Major Gift Dashboard

Sa'id Kolapo · September 5

Hello Blackbaud PowerBI Community,

I am working on building a donor pipeline and pledge tracking report in Power BI using data exported from RENXT. My goal is to replicate and enhance the reporting format we currently maintain in Excel.

The Excel structure includes the following fields:

KRM (relationship manager)

Donor Name

Expected pledges / Opportunities

Actions (date/type/summary)

Ask amount

Deadline

Actual total Gift/Pledge amount

Pledge Forecast by Fiscal Year (e.g., 2025/26, 2026/27, etc.)

What I am trying to achieve in Power BI:

A dynamic report that shows donor pipelines, including pledged vs. actual gifts.
A way to track forecasted pledge amounts by fiscal year side by side.
The ability to filter by KRM, donor, and fiscal year.
Visualization options for progress toward targets (e.g., actual vs. ask amounts).

My questions are:

Does Blackbaud (NXT or RE/FE) already have a recommended Power BI report template for this type of fundraising pipeline?
If not, what’s the best way to structure the data model in Power BI so that fiscal year pledge forecasts (e.g., 2025/26, 2026/27) are reported correctly?
Any general tips or examples on how others have built similar reports?

Any advice, sample designs, or pointers to resources would be very helpful as I get started.

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

Carol Grant · September 8

Hi Sa'id- this can be done but it would have to be different queries that are combined into one or shown on different pages in Power BI. You want to use the Fundraiser's specific record ID or Fundraiser Name to link it all together. You would need to roll up certain columns like you can't show all their actions with all their gifts without duplicating something. You would need to do last action with a gift total. Or have them appear on separate pages.

RE does not make it easy to pull installments due. I use a Gift export that pulls over 10 installments for each pledge. Then I Unpivot the installment columns so they appear in one column and use a date formula to get the installment date to a Fiscal Year. Then write formulas for what installment balance is in what year.

I'm sure someone could demo this at a Power BI User Group meeting if you aren't a part of that yet, many users have done this.

-Carol Grant

Alex Wong · September 8

@Crystal Bruce might want to move this under the SKY Developer forum for RE NXT or Power BI

What you want to achieve is doable but more complex. Blackbaud has multiple reports / query that you will need to use to then put everything together. How you go about it depends on how much time you want to put into this and how much ease to re-run,

Specifically for pledge forecasting, it is a little lackluster right now with the API. There is no "give me a list of all pledges installment schedule and pledge payment against each installment schedule" API endpoint, what Blackbaud provides is PER pledge, you can get a list of all its installments, and PER pledge, you can get a list of all its payment details (payment application, write off). Query API can get you installment schedule, but won't give you the breakdown needed with payment details. In order to "truly" do what you want to do with forecast, without "workarounds" that depends on circumstances, you will need to:

For all unpaid (not fully paid) pledges
- call the "get installments" api save it in a data warehouse or cloud storage somewhere that Power BI can pick up
- call the "get payments" api and save it in a data warehouse or cloud storage somewhere that Power BI can pick up
then in power bi, you will be able to link up all the gift details (for pledge) to its payment and write off gift details, thereby allowing you to do proper forecasting.

Dan Snyder · September 8

@Sa'id Kolapo I'll chime in with my answers, but I know there are many others who have likely achieved the same thing more efficiently.

To my knowledge, BB does not have a report template for this type of pipeline.
How I have achieved this is via an export from a Mail - Reminders parameter file in database view. We have the Queue module so this can be exported automatically and it importantly includes the installment date/amount/balance in the export that I can use for the "forecasting" of pledge amounts due. See also attached Aging Report PDF.
I'm including here a few of our Power BI reports as samples of what I think answer your questions. I have three separate reports for these, but that does not mean you cannot do this all in one report with a variety of data sources.

Major Gifts Team Overview_Redacted.pdf

Aging Report_Redacted.pdf

Proposal Pipeline_Redacted.pdf