What I Wish I Had Known When I First Started Using Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®

My journey with Raiser’s Edge NXT began in 2005 when I was first hired by a nonprofit organization to manage their donor database (which was then Raiser's Edge®). I had no experience with Raiser’s Edge or fundraising, but I loved the work they were doing in my community and I was willing to learn.  

I made my fair share of mistakes (and learned how to fix them!), spent hours on the phone with Support, and was a regular attender of my local Raiser’s Edge NXT User Group where several patient and kind Raiser’s Edge NXT DBAs provided guidance and answers to my many questions. Two decades later, I love being able to pay it forward in local Raiser’s Edge NXT User Group meetings, the Blackbaud Community, and beyond.  

Here’s what I wish I’d known then: 

• Garbage in, garbage out. We hear this all the time, but it’s foundational to good use of RE. You can’t make use of the reports, mail functions, etc., if you have bad data. 

• Clean data doesn’t happen overnight and it’s a never-ending project. Just like keeping a tidy home, clean data requires ongoing maintenance. 

• Watch for trends. Unraveling data messes or even learning how to accurately report or pull a mailing list means knowing the trends in your database. Spotting a trend of records that were all entered the same way can help you better use (or fix!) your data. 

• Become familiar with all the fields in your system. I often use Import IDs to determine if an individual has a history of giving or even a spouse. You may find other “hidden” fields immensely useful (such as the date added, date last changed, etc.) 

• Learn to use Excel. I’ve picked up a lot of Excel functionality over the years, but it would have been much easier if I had taken a course to learn more formulas and reporting skills (such as Pivot tables) earlier in my career. 

• Always leave a trail to undo any imports or global changes. It’s very easy to make a mistake with an import or a global change. If you save a file of what the data was before you made your changes or keep a static query of the records that previously had the data that you’re changing, you can undo a mistake much easier. 

• Find your people! I’ve already mentioned my local Raiser’s Edge NXT User group – if you live near one, make the time to attend whenever you can. Online groups didn’t exist when I first started, but being active in the Blackbaud Community is also a great way to ask questions and connect with others using Raiser’s Edge NXT. 

• You may not be on the frontlines, but you absolutely are a fundraiser. Listen to the strategies in your office, read about fundraising, and think about data in terms of how it can best support relational fundraising practices. 

• You won’t learn everything about the database overnight. Frankly, don’t ever expect to know everything about it (even if you did manage to learn it all, something will change). You’re always going to be learning something so stay humble and keep an attitude of learning as you approach each day. 

Christine Robertson is a consultant with NPact who helps organizations get the most use out of Raiser's Edge NXT. Christine will be writing future blogs diving deeper into some of these topics!