Idea for Next Year's Raffle (Is This Possible?)

Bobby Steurer

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place. If not, please advise on where it should go. Thanks!

Each year, my organization hosts a raffle campaign that generates $1M+. It's one of our biggest initiatives of the year, and runs from late-June to mid-November. It used to be a massive, clunky, manual process involving physical packets and committee members. Since 2019, we've trimmed down to a digital operation (I live in a state where gaming laws permit that, fortunately).

However, the process still has a few too many moving parts. Though we do receive quite a few checks and cash, most of our tickets are purchased through an Online Express form. These purchases are batched, and the batch is then formatted according to our needs re: gift types, etc. From there, I have a query set up to show all raffle tickets purchased year-to-date that do not have a “Ticket Assigned = Yes” Attribute applied to them. I export those results using an Export I have set up specifically for this, formatting the resulting CSV and sending it to a member of a different department to upload to Salesforce, which then generates ticket numbers in a process we've honed together. After that, I apply the “Ticket Assigned” attribute to all of those purchases. The process then repeats a few times a week - sometimes many more, depending on the events/deadlines surrounding this campaign.

This process works, and though it's not as tedious as it was when we first had to figure this thing out together, I have to wonder if there's a better way to be doing this. Do you think there's a workflow via the Power Platform and NXT's email capabilities that could eliminate some of these steps? There's no third-party system that can do this (trust me, I've looked at and demoed all of them).

Again, what we've been doing works well enough. Just feels like we could eliminate some steps or automate this thing a little more on our end, rather than depending on another department to send out the emails, formatting a large CSV, etc.

I appreciate your help. Thank you for reading.

Austen Brown

@Bobby Steurer - This seems like it could be possible via Power Automate - from the report pull to adding attributes to gift records. Have you started the on-demand Accelerator Course that Blackbaud has for Power Automate? Where are you in your learning process of the Power Platform?

Bobby Steurer

@Austen Brown At a standstill with my learning. I'm re-introducing the discussion about access to our IT team. Kind of seems like it's always the wrong timing, unfortunately. Do you think it could handle numbering, too? That's honestly our biggest hang-up, and something no third-party software can do in a way that suits us, hence our reliance on Salesforce. The other items aren't really a big deal, but if Power can tackle the numbering for us, I could potentially make a better case for access.

Dan Snyder

@Bobby Steurer I am not familiar with Salesforce, but depending on what actions are available in their connector I agree with @Austen Brown that this sounds possible with Power Automate, the attributes at a minimum.