Best Of
MCP for Claude
AI tool can only obtain information as API allows it, so the question is, when there is no API endpoint to suppose certain specific needs, will AI not give correct answer?
example: there is no endpoint to get gifts of a constituent based on soft credit, only based on direct credit. Is AI able to answer to "How much a constituent gave through the years and what "level" of giving they are in, factoring in soft credit by soft credit grid amount
not sure if the MCP for Claude will be "smart" enough to use "Query API" soft credit options
Re: deceased husband survived by wife
While this is something that can be done, I would pause that direction as it may have a litany of unintended results. Constituencies may not be aligned, as @Joe Moretti mentioned. There's also the potential for giving to be impacted, let's say from a major donor to more of an annual prospect. I would really consider all aspects before just changing a name.
There is no button for this, as it is just a manual change, but it would change the spouse record and possibly addressee/salutation information. But tread cautiously @Michelle Knizley.
Re: Non-constituent event host
This is a general restriction within WV rather than a Online Data Review issue - "Hosts" are required to be a full constituent in WV event management.
Recommend you visit the RE NXT Idea Bank and either add an idea or vote for one that covers this topic.
Re: API Call Limits
Hi @Joe Shaver Calls through the Power Platform connector do not count against your daily limits!
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Re: A Better Way to Manage Donor Recognition in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®
Thank you @Daisy Alarcon for this very helpful post!
I think it highlights a few really good points to keep in mind!
First - there's no rush to implement this right away - I know we're all juggling a lot, especially with how much change is happening to core functionality in webview. It is ok to punt this farther down the road until you have more bandwidth. I'm very excited about Recognition and especially about Loyalty Programs, but I know my top priority right now is keeping on top of how core functionality is making the jump from database view to webview. Having said that - it's definitely worth playing with Legacy Recognition if you have the time!
Second - I really encourage folks not to try to put a square peg in a round hole with Legacy Recognition. It is set up for planned giving specifically and while you COULD try to shove a different kind of Recognition program into it, it will never have the features those future Recognition programs would have. Resist the urge to spend a lot of time setting up a work-around and just wait for the other Recognition Programs to be released that are built with the specific needs of those programs in mind (Loyalty, Cumulative, Annual).
Third - Keeping a program in Preview is a great way to play around and get a feel for the functionality before it's written onto records. Even in Preview, you can do a lot! You can see the list of folks who are qualified, and can even export that list. In fact, my team completed a whole stewardship mailing for all of our living donors with a planned gift on file while we were still in Preview! We just exported from the preview list, used that list to create a query and used that query to export the fields we needed for the mailing.
Fourth - I highly encourage everyone to think of Recognition in conversation with your stewardship strategy. These are, at their heart, stewardship tools. And while I am looking forward to being able to query on recognition programs directly (Daisy, this wasn't covered in the post, but I think I remember hearing that Recognition will be in query in the future, right?), a lot of how Recognition built is meant to be worked with inside RE directly (especially after a program is Active and shows up for Fundraisers on Constituent records). As my team started working with Legacy Recognition, we realized we actually needed three Legacy Recognition Programs, vs the single program we thought we needed! To match our strategy, we've set up the following programs: Legacy - Stewardship (list of living legacy donors who we want to steward intentionally and love on); Legacy - Donor Wall (a list of all the legacy donors who need to appear on our public legacy donor wall - i.e. all legacy donors who's legacy gifts are not anonymous); Legacy - Emeritus (legacy donors who have passed and whose planned gifts have been realized). This gives us a really easy way to think about our planned giving donors and work with them.
Fifth - If you're a system admin, its also easy to miss that there are permissions to set up to let your users in on Recognition programs. (It's under Fundraising Roles: Recognition Tasks). I encourage data managers to play around with Recognition Programs in preview to get a feel for how it works, and then be intentional about who else in the organization needs access and at what levels. Do you have a Gift Officer assigned to Planned Giving? They probably need more hands-on access (possibly approve/decline rights for each program). Do you want to encourage your co-workers to work with the lists/programs inside RE webview? Be strategic about who has rights to export recognition lists.
I'm so excited about this new tool for stewardship and cannot wait to get my hands on the other three Recognition Programs, but for now we're taking a slow, steady, and strategic approach to Legacy Recognition.
Re: Collecting Post-Event Donor Data
Just make sure to set expectations around an email append. None of them are 100% accurate, and many will provide "the most frequently used email in the household". That is often a more generic email that people use for online shopping, and not an email that they use much.
Also be very careful not to inundate them with email. I delete multiple emails every day from nonprofits that I wholeheartedly support, but I just don't have the time to read them or resources to make donations.
A lot of people think an email append is a magic bullet, but as long as everyone recognizes that it is only one small step to engaging donors, it will be useful.
Re: Paper Document Best Practices
Also supporting what Devan and Faith have said. Until recently, I was putting PDF's on records and considered that viable, but I have since learned that most likely if something happens attachments cannot be recovered. Our org uses SharePoint, so I now put documents in folders within our department's shared files and link to those on the record.
Of course, there's not a lot of great options for bulk-downloading any attachments already added directly to a record. I've read that maybe you can pay for a service through Blackbaud to have attachments delivered in bulk to you, but there are also independent services out there that will do so as well, or I have seen github projects that will procedurally download attachments off constituent records but I have not tried implementing them myself as we do have the files. In your case, because you have the printed copies, you at least have a backup so probably not worth pulling from your DB to get digital copies of any you may not have stored anymore in digital form, as you can always just scan any you need a digital copy of should the need arise even if something happens to the copies within your DB.
My individual take is that having print copies does not make sense for my org these days. If we need a print copy for whatever reason, we can always find it on the record or within SharePoint barring that. Ultimately, if it suits your process better to have print copies and you're not running into storage issues, I do not see a reason to radically change what sounds like is working just fine for your org.
Re: Paper Document Best Practices
Like Devan, I am unsure if attachments are backed up currently with Blackbaud. After originally advising our staff not to use attachments, I have instead advised staff that they can use attachments, but must 1) also save an additional copy (hard copy or digital) and 2) add a query-searchable field to the RE record to accompany the attachment.
As far as whether digital files can replace hard copies, I'll quote something I heard from a lawyer at an educational conference. He was speaking about school records, but the same principle applies: if a court (or an auditor, or the IRS) asks you to provide required documentation, he won't care that your computer broke or your cloud storage was compromised - it is your responsibility to have the documentation on hand. To that end, I am a big believer in storing legally required documents in at least two different locations, whether that second be a hard copy or secure on-campus server storage.
Re: Paper Document Best Practices
One consideration - at one point, RE attachments were not backed up. I don't know if that has changed because our org opted not to use attachments in the system (we use a 3rd party document storage system instead). You may want to check if this is still the case. If so, then I'd definitely recommend having a copy elsewhere outside of RE. Whether that is a paper hard-copy or a digital copy saved somewhere else is up to you, although I'd always recommend digital that is backed up and restorable!
