,

Evaluating Your Raiser’s Edge System data cleanup, (including codes / tables and duplicates,) process design and documentation, query and report setup, and training. For our clients with advanced needs, we can develop Crystal Reports, integrate with other databases and perform custom programming. These services provide our clients a solid foundation for effective use of this powerful fundraising tool. Contact us today to find out how we can help you!

For more information:

Beverly Hannay Business Development Associate 518-797-3438 [email protected]

Name Frequency Who Who Function/Purpose Custom? Priority Runs Reads (Example) Gift Detail Daily Bill Sam, Sally List of all gifts for the day No 1 Report

(Example) Board Report Monthly Bill Everyone Provides key summarized Yes, 1 figures for the Board Excel meetings (Example) VIP Invite List Quarterly Bill Sally List of VIP Donors to invite to No 2 Events quarterly thank you tour Our Raiser’s Edge System – An Overview

Question Response Your Organization’s Name Staffing and RE History How many people are on your development team? How many of them use Raiser’s Edge: Every day, for most of the day? Once a day, just for lookups? Once a week or less? How long has your organization had RE? Who has the most experience on RE, and for how long have they been using it? (either at your organization, or another) Who, if anyone, is in charge of the database? Is it their full-time job to be responsible for the database? If not, what percentage of their job does it represent? Have consultants worked on your RE system? If so, who, when, and what did they recommend? Raiser's Edge Record Counts To gather this information, run the System Statistics from the Admin portion of Raiser's Edge. Constituents Gifts Actions Notes Campaigns Funds Appeals Events Participants Jobs Tributes Memberships

Raiser’s Edge Modules & Features Which of the following do you have? Please mark in bold or circle. Enterprise Version RE:Search / Event Member Prospect Alumni Tribute Planned Gift Tracker Volunteer NetSolutions NetCommunity Queue VBA / API Other (please list): Consulting

Evaluating Your Raiser’s Edge System

RE Evaluation Worksheet

What’s In Your System (Codes and Records) Do you feel the basic demographic Circle one number for each information in Raiser’s Edge is well (1 = well-organized, 5 = mishmash and organized? chaos) Names 1 2 3 4 5 Addresses 1 2 3 4 5 Addressees & Salutations 1 2 3 4 5 Do you feel the codes below make (1 = well-organized, 5 = mishmash and sense? chaos) Constituent Codes 1 2 3 4 5 Constituent Attributes 1 2 3 4 5 Campaigns 1 2 3 4 5 Funds 1 2 3 4 5 Appeals 1 2 3 4 5 If this information and codes don’t seem well-organized, what are the biggest apparent problems?

How many duplicate records do you have? On a scale of 1 (not so many) to 5 (so many we can’t function) how big a 1 2 3 4 5 problem are duplicates? Where does the duplicate problem exist? (Mailing lists, Constituent look up, on reports, etc.)

Getting Information In (Business Processes) How many gifts are processed every week? Do you use the Batch function to enter gifts? Are your policies and processes documented? How would you rate these gift entry Circle one number for each processes? (1 = very efficient, 5 = redundant) Cash/Check 1 2 3 4 5 Credit Card 1 2 3 4 5 Pledges 1 2 3 4 5 Gifts-In-Kind 1 2 3 4 5 Stock 1 2 3 4 5 Tributes 1 2 3 4 5 If you feel these processes aren’t

Evaluating Your Raiser’s Edge System working very well, what are the primary problems or symptoms? Do the Fund codes in RE match the account numbers in the GL? All Some None How often do you reconcile donations in Raiser’s Edge with your accounting department’s General Ledger system? How smooth would you say this process Very Somewhat Pulling is? Teeth

Getting Information Out (Lists, Letters & Reports) What’s your target turnaround time for thank-yous? Do you hit that target? If not, why not? Do you think the acknowledgement letters get created accurately? 1 (never 1 2 3 4 5 any changes) to 5 (always need corrections). What types of changes need to be made to the acknowledgement letters on a regular basis, if any?

How many solicitation mailings do you generate from Raiser’s Edge each year? On a scale of 1 (easy) to 5 (impossible), 1 2 3 4 5 how easy is it to create mailing lists? What challenges do you encounter when generating mailing lists? (e.g., duplicates, complex queries, people who should be included are left out, people who should be excluded are not (e.g. deceased, do not solicits, etc.) About how many of the standard reports do you use?

Can everyone run their own reports? If not, why not?

On a scale of 1 (easy) to 5 (impossible), 1 2 3 4 5 how easy is it to get the information you’d like reported? What challenges, if any, do you encounter with reports? (e.g., what you want isn’t on any of the reports; it takes

Evaluating Your Raiser’s Edge System too many reports to generate what you want; you don’t trust the accuracy of the numbers you do get, only one person can run the reports; you have to use Excel and manipulate it to get what you want). Feel free to make comments. What outside lists do you have? (in Excel, Access, FileMaker, Outlook, online, etc.) Your Wish List – What do you wish RE could do for you? (or would stop doing!)

Raiser’s Edge Streamlining Plan

Order Task Lead Support Deadline Details Person People 1 (Example) Bill Sally End of Delete the codes no one Clean March, understands or uses, move Constituent before some of the detailed codes Codes the big to attributes mailing