I COULD USE A MENTOR!

Kim MartinezWard

Ugh, I could use help from my community. I'm new to this agency and no one here knows how to use RENXT basic functions. Such as: How do I pull a gift report that just shows Donor name, donation amount within a specific date range? (i.e. donations received 12/1 - 12/31/22).
Anyone willing to help a girl out?

JoAnn Strommen

@Kim Ward Welcome to the community. You will definitely want to check out the trainings BB offers. That would be a good starting point. You should be able to find a some free sessions if you don't have learning subscription.

I personally run 99.9% of my reports from database view. I can wrangle out an NXT report but not always confident knowing exactly what it's pulling. And right now I wish I had the time to assist you but just don't probably for another couple weeks.

I'm sure you'll get other replies. Best wishes.

Karen Diener

Ask your employer about professional development opportunities too. The Learn subscriptions can be helpful for completely new users, but the hardest part is understanding what RE can do, what industry best practices are, and applying both of those to support your organization's needs. You can't be successful in the role without some support, and since you don't have it internally, you need to look elsewhere.

A few other options:

• Start with the free classes that JoAnn mentioned at Blackbaud University - these are the “Learn” subscriptions I referenced,
• Watch every webinar that is applicable to your organization. This page is where you can register for new ones and watch previously recorded ones.
• Read as much as you can in this community. You can subscribe to various topics and get a daily digest with new posts and responses to existing posts. A lot of the best practice stuff can be learned this way.
• There is a Facebook user group as well that I would encourage you to join. A lot of people like to respond with “I don't do Facebook”. If you want to learn and invest in yourself, you'll do it. No reason you can't set up a random email address and join so that you can follow a few professional groups.
• See if you can get your hands on Bill Connors' book “Fundraising with The Raiser's Edge”. It's really the only comprehensive guide to understanding RE.
• Bookmark and use Blackbaud's knowledgebase. Always use this (and other resources) before you ask questions. I think the search results have become worse over the years, and sometimes it isn't always clear if it is referencing webview or database view. But the occasional struggle does not mean it should be dismissed entirely. It will help you with a lot of your questions, or at least get you understanding how to “speak” Raiser's Edge.
  

Those are the top things that come to mind! As for your specific question, I would recommend reading up on Query. You'll need queries for nearly everything, and this is probably one of the most important skills to understand.

Best of luck! Hope to see you a lot in the Community!

Karen

Elizabeth Perron

@Kim Ward

As @Karen Diener and @JoAnn Strommen have already shown how helpful and knowledgeable this community is to new members. You may want to sign up for @Karen Tuecke ‘s Blackbaud Field of Dreams webinar. Also, visit member’s profiles to read through their bookmarked content.

Welcome to the Blackbaud Community!

In harmony,

Elizabeth

Blackbaud Community Team

Karen Tuecke

@Elizabeth Perron @Kim Ward, join us in two weeks!!

Angela JohnstonGoch

@Kim Ward I'm new to RENXT, too. I have taken the BBU classes and some are very helpful. Until you complete the beginner courses, you can't get to the other more important stuff. I prefer using NXT but have found, I actually need to use Database for most things. So I'm happy to help as much as I can from one new user to another!

Rachel Kave

@Kim Ward I am mostly an NXT user and happy to help with whatever I can!

Kim MartinezWard

@Angela JohnstonGoch
Thanks Angela. I've slowly been able to take BBU classes, but understand that until I get a better foundation under me, I'm not going to move to the important items.

Kim MartinezWard

@Rachel Kave

thanks Rachel. You will be hearing from me, as I get some of the BBU beginner classes done.