Summertime Alumni, Parent, and Student Imports – Getting Started

The students have graduated. Classes have ended. Parents have collected their kids. It’s summer – and the summer months for a higher education institution or independent school mean record update time to add new graduates, student updates, and new incoming students and parents in The Raiser’s Edge.

If your Raiser’s Edge is integrated with The Education Edge or onSuite, then this update process is part of the integration. However, if your school uses The Raiser’s Edge separately from another school administration product, then this series will be about helping you get that spreadsheet of new alumni, parents, and students into The Raiser’s Edge.

Typically, the majority of these are done in the summer between the end of the last and the start of the next academic years. Smaller updates may also take place in winter to record December graduates and student updates. Since these imports are usually done 1 – 2 times per year, preparation and documentation of the import process becomes important to get them right the first time.

Planning the Import

The Raiser’s Edge is a flexible system where the same information can be captured in several ways. So before opening the data file, the first step in successful import is planning on how the final information will appear. Some questions to consider are:

• Are students already in your Raiser’s Edge? Are they constituents (on their own records) or non-constituents (on a parent’s or guardian’s constituent record)
• Will alumni be constituents (for higher education)? Or will alumni stay on their parents’ records (for independent schools)?
• Are siblings, who are now students, already present?
• Are parents already present? Do parents of students need to become parents of alumni?
• What about grandparents?

Preparing the Data

Data from another system is usually not in a format to go right into The Raiser’s Edge. The fields may be in a format that The Raiser’s Edge would not understand. The headers (field names) are not the same. And there are fields that The Raiser’s Edge requires that the other system would not have. So the next step of a summertime import is preparing the received data file(s) for import.

Some common changes that need to be made are:

• Names should be in separate columns: Title(s)/Prefix(es), First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Suffix(es). If your data has names fields put together, then try parsing the data (text to columns in Excel) using a space as the delimiter. (Refer to these steps from Microsoft)
• Address lines (street address) should be in one column joined with /n between lines for carriage return. Refer to this Knowledgebase solution to merge these fields into one column: How to import multiple address lines  (City, state/province, and zip/postal code are separate columns.)
• Make sure dates are in appropriate format for the field.

Adding Raiser’s Edge Information

Some fields need to be added to the data because they are required by The Raiser’s Edge to create the record or so it knows where to add information.

Common troublesome fields are the Import IDs needed to add and link the various records on a constituent. Some common ones are: Education Relationship Import ID (adds an alumni record), Address Import ID (to add addresses), Individual Relationship Import ID (to add a spouse, family member, or contact) and an Organization Relationship Import ID (to add employer or foundation relationship). Note: It’s important that you create the import IDs in your data and that you always use them in imports to correctly link records – we’ll talk more about these in future posts.

Other fields are required by The Raiser’s Edge so the record can be created. Some fields can be omitted and will default to a value if missing, such as Address Type defaults to Home if no value is present. However, some fields must be present to add a record, such as Phone Import ID and Phone Type to add a new email or phone number.

Where to find import requirements?

There are many resources to help you get started. A great one is right in your Raiser’s Edge under Import:

Go to Import and find the list of available imports. For example, click on Constituent Phone under Constituent. Then at the bottom of the page, find the Click Here link for a full list of fields available in the import. It will list the Import Name (field name), if it’s required, what the allowed data format is, and any applicable notes.

This information is also in the Import Guide.

You can also visit the Knowledgebase and type in the import you wish to complete. There are many Knowledgebase solutions with thorough walkthoughs, demos, and sample files. Some common ones are:

How to import constituent name, address, and phone numbers 

How to import education relationships

How to import primary alumni info

Is Import even necessary?

In some cases, preparing and planning an import just might be too much. It’s important to know when to work smarter, not harder.

If you are brand new to The Raiser’s Edge, tasked with this update, and the data set is a few hundred records, time invested into manual entry of the records might just help you “learn the neighborhood” of the database. Import is a Raiser’s Edge task that is successful with knowledge of the database. For this year, get a little more experience and training, practice with some smaller imports, and then attempt the Import next time.

If you record all that you can about a student in The Raiser’s Edge, then a global update might accomplish the update. For example, would adding a date graduated to the primary alumni education relationship and a constituent code of Alumni to the Bio2 tab make that record a alum? If that question makes sense to you, then a global update may be faster than a full-on import.