RE Event Module Time Savers 5625

RE Event Module Time Savers

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Fenway Health hosts two fundraising galas every Spring and we use the Event Module in Raiser’s Edge to manage seating, special meals, and ticket payments.

Each year I learn a new ‘trick’ to make things more efficient and wanted to share some of these in the hopes that it will help others.  Perhaps others have even better ways to do some of this, which would be lovely to share as well.

Tip 1: Globally Adding Guests via Import

Our galas are table captain focused and many table captains buy an entire table of 12 (or multiple tables of 12) and provide their guest information at a later date. We also have corporate sponsors that follow this model.

The first two years I entered all guests by hand. If you have used the Event Module you know what a hassle this can be.

Year 3 (of the 4 years I’ve done the gala seating) I realized you can globally add guests to a Participant Record via Import. Here is a link to a Knowledgebase article that gives step to step instructions on how to do this.

For the guest participant ID, I usually use the following naming methodology: my initials year month day-number (ex: JF20190429-1, JF20190429-2) that way I know the numbers are unique and I can easily move to my tip 2 as there does not seem to be a way to link the guest to their constituent record in one import, though if someone knows a trick to do this I’d love to hear it.

Tip 2: Linking Participant Records to Constituent Records via Import

After a few years of doing the event seating I noticed that the same set of people usually attend every year and sit with the same group of people. Because we want to attach participant records to corresponding constituent records, when one is available, instead of doing these one at a time, I’ve used an import to link the participant to their constituent record using the constituent record Import ID.

I’m only using import for larger groups, not those one and two guests a person might buy tickets for.  Here is a link to a Knowledgebase article that gives instructions for this tip.

Tip 3: Linking Registration Fees via Import

We have one donor that buys five or six tables of 12 each year and pays for them via an installation plan of four gifts. This turned into a very tedious, time consuming job as we want to link every gift to each participant to make sure the tickets are fully paid for by everyone.  This year I found a way to do this via import that rocked my world!

Here is a link to a Knowledge Base article on how to do this. One part that hung me up is within the event record you need to add the ticket levels and pricing on the Prices tab or the whole thing falls apart.

Wishing you all the best for fantastic, successful events!
 
News Tips, Tricks, and Timesavers! 04/30/2019 7:19am EDT

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1 Comments
Great info, thanks!

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