Scholarship Name - Field limitations between BAM and RE

Rosalyn Galloway

Hello,

Our institution is in its first year using BAM. My office is responsible for donor endowment reports and we rely on information from BAM to match students with donors. We are finding that the scholarship names, specifically, the field length, between BAM and Raiser's Edge are different (BAM field is much smaller) and we are having a hard time matching up the names of the scholarships across the two systems. Has anyone encountered this and how did you resolve this issure?

Linda Buerger

We had the same issue here, trying to tie the scholarship to the fund to the account in the financial system. We are limited to a 30 character name field in the financial system. We solved it by using a “ShortName” for all scholarships, funds and accounts. Our fund set-up in Raiser’s Edge uses the ShortName in the description field, and sets a fund attribute of Fund Recognition to house the formal name. In BAM, the Portfolio Name is the formal name, and the ShortName is housed in the Project ID field. It took some work to change the names in all three systems, but it was worth it. All of our inhouse reporting uses the ShortName, while anything sent to the donor, or award letters sent to a recipient, all use the Formal Name. Using this method shows the important information at a glance

ShortName = Donor Good Deeds Scholarship

FormalName = Dudley and Pollyanna Donor and Nell Little Families Scholarship Promoting Good Deeds

ShortName = Donor Heroes Scholarship

FormalName = Dudley and Pollyanna Donor Annual Scholarship for Emerging Heroes

Using this method makes it very easy to see at a glance which Fund/Scholarship is which. It makes reports generated from Raiser’s Edge much easier to read, and simplifies grid sorting in BAM much easier to follow.