Blackbaud Training

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For the past few years, we have subscribed to the Learn Everything training package. Not only has it given us a greater understanding of RE, it has also helped widen our knowledge of the fundraising sector. A great course that I took back in 2018 was ‘Process Improvement, Tips and Tricks’. Some of the time saving tips that were given during those three hours have saved me many more!

Here are some of my favourites:

To ensure you maintain good, clean data, create a dashboard panel to monitor records added by users and set up a schedule to evaluate those records (constituent and gift records).
To speed up your system – static queries take up a lot of memory – delete them if they are not regularly used.
Clean up Addressees and Salutations by adding headers: ---INDIVIDUAL---, ---COUPLES---, ----INFORMAL--- and ---ORGANISATIONS----.
Change Direct Debits to just the 1^st and 15^th of the month.

I thoroughly recommend signing up to one of Blackbaud’s training packages, if you have not done so already, and I really do recommend taking the Solution Workshops and Best Practices Workshops. They’ve helped me and I’m sure they will help you.

One final piece of advice – the Blackbaud community is great, with so many helpful people wanting to share ideas and help you through whatever tricky situation you might encounter. Make use of it, post a question and watch all the replies come flooding in.

Thank you everyone out there for the help and guidance you’ve given me!

News Tips, Tricks, and Timesavers! 04/30/2019 11:37am EDT

Added by Gavin Mann

2 Comments

Gavin Mann May '19

Hi Joanne,

My third bullet point is all about tidying up the addressee/salutation headers. You might find there are many addressees and salutations that you don't use, and also, it is often quite a jumbled list. Therefore, this is a way in which to tidy up the list and save a bit of time when searching for the correct addressee/salutation for individuals, couples and organisations, etc.

Go into Config. then Addressees/Salutations. The first thing to do is to check which are in use and which are not. Do you need all of them, or can you trim the list?

Then, add a New Addr/Sal: ----INDIVIDUAL----
Then, group together all of the titles for individuals.

Repeat the process, adding ----INFORMAL----, -----ORGANISATIONS----- and ----COUPLES----, grouping together the variations of eahc addressee/salutation under the specific title.

It will save a lot of time when searching for the correct label!

I hope this helps.

Joanne Felci May '19

Gavin - could you explain your third bullet a little more - about the addressee/salutation headers?

We got a Learn More Subscription this year and it has been wonderful! Wish I had time to take classes right now, but I got a lot out of it last fall and we have it until next September so I might get time to take more before the end.