Best Of
Re: What was the HIGHLIGHT of your year?
Professionally - bbcon is always an annual highlight. So many conversations, meeting folks I've only ever known online, and sitting in on sessions that spark 'ah-ha' moments!
Personally - I finished my first crochet project. A cardigan that took at least 100+ hours over four months. Pretty proud of this one! (Deviated from the pattern on the sleeves and trim.)
Re: On Demand: November Product Update Briefings and the Future of Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®
Thank you for this great list of resources! I look forward to joining the InsideTrack to the Unified View!
Re: How does your organization handle IRA gifts and Qualified Charitable Distributions?
@Andy Flory There are almost as many ways of dealing with this as there are orgs using RE.
We found while the type is very clear on some distribution checks, others have no indication at all. Our solution has been to use the statement below on their letter of receipt. It has worked for us.
If this represents a qualifying charitable distribution from an IRA under Internal Revenue Code Section 408(d)(8), this gift is not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes. If this distribution does not represent a qualifying distribution from an IRA under Internal Revenue Code Section 408(d)(8), it may be tax deductible. No goods or services were provided by South Dakota Mines CARA in return for this gift. All or part of your gift may be tax deductible as a charitable contribution. Please consult your tax advisor.
Re: Tributes as new Constituents...adding deceased people and pets to database
@Amber Mullins I both love and hate the Tribute functionality for this reason. It is great when the Tribute fits the functionality. But, it is a lot of clutter for this type of situation. With one client, we actually stopped using the Tribute functionality on the web page and linked to Custom Fields/Attributes (and manually made the Tribute records only when we actually wanted them in RE). It was a bit more work in some ways, but it helped avoid the surplus of records.
Re: Duplicate first time recurring gift
Check your report gift type filters. Do not include Recurring Gift, just Recurring gift pay. You will not want to remove the recurring gift record as that is similar to a pledge and you will link each future payment to it.
Re: Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT Product Update Briefing: Leave Feedback and Earn a Badge!
The best new functionalities that I am looking forward to are Grid View Gift Batch, true Gift Batch Templates and Single Row Query (aka database export function)… Finally! That one gets a special applause! I am not excited about AI. I would disable it everywhere I can if I had the choice.
Re: Reporting changes
It really adds so much unnecessary time and adds a lot of downloads to my computer for no reason! I hope they decide to make a change. I like the feature of being able to export directly to PDF, but would love to get back the progress window and being able to view the report on FENXT without downloading it.
Re: Reporting changes
I totally agree. Yesterday I created a new report, and there was an error in one of my columns. In the previous system, I would get an error message right away letting me know. This time I waited for twenty minutes for a report that should take less than a minute, not knowing there was an error.
Re: Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT Product Update Briefing: Leave Feedback and Earn a Badge!
There was so much information from the update, I may have missed this but when will choosing constituent codes be available in gift entry? Also - VERY much looking forward to the redesign of batch, it looks much more data entry friendly. When will the new batch design be available?
While web view visually looks great it is NOT data friendly. Blackbaud needs to keep us database managers in mind with design for easy viewing, entry, and cleanups. There is just too many clicks I need to do to see all the information in certain areas of a record. For example in the Relationships and the Custom Fields sections I cannot see all the information on one page and have to click multiple times to see the information if a constituent has a long list. Plus not being able to view it all together is cumbersome and wastes my time. I still prefer using database view because I can see all the information I need at one time, on one page.
Also in database view I can right click in the relationships, gift, actions, etc part of a constituent record and export a list of that data. I really, really, really need this functionality in web view because I pull relationship information very often for our Comms team and other than having to build queries or take a screen shot, I'm not sure how to do it in web view.
Re: Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT Product Update Briefing: Leave Feedback and Earn a Badge!
I always love the PUBs! That said, I really wish the RE one had been 90 minutes instead of 60—there’s just so much to cover. The other PUBs I attended were also 60 minutes, but felt more manageable. I’d rather spend 90 minutes at a steady pace where I can absorb the details, instead of a 60-minute firehose followed by another hour trying to track down answers in the FB group, here in Community, or via email.
Also: if something’s being shared via QR code, please include a direct link in the Resources. I’m watching on my laptop—why would I want to open a form on my phone?
As always, BB could use about 45 more people behind the scenes to field questions, but I thought the team did a great job overall. I’d love to see a Community blog post that recaps the most common questions—it would be a great companion for folks watching the PUB recording without access to the chat.
Bonus shoutouts:
✨ David Springer looked like an angel singing in a choir
✨ @Anthony Gallo had a fantastic background
✨ Thanks to @Sunshine Reinken Watson for coordinating all the PUB Watch Party events over in Facebook —so wonderful to chat and react in real-time with other users!
