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VSE Survey Report

Joel Clasemann

As our advancement services team has shrunk over the past few years, we started using the VSE Survey Report provided in the Analytical Reports section of the Reports tab. I had problems this summer with CASE changing the template and Blackbaud not changing the Raiser's Edge template. I started a ticket with Blackbaud and today learned that they are not going to update the current template AND have plans to decommission the existing report.

My question for you all: what are you using to produce information for the VSE?

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Comments

Dan Snyder

@Joel Clasemann We use the VSE Report cause a couple things are usually right (Largest donors and our endowment stuff is generally pretty accurate), however, we basically have queries set up for everything else. We use the rest of the VSE Report created by BB just as a place to enter the new information before entering it in the CASE portal.

Joel Clasemann

@Dan Snyder Thank you.

Tom Klimchak

@Joel Clasemann Yep, we have about 20 queries in total. A bunch of them answer the very specific questions (top 3 this or that) and then we have one query and export that kicks out all giving records for the year into a CSV/Excel file. With a little cleanup, a few extra codes tossed in and the use of a pivot table we can get most of the numbers we need.

It's not great, but it also isn't too awful once you've built everything. Writing out instructions for your “future self” is a big help ?

Elizabeth Johnson

@Joel Clasemann Good to know about their decommissioning plans. As a high school, we don't have to do the full report and I've been able to use the canned report with the supplement of two queries - I've never been able to match the number of alumni in our system to their number. I'll start building queries to do the job each year until it is eventually sunsetted.

Christine Cooke

@Joel Clasemann I've never used the VSE, could never get the numbers to come out correctly. I think you have to do all of your entry in a very specific way to make that one report behave. It's always been a series of reports and queries to get the answers. And of course now that they have changed everything this year - we are all scrambling to rebuild/adjust. yay… ahem

Joel Clasemann

@Tom Klimchak Thank you.

Joel Clasemann

@Elizabeth Johnson Good luck! I am curious for their formal announcement and what the timeline will actually be.

Joel Clasemann

@Christine Cooke bCREPro Yes, our VP decreed that our data entry logic should follow a path that makes it as easy as possible to produce the VSE. Since it was hard to justify (and explain) the logic prior to that decision, it was a very welcome structure for us. We have been using the RE report template to then produce monthly reports because it ran so quickly and was explainable to all.

Maryann Perrotta

@Joel Clasemann
We have been using VSE for many, many years and I have managed to get the dollars in each bucket to total accurately with a bunch of other queries for some of the questions not filling in correctly! Now I'm scrambling like everyone else. I just can't seem to figure out how to get the hard and soft credit dollars for each of the core constituent codes needed on the DASL/CASE combined survey. Can anyone help point me in the right direction?

Joel Clasemann

@Maryann Perrotta
Our finance department appreciates me because I like things to balance to the penny. I have been reviewing our setup of the VSE report, double checking coding with other queries, building new queries to cover other areas not delivered in the current RE template, and I am not balancing either. I am close enough where I may just decide to fudge one number to get it to balance because I cannot find any data entry inconsistencies or any incorrect constituency hierarchies. It really sucks that BlackBaud and their development team have chosen to abandon the education sector on this.

Keya Graves

@Tom Klimchak
Could you share the queries you use/created for the VSE reporting. tgraves@oakton.edu