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Examples of Useful Attributes?

Anastasia Bailey

Hi, I am in the process of determining which attributes we will configure in our Raiser's Edge NXT. Can anyone provide some attributes you have added that are useful? For reference we are a large city library with a goal of ramping up our fundraising capacity. Thank you!

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Comments

JoAnn Strommen

@Anastasia Bailey Welcome to the BB Community forums.

Having worked at two different orgs, the attributes for the two were completely different. IMO, attributes are set up as needed when you have miscellaneous pieces of information that you will need on a good number of your records and want to be able to query. And, that is not better entered or already entered somewhere else.

My one suggestion is to use a table for data entry in the description field whenever possible for this special information. This will provide consistent, correct data entry and make it easy to query on the data.

Austen Brown

@Anastasia Bailey - Echoing what JoAnn has said and adding that you should try to use the native fields in RE first before creating something new through an attribute.

Anastasia Bailey

@JoAnn Strommen Thank you so much for your reply. Prior to my current organization I worked for an environmental nonprofit and used Raiser's Edge while there. I intend to follow best practices as suggested by the specialist at RE NXT, but to prepare for configuration, what attributes did you add at the 2 orgs you worked at?
Our fundraising activities are pretty typical so we will be reporting on prior gifts, years given, etc. Any special fields that you added that worked for you for special reports? Thank you!

Anastasia Bailey

@Austen Brown Thank you for you reply. I replied to JoAnn below but have the same question for you if you are willing to offer input. Did you add any special attributes that helped pull good info while reporting? So far our reporting is pretty standards with gifts, years, and amounts, but we'd like to expand our capacity as much as possible. Thanks!

Austen Brown

@Anastasia Bailey - Unfortunately, this is an area that is specific to each individual organization - it is truly the additional things that do not exist elsewhere that are important for your reporting structure.

If anyone shares their attributes I would take it with a grain of salt; attributes tend to turn into the junk drawer of the database over the years - it can be difficult to reel in this section.

JoAnn Strommen

@Anastasia Bailey Most financial reports can be done with correct query grouping and exporting fields with Export for anything not available in a canned report.

Our constituent and gift attributes were created as needed. I can only think of a couple which were/or could be configured ahead of time. At the YMCA we had an attribute for what department an employee worked in. Here we have an attribute to save alumni's college ID.

IMO, they really are created when a need arises to save information that does not have an intended field already.

We have a number attributes that are related to events, likely entered before we had Event module, and rating type info, entered before Prospect module. These now create a cluttered mess that needs to be cleaned out as there are better, appropriate places for the info.

Dariel Dixon

@Anastasia Bailey I think the best attribute usage comes as a result of a problem. I've seen many attributes created proactively that don't get used, or were created as an incorrect type. If you are creating an attribute, have a plan for it and make sure everyone understands what it is used for.

You probably won't know you need an attribute until you need it. LOL.

Dana Burton

@Anastasia Bailey, I agree with the others. But since you asked, I'll give you an example of what we do here. Some of the attributes were created based on the previous system we used. Here are some of of the new ones we list under Affiliation in Attributes. These are for our partner relations team to send various emails to include our constituents in what is happening, raise awareness for people who are new, and generate more gifts. People can subscribe to or unsubscribe from any of these.

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Some fields are geared towards the finance department for receipting, while others are for outreach.

Anastasia Bailey

@Dana Burton Thank you so much. A useful comment that gets my brain going in the right direction. I appreciate your input.

Rose Dixon

@Anastasia Bailey I presume you are looking for constituent attributes (vs gift, action, event, appeal, etc.)? Here are some we use: Communication Preference, Hobbies/Interests, Military Affiliation, Swag size/color, Political Affiliation, Professional License/Certification, VIP - and we have a bunch of iWave attributes we were told were required to plop that data.

Anastasia Bailey

@Rose Dixon Thank you so much, this is very helpful.