Q1 2024 ResearchPoint™ Release: What You Need to Know!

The Q1 2024 ResearchPoint™ release is out and here is a deeper dive into the first two items listed in the release notes.Research List Ratings Update

This very exciting new feature now gives you the ability to apply a rating of your own choosing to a research list. For example, let’s say you created a query of prospects who’ve been screened through WealthPoint and you did a segmented query on anyone giving confirmed gifts of $1K+ to animal organizations because you are raising money for a scholarship program for veterinary students at your college? Then you want to take that query and assign a rating so that you can group them together and use the rating in ResearchPoint, or even better as a score that you sync with Raiser’s Edge® so that you can see it there? Or export it out of ResearchPoint and use it in a different CRM system? You can now do that.



There are a myriad of scenarios of how you can use this, so if you can segment within ResearchPoint on any data point to pull a list of prospects, you can create a research list and then assign a new rating that can then be used in your CRM system for gift officers to review or to segment for an upcoming direct mail appeal, etc.

1. The first step is to know what you want to do and how you are going to apply it.
2. Then create the query to group together the prospects to receive the rating and to ensure you have prospects that match your criteria.
3. Then you can create your Model Scores and Ratings Attribute Category in ResearchPoint first (this will be the name you give your rating!)
4. Then create the corresponding research list to the query in step 2 above.
5. Then while in the research list created during steps 4, assign the rating
6. Then for those with Raiser’s Edge, you can select your new rating in the configuration of fields
7. Lastly sync the research list that contains the newly rated prospects between ResearchPoint and Raiser’s Edge in order to have this new score in the Ratings panel of NXT as well as the Ratings section of the RE database view record.
   1. NOTE: If you do not have Raiser’s Edge, then you can export it with the Lookup IDs in RP and import it into your CRM system.

So let’s use an example. I had a client that during their consulting meeting with me wanted to group together prospects based on using specific WealthPoint data that doesn’t exist in Raiser’s Edge. They wanted to subsegment their custom ProspectPoint modeling results using the PGL scores to also identify Gen Xers (those born between 1965 and 1981) who have higher Affluence Insight invested assets or higher confirmed public WealthPoint assets and who also had confirmed planned gifts to other nonprofits from the Blackbaud Giving Search database. All records with PGL > 700 were screened via WealthPoint batch so that they could accomplish this. Here is what the query criteria looked like:

• Planned Giving Likelihood > 700; AND
• Birth date between 01/1965 and 12/1981; AND
• (Total assets - confirmed >= $1,000,000; OR
• Affluence Income Attribute Value >= $1,000,000)
• (Philanthropic Gifts Confirmed = Yes; AND
• Philanthropic Gift Type Contains Planned)

Here is a screenshot of what the criteria looked like in ResearchPoint:







For more information on creating queries in ResearchPoint, please see this KnowledgeBase solution: How to create a query in ResearchPoint.



We then saved the query and made sure we checked off the Create a selection? and the Show this Selection in the Query Designer checkboxes so that we could take that query and put it into a research list and then assign a rating.







Since they had several thousands of prospects with PGL > 700 and many in the Gen X age group, they were able to get results that truly allowed them to find a succinct list of prospects for the planned gift officer to focus on. We could also make sure we had results in the query, which is not always the case.



Next we created the rating in ResearchPoint by going to Administration > under the Data section > Attribute categories > Add > Name your rating (be sure it is a name that really describes the prospect list but also isn’t too long) > choose a Record type of Model Scores and Ratings from the dropdown > select a Data type of Yes/No > click on both checkboxes of Allow only one per record and Make available in lists > Save.







Next we needed to assign the rating in ResearchPoint by going to Prospects > from the dropdown Manage research lists > click Add at the top > where it says Selection find the source query created in RP > where it says Name, I suggest naming it the same name as the query > then Save.



Once the research list was saved and we were sure that they wished to assign a rating to everyone on the list, we clicked on the Assign rating button at the top of the research list and please note that when you do this, it should generate in a couple seconds.







Last we wanted to make sure the new rating was added to the integration configuration for the rating to import from ResearchPoint into Raiser’s Edge. We did this in RP by going to Home > The Raiser’s Edge integration in the upper left corner > Configure fields > highlighted the fourth one down that says Model scores and ratings > clicked on the diagonal pencil in the lower right corner > clicked on the checkbox next to the new rating that was assigned > OK > Save.







Then we went back to the research list and clicked on the Sync with RE button at the top of the list.







This may seem like a lot of steps, but it has real practical application and if you have an Analytics Services Strategic Consultant, schedule time with them to help you with this process during your next scheduled consulting meeting.



Birth Date Field Update



Due to a recent security enhancement to ResearchPoint, you may have noticed that the day is no longer being stored in the birth date field, which means that instead of a MM/DD/YYYY format, we have a MM/YYYY “fuzzy” format.



I have had clients contact me to find out how to export the new birthdate field, as it is exporting with a zero ‘0’ in the DD part of the birth date field. We figured out how to export this date so that it shows the new MM/YYYY “fuzzy” date field format in the birth date field instead.



First you will need to process an export with the birth date field in it. Next, below are instructions for taking an export with the new birthdate field that is currently exporting as MM/0/YYYY format to be in an accurate MM/YYYY format:

• Highlight the Cns__Birth Date column
• Right-click and choose Format Cells
• Go to the bottom and highlight Custom
• Up where it says Type near the top, type in mm/yyyy and then OK button – see screenshot below:

I hope that these first two items from the March Q1 2024 ResearchPoint Release was helpful. Please let us know what you think!