FAQs: Database Cleanup and Moving from Raiser’s Edge® to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®

All-Star Amy Barker has used Raiser's Edge and Raiser's Edge NXT for over 24 years, Blackbaud Luminate Online for over 16 years, and Omatic products for over 12 years. After a brief stint (5 years) as a software implementation consultant at Omatic Software, she is back in the land of nonprofits, joyfully doing database administration for the Pine Street Inn in Boston.

Recently, Amy held an Ask an All-Star session in the Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT community where she answered questions about making the move to Raiser’s Edge NXT and database cleanup.

Below is a recap of the questions and Amy’s answers:

Q: Do you have any tips for coaching/empowering frontline fundraisers to be more self-sufficient using Raiser’s Edge NXT? I am a consultant, and our clients often struggle with getting their fundraisers to get on board using web view for Portfolio Management and using the Work Center.

A: Well, we aren't on Raiser’s Edge NXT yet, but my fundraising team is chomping at the bit to get on it, which bodes well! Several of them have used web view in the past and miss it, they find database view a bit clunky. So, they are eager to embrace it, thank goodness. Every time I do a call with them, I stress how much easier it will make their lives. I also stress that they'll be able to access it from anywhere, so it saves them time and energy when they have to add actions after a visit with a donor. And when at events they'll be able to pull up a donor's whole history quickly, before they go say hi.

I am also a huge fan of getting people as trained as possible. We will have the all-access training pass and I'm already developing some training plans for people to help them become more self-sufficient.

Q: What are your tips/tricks for making sure data clean-up happens? How do you prioritize what needs to happen first?

A: I am doing all the clean-up myself so I can guarantee it gets done! But if I had a team helping me, I'd have a series of checker queries so I could track progress. I've come up with a bunch of How-To guides on various clean up tasks, with screenshots and so on that I share if people want to help. My supervisors and I meet weekly to talk through the priority list. There are always some things I need them to give input on, but it really has been nice to be able to take our list of Constituent Attributes from 42 options to only what is current, currently being used, or used for reports. There was a lot of ancient, historical junk which never had a defined purpose and we won't use going forward.

As far as prioritizing things, I started with the basics; making sure there are no duplicates and keeping it that way and getting a system in place to check pretty much daily, so things don't get out of control.

Then I moved onto things that will just be easier to manage now, before we moved to NXT, like Table and Attribute clean up. Getting the Table clean up done now, while we still can manage it in database view, will be super helpful in the future.

I also have been focusing on things that I know are unwieldy still in web view. Addressees and Salutations, Actions, Spouse and Relationship Records. I used Raiser's Edge NXT while I was at Omatic and got trained and certified with it, so I have a lot of notes from that time, and as I do Blackbaud trainings I take screenshots so I can share them with my supervisors.

Finally, I'm also documenting and defining everything, so future people at the org will have clear guidelines on what Constituent Code to apply, for instance.

Q: What cleanup project are you the most proud of?

A: At this point definitely the Addressee and Salutation clean up. I got our list from 225 down to about 25. It took FOREVER but was a really fulfilling thing!