One Last Roadtrip: On the Map for Raiser's Edge NXT

Lists. You already use lists throughout Raiser's Edge NXT to manage your fundraising assignments (like in Work Center) and analyze a donor's gifts and proposals (such as from their constituent record). Over the next few months, lists will continue to evolve with new filters (like additional giving filters for constituents) and columns (custom fields, anyone?). The biggest addition: A central Lists area(!), where you can manage all your lists and easily build a list from scratch, such as to refine recipients for a communication and analyze fundraising efforts, all without complicated query algorithms. Call to action: Be thinking of lists you use on a regular basis (or could, if they were easy to create) so you have a short list of which to build first! Admins: Think about who at your organization should manage lists (you'll be able to specify who accesses Lists via security groups in Control Panel). 

Analysis. Speaking of analyzing efforts, you'll be able to quickly get a pulse-check of your fundraising efforts with new web-based analysis tools. Call to action: Interested in being a BETA partner as they undergo development? Contact Product Manager Anthony Tomaino or sign up for some short Discovery sessions to put your hat in the ring. (Seats are limited!)

Attachments. As you cultivate a relationship, you'll collect collateral that helps paint a full picture of the constituent. Think items like correspondence, artifacts from prospect research, and selfies they take at fundraising events. In an upcoming release, you'll be able to securely upload those items to the cloud and attach them to the constituent's record. You'll also be able to use that selfie or grab the constituent's profile pic from their social media presence to help personalize their record in Raiser's Edge NXT. Since these files will live in the cloud, not your database, you can easily access them across devices, attach them to multiple records, and open them in their native applications to tweak as necessary! Call to action: Consider your current attachment strategy. If you currently copy/paste long email threads to save as notes or part of actions, you'll be able to simply save the thread as an attachment. If you use cloud storage such as Box or SharePoint, make sure its security is set up so others at your organization can access links saved as attachments. Also, think of good candidates to grab profile pictures of for their records (high-touch constituents are a good place to start!).

Gift record enhancements. With the main goal of fund-raising being to raise funds, having detailed information about all those donations, pledges, gifts-in-kind, etc. that you bring in would be beneficial. The recently released gift record will continue to evolve to include a deep-dive into a breadth of details, including the acknowledgement and receipt used to recognize a gift, marketing IDs used to track its source, installment schedules for pledges, and much more. 

Records for campaigns, funds, and appeals. Details of the gifts you receive are important, but so is information about the campaigns and funds you apply them to, and the appeals used to acquire them. In addition to gift records, you'll also have single-page records of your campaigns, funds, and appeals. With these records, you'll be able to take a deep dive into these fundraising efforts to analyze their effectiveness, view related campaigns and funds, and track their progress toward goals. Call to action: Take note of which campaigns, funds, and appeals you're actively tracking so you know which one to check out first! Also, assign overall goal amounts to track for your active campaigns, funds, and appeals, and set personal goals for their fundraisers to add a little extra motivation.

Summary indicators. Speaking of records, being able to expand and collapse sections of a constituent or proposal record makes it easy to quickly skim and find information, but it's sometimes hard to know whether a collapsed section has anything worth expanding to review. In an upcoming release, you'll be able to quickly see whether a section has any information and, in some cases, a quick summary total of the data it contains.

Prospect status enhancements. With Prospect Research Management, you can quickly view where a constituent is in your overall moves management process with the prospect status that appears across the top of their record and under Prospect research. In upcoming releases, you'll be able to set up statuses for the stages of your solicitation process and automatically raise the flag should someone stall out along the way. You'll also be able to quickly view where a constituent's been in your solicitation process (and for how long), in addition to where they're currently at. Call to action: Start to think about how long constituents should be at each stage of your moves management process so you determine appropriate time frames to set for your prospect statuses. If you currently track stages as actions or custom fields (or attributes), determine their proper order and durations so you can easily set up your prospect statuses for proper moves management.  

Hopefully you enjoyed this whirlwind sneak peek into the future! As with any roadtrip, we may run into detours or take longer to hit some destinations than others, but that's the path we've mapped for the next few months. We'll also likely take some side excursions, so expect some additional highlights along the way (for example: Add and edit contact information! Mark constituents as fundraisers! Additional Work Center security!). Which attractions are you looking forward to the most?