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ResearchPoint Training

Cathleen Zinn

We just purchased ResearchPoint and then discovered that you have to pay more to take the training. I would love some suggestions on how I can learn this product without having to pay for training. Can I say that it is ridiculous that you have to pay extra for training!

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Comments

Jenny Marquardt

@Cathleen Zinn we have the training and I would say it’s worth it.

Cathleen Zinn

@Jenny Marquardt can you tell me more about your training?

Lee Grisham

@Cathleen Zinn I was told this product would no longer be offered. How did you even do that?

And welcome to how Blackbaud works. You have to pay for any training they have and the results will vary. If you already have a training subscription, “Learn More,” it should be included, right?

Carol Belair

@Cathleen Zinn - There are a couple of RP introduction on-demand training sessions available via Blackbaud University. Here are links as part of the Introduction to ResearchPoint:

I also suggest reviewing the Fundraiser’s Guide to Data Sources for more about the WealthPoint data sources utilizing when screening records through WP within RP. I hope this is helpful!

Cathleen Zinn

@Lee Grisham that's strange. We just purchased it. I hope they are not planning on discontinuing it! I agree, if you purchase a product the training should be free!

Cathleen Zinn

@Carol Belair thanks for your comment. I already took these two trainings. I will look at the other one you suggested.

Katherine Swank

@Cathleen Zinn Hi Cathleen - thanks for your post! With each analytics project you're assigned to a consultant on the giving insights team. We help with learning about what you have purchased and that includes some special help with ResearchPoint for the asking! While our training package gives you A-Z training on the software, your consultant on our team can check in with you to make sure that you're learning the functions and features most important to you. I've sent you a separate email to connect you back to your assigned consultant. There you can use the link to ask for a one-hour consulting session on ResearchPoint ? I hope that's a welcome new year present! Check your email.

Chris Nungesser

Hello, @Cathleen Zinn:

I see this was from last month, so hopefully you've been able to move forward. For whatever it's worth, I'll share that I've been using ResearchPoint with a Target Analytics package for a few years now. And I found the training to be quite useful in my first year with it. Depending on what you're doing, you may not feel it's as essential in subsequent years. There are training sessions you can take on Blackbaud University. I do recommend those, however, I don't believe they're going to be the same as the training you would get working with your ResearchPoint consultant.

The ResearchPoint trainings, I think, have two main components:

The first part is understanding your specific package and what it means. For example, depending on your package, Blackbaud may have created some modeling scores for you. Or perhaps they pulled some data based on publically available records. I found it helpful to understand what Blackbaud's scores and categorizations meant so I was comfortable working with the data.
The second part is query-related. It's really helpful to get familiar with querying on data. Learning how to work with the data from ResearchPoint and, in your org's case, the data in RE. And that's just standard query mechanics. The training with the consultant helps with an additional aspect which is how to think about your data specifically. Like pulling in various ResearchPoint fields into the query criteria. My consultant brought some ideas for specific queries to help us identify promising fundraising opportunities.

One challenge I felt when I first began working with ResearchPoint data was that I felt overwhelmed with my options. Actually, this just came up again for a newer gift officer that I doing some training with. It feels like there are more potential opportunities than we have the capacity to act on. Working with the consultant helped me focus on the most promising aspects of the ResearchPoint data and helped me prioritize which directions to go in.

I feel like a weird Blackbaud commercial right now. Ha! I hope your project is going well. Reach out if you have any questions. I am happy to assist if I'm able to.

Good luck!

Chris

Cathleen Zinn

@Chris Nungesser Thanks for your response. I did receive some one on one training with my consultant, so all is good!