Getting the date right on special event appeals?

Hi. We have certain appeals that are fundraising events like galas. The money is placed into a holding account until the end of the month following the event. The money could have a gift date years in advance of the date of the event.

In our financials, we track this by following the money. But I'm trying to do a report based on Raiser's Edge data. Is there a way to track event date in Rasier's Edge so we can get the month on these kinds of event gifts right?

I notice from https://kb.blackbaud.com/knowledgebase/Article/52438 that changing the start and end dates might mark gifts outside those dates as invalid.

Best Answer

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Facilitator 3 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge
    Answer ✓

    @Crystal Bruce I think this should be moved to RE NXT forum, this isn't a SKY API question.

    @Joe Heideman I am not clear why, but will respect how your org record gifts. If you specify start and end date on appeal, RE will restrict gifts outside of those date, so it is not a good place to record the date of the event. I record the event date as an attribute (custom field) to the appeal record, and since I run my report via API and data warehouse, I can query/report however I want. Unfortunately, without custom reporting, using RE gift query, you are not going to be able to criteria on appeal attribute (custom fields). Meaning you will need to run your gift report separately and an appeal query separately and merge them in excel.

Answers

  • Discussion moved to the Raiser's Edge NXT forums. Thanks!

  • Hey Alex. This issue is only a problem for me running reports out of the data warehouse. Our org is handling events just fine, I'm just trying to build a dashboard using our data warehouse that will reflect the same info as the financials. I am moving from sky api to a query api for the data warehouse. I believe custom fields are able to be added to a query. So I believe would be able to use this solution. Thank you!

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Facilitator 3 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge

    custom field (attribute) is available in Query and thereby Query API. However, you will have to pull 2 separate queries: Appeal query (can include appeal custom fields) and Gift query (which does not include appeal custom field, but can include gift custom fields).

    So if you record the event date on the appeal custom field (which makes more sense), you need to pull appeal query too.