Fundraising with The Raiser's Edge

A Non-Technical Guide

Bill Connors

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780470560563
• eBook ISBN: 9780470602317
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

A non -technical guide to The Raiser's Edge-the most widely-used fundraising database package on the market-for the fundraising professional

The first-ever guide to The Raiser's Edge database package for the fundraising professional, Fundraising with The Raiser's Edge: A Non-Technical Guide educates your nonprofit about what The Raiser's Edge can do for you and will help you more effectively work with the staff who are responsible for data entry and output.

• Helps your organization get much greater return on The Raiser's Edge, and use it to raise more money more effectively and with less stress
• Contains specific and clear direction on the key areas you should know without technical discussion
• Includes numerous checklists to give you practical takeaways

Providing you with the non-technical details you need to know to recruit, manage and retain quality database personnel, Fundraising with The Raiser's Edge: A Non-Technical Guide will help you in your day-to-day fundraising work without needing to become a database expert.

CHAPTER 1

Organizing Fundraising

The Raiser’s Edge has been designed as both a “front office” and “back office” system. What do we mean by that? Think of the back office as tasks such as gift entry and acknowledgement, interfacing with accounting, and running after-the-fact reports of money received. The front office is you, the frontline fundraiser out raising money. The Raiser’s Edge was designed to be used by and for you and not just as an administrative system.

Therefore gift coding in The Raiser’s Edge is not just about gift data entry fields. Gift coding should represent how you and your organization fundraise. It has two purposes:

1. To help you organize and manage your fundraising.

2. To help you track and report on your progress toward your fundraising objectives.

The codes used with gifts apply to functionality throughout The Raiser’s Edge, not just the gifts you receive. For example, these codes also affect the setup of your fundraising staff, fundraising volunteers, prospects, and donors in the system.

This chapter is about how to reflect in The Raiser’s Edge the ways your organization raises money. The primary structure to do this uses the following three types of “records” (I explain a “record” shortly):

1. Campaigns

2. Funds

3. Appeals

Matching your fundraising structure with these records seems easier than it usually is in practice. Blackbaud provides definitions for each of these records in The Raiser’s Edge, but often I see two situations that I would like to help you avoid:

1. Confusion on the organization’s part—among the fundraisers and the database staff alike—about what their campaign, fund, and appeal structure should be.

2. Rigid adherence to the user guide definitions that do not make sense for the particular organization. This adherence results in the need to do development, senior management, and board reports in Excel and Word documents, defeating the investment the organization has made in The Raiser’s Edge. There are three objectives for this chapter:

1. Help you understand campaigns, funds, and appeals. These are concepts you encounter repeatedly in looking at data and asking for reports. Fundraisers need to understand the terms and roles these records play in data entry and output.

2. For organizations already using The Raiser’s Edge, help fundraisers evaluate whether your campaign, fund, and appeal structure is set up and being used to best effect for your fundraising needs. Many organizations struggle with reporting and question whether this structure is set up right. This chapter helps you decide whether the way your database is set up best meets your fundraising needs.

3. For organizations implementing The Raiser’s Edge, help fundraisers decide what the campaign, fund, and appeal structure should be. These are key concepts and fields in the database and much forethought needs to go into deciding how to use them. Setting up campaigns, funds, and appeals correctly helps determine your success and happiness with The Raiser’s Edge.

If you follow fundraising best practice, you enter each fiscal year with a fundraising plan. Let us talk about how to apply that plan to The Raiser’s Edge so you can use the software to perform and track your fundraising through the year.

Getting Started with The Raiser’s Edge

When you log into The Raiser’s Edge, you are not going to see a screen that says “Organizing Your Fundraising” or anything similar. The Raiser’s Edge is laid out based on the different “parts” you need over the course of using the database. Think of starting to use The Raiser’s Edge like walking into a kitchen. The pots and pans are in the cabinets below the counter, the spices are in the cupboards above, some of the ingredients are in the refrigerator while others are in the pantry. The utensils you need to whip it all together are in the drawers. You have to take out the tools and food from the various locations in the order you need them to make each meal. They are not neatly lined up for you in just the right order.

The Raiser’s Edge is like that kitchen. When you log in, you are presented on the main screen, called the “shell,” with the various tools and parts that make up the system as shown in Figure 1.1. When you use The Raiser’s Edge, you need to select the particular functions and resources available to accomplish a task. These functions are not grouped together or labeled with the particular task at hand because the same tools can be used many different ways for a number of different purposes.

Blackbaud is changing this in the next generation of The Raiser’s Edge, but understand this rationale when approaching the system. There is a lot there. But just as a kitchen with only a spoon and knife will not allow you to make much of a meal, if The Raiser’s Edge only had a few options you would not be able to do much fundraising with it. With the blender, food processor, and double ovens, you can do so much more.

When you log in, you see a list of options down the left side of the screen as shown in Figure 1.1. These options are called “pages.” The Raiser’s Edge was designed to look similar to a web site. A web site has a home page and many other pages; so does The Raiser’s Edge. There is the Home page, Records page, Reports page, and so forth.

FIGURE 1.1 The Raiser’s Edge “Shell”

What pages you see depends on your security rights. As we discuss in Chapter 8, most fundraisers do not see all the pages that are available. Some of the pages are for tasks that only the database administrator needs to do.

Your database administrator should have assigned you a login name and password. Contact your database administrator if you have any challenges logging in. Your database administrator can also assist you if you are not able to access or use the functions discussed in this book.

Please protect your login name and password carefully. Create a password impossible to guess. Try to avoid writing it down (your database administrator can always reset your password if you forget it). Your login name and password provides access to sensitive name, address, telephone, wealth, relationship, gift, and other information that needs to be protected carefully. It also identifies you to The Raiser’s Edge, giving you ownership of the items you create and the settings you prefer to use.

Accessing Campaign, Fund, and Appeal Records

To see the setup of your fundraising, click on Records in the upper left corner of The Raiser’s Edge. There are three types of records on the Records page shown in Figure 1.1 that are relevant to organizing fundraising in The Raiser’s Edge:

1. Campaigns

2. Funds

3. Appeals

You need to know where these records are located so you can see the list of them and to track their individual performance. For example, to most powerfully measure the performance of an appeal, you want to use the Appeal Summary available within the appeal record (discussed in Chapter 7).

Our intent here is not for you to do data entry. In a well set-up system typically only the database administrator for The Raiser’s Edge has access to add and edit campaigns, funds, and appeals. Occasionally only the annual fund manager will have add and edit rights to just appeals.

A “record” in The Raiser’s Edge is an entity that is big enough and important enough to have its own file in the database. It is not just an item in a list but instead has many fields of information related to it. “Record” means “database record.” Your prospects, donors, and other individuals and organizations have records in the database because they have name fields, address fields, notes, gifts, and much more information associated with them.

Campaigns, funds, and appeals—the way we organize fundraising in The Raiser’s Edge—are records because they are more than just names, as shown in the fund record in Figure 1.2. They are more than just options in a list of choices when doing gift entry. They have dates, goals, notes, ways to categorize them, possibly solicitors raising money for them, and relationships to each other (e.g., the direct mail appeal raises money for the unrestricted fund). Funds have the ability to be set up to relate to your accounting software. Appeals let you track how many constituents were solicited, how much the appeal cost, and what steps are necessary to accomplish the appeal.

FIGURE 1.2 A Fund Record

To open a campaign, fund, or appeal record, type the name of the record in the Quick Find field on the relevant Records page. If you do not know the name of the record you are seeking, click the Open a . . . option on the screen. When the Open screen appears, if it does not automatically show you all of the campaign, fund, or appeal records in your system then click on the Find Now button and it will. Then simply double-click on the campaign, fund, or appeal you would like to see to open it.

Defining Campaign, Fund, and Appeal

The data entry for campaigns, funds, and appeals is easy for your staff as shown in the sample fund record in Figure 1.2. Where organizations struggle, and what is most important for you as a fundraiser to understand, is what the campaigns, funds, and appeals should be.

Why This Is Important

The standard fundraising plan usually addresses four primary points:

1. How much needs to be raised for each program or purpose, including unrestricted money.

2. How that money is going to be raised.

3. From whom it is going to be raised.

4. Who is going to raise it.

Therefore fundraisers want and need to measure four things about the money they raise:

1. What the money is for.

2. How the money is raised.

3. Who gave the money.

4. How much each fundraiser raised.

The best way to measure these by using The Raiser’s Edge is to assign a different field for each of these metrics. Although one might inform the other—it is likely you have different fundraising methods for your corporate donors than your other donors—fundamentally “Who gave?” and “How were they asked and why they gave?” are two different questions.

As a modern database, The Raiser’s Edge takes the approach of putting the answers to each of these questions in their own fields. You should do this also, as you define your campaigns, funds, and appeals.

There are many functions and rules about campaigns, funds, and appeals, but let us focus on the common challenges and solutions to help you determine if your campaigns, funds, and appeals are set up well. It is the work of determining what they should be that is the most important and hardest challenge. Once you have the structure designed or fixed, they are easy to enter or modify in The Raiser’s Edge.

User Guide Definitions

The user guide for The Raiser’s Edge defines these records as follows:

• Campaign: “A campaign is your overall objective to raise money. For example, a museum can have a New Building Campaign with the objective to raise money for a new location. Of campaigns, funds, and appeals, campaigns are the broadest type of record. Campaigns act as an umbrella over funds and appeals.”

• Fund: “A fund identifies where to track gifts and pledges for financial purposes.”

• Appeal: “An appeal is a solicitation that brings in your gifts. Solicitations can include auctions, direct mailings, and phonathons.”¹

The classic Blackbaud training example is to pretend for a moment that we are the Red Cross. We are doing a direct mail piece asking our supporters to send in a gift and allowing them to designate the disaster they would like their relief gift directed to. So:

• We have a “Disaster Relief Campaign.”

• There would be one fund for each of the following donor designation options:

• Relief Fund for those in Location X affected by Fires.

• Relief Fund for those in Locatio...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 - Organizing Fundraising
• CHAPTER 2 - Prospects, Donors, and Other Constituents
• CHAPTER 3 - Gifts and Giving
• CHAPTER 4 - Direct Marketing and Other Mailings
• CHAPTER 5 - Events and Membership
• CHAPTER 6 - Major Gifts and Grants
• CHAPTER 7 - Reporting, Lists, and Other Output
• CHAPTER 8 - Database Oversight
• Conclusion
• APPENDIX A - Converting to and Implementing The Raiser’s Edge
• APPENDIX B - Database Administrator Task List
• APPENDIX C - Policy and Procedure Documentation Example
• Bibliography
• Index