RENXT Giving statements

Ben Regier

I spent some time recently checking out the new Giving Statements that can be generated in RENXT. It sounded like a feature that might help address a problem I have been asked to solve. I was surprised by a few things, and wanted to highlight those things here in case it's useful for others.


First thing that surprised me was what information is included in the giving statement. There are columns for gift type, gift date, gift amount, contribution amount, receipt number and receipt date. There is no information about the fund or the campaign.


The second surprise was a little more serious for us - the giving statements don't respect the security settings of the user who generates them. We set security based on fund for some of our users, so they aren't able to see all gifts. However, when I log in using one of those restricted user accounts and generate a giving statement, the statement includes all gifts. Even the ones that the user should not be able to see. In this case, I'm actually glad that the giving report doesn't include fund or campaign information! But it's still not ideal.


I also checked to see if I could restrict access to Giving Statements within Roles in RE security, but could not find an option to block that specific function without also blocking other things.

Heather MacKenzie

Thanks for sharing this info! All interesting stuff.

Tom Klimchak

Agreed! Without fund or campaign or any real "info" about the gift the Giving Statements are laughably incomplete for us. We created exactly one Giving Statement before we realized the feature (like so many things that initially appear in RE NXT) was only half-baked and needed to be ignored for a while.


The security concerns are very troublesome. Thanks for pointing them out!

Karen Diener

This is very helpful and somewhat surprising feedback. I was also immediately struck by the lack of Fund in the statement, so didn't really pursue much further. The fact that it doesn't respect security by Fund, or have other security settings for the function itself is concerning.


Thanks for checking this out and sharing the details!


Karen

Jarod Bonino

Hey Ben, thanks for this feedback!


We do have plans to make the Giving statement itself a little more customizable in the future, however I think it probably makes sense to at least add a Fund column in the meantime since that is such a fundamental aspect of the Gift record itself. I'll see what I can do to get that in the works.


As far as feature level security goes for your users, that is managed through the "Manage receipts" task in the Fundraising role in security.

It's helpful to know that this wasn't immediately obvious to you. We have debated separating the permissions for Gift receipting and Giving statements, but want to avoid a world where the Security area is over cluttered, so we erred on the side of consolidating them (assuming that in many/most cases, the same user would be responsible for issuing both communications).


I am curious to learn more about your expectations around enforcement of Gift Security by Fund. We did consider enforcing this on the Giving statement output, but we actually considered it less desirable in this context than what we have now. Keep in mind, the Giving statement is intended to provide your donors with a comprehensive view of their giving/support toward your organization for a given time period. We determined that it would be a very odd experience (as a donor) if certain gifts were left off of that statement simply due to the fact that someone with certain permissions was the one that issued it. Keep in mind that this document is strictly donor facing and this lack of enforcement does not do anything that would allow the user to see gifts that they should not.


I am genuinely interested in your thoughts around this, and I apologize for any confusion or misunderstanding, but our thoughts were truly on the donor and providing a sensical experience for them since this is a donor facing form of communication (and the donor is unlikely to understand that certain gifts were left off due to permissions of the user that triggered the communication).



Thanks!

Denise Small Kelley

This is why I still generate custom giving reports using Crystal Reports, though I realize that isn't an option for everyone.

Denise Small Kelley

I've read the feedback from Blackbaud, but I'm troubled by the security issues you've outlined. If could easily be a matter of policy that the person who generates annual giving statements should be one with the authority to see all gifts. I don't see why the average frontline person would need to provide this in a level of detail they shouldn't be able to see.

Ben Regier

Hi Jarod Bonino‍,


Thanks for the response and the context! I’m glad to know that Giving Statements are covered by the Receipt management permissions. I should have thought to try that one.


We occasionally set up users to send receipts for a specific fund, and in those situations we would block them from seeing the other funds. I realize that this is an usual practice (at least, I think it is – I’m curious if anyone else reading this thread ever does this). In those cases the Giving Statements would still give some of our users access to information they shouldn’t have. But I understand this may be an edge case and you can’t always account for every edge case.


You asked what my expectations were for enforcement of gift security by fund. I guess my assumption was that the giving statement would work similar to the way the Giving panel works in web view, where the gifts, giving total, first gift and largest gift all change based on which funds the user has access to. If the Giving Statements always include every fund, I would expect that only users with access to every fund would be able to generate them. I see your point that a donor would want to see all of their gifts, but there are situations where we would want to generate a report like this for a specific fund, or a group of funds (again, we may be unique here).


Also glad to hear that funds are coming to the Giving Statements, and potentially more options for customizations down the road!


No need to apologize - I didn’t intend for my post to come across as snarky or angry – I just wanted to share what I learned with others who might have the same assumptions as me. Thanks for your engagement and ongoing work on this.

Lisa Johnson

I've just started to play around with the giving statement option and think it could be a good tool for us, however, it doesn't seem like there is a way to have the statement include stock gifts? Is that correct? If so, this is not a usable tool for us since donors will immediately call and say most of their giving is not reflected.