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How to get started with Research Point

Payal Sen

What is the best possible way to understand this platform after the fundamental training? Are there guides available like Raiser's edge to go in depth or it's better to get in touch with a consultant. I am more interested to know to how research point and raiser's edge compliment each other to support fundraising on a broader perspective.

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Accepted answers

Carol Belair

@Payal Sen - I do feel the best resource is to review the ResearchPoint Course Catalog via Blackbaud University for other resources that will be helpful in utilizing ResearchPoint such as on-demand courses and instructor-led courses.

Re: having a consultant who can provide strategic guidance in using ResearchPoint: I am not able to see what organization you are from as your profile is marked private, so I am able to see if you have an analytics strategic consultant around using ResearchPoint or analytics project with an analytics project manager who can contact you. You can also check in with your Blackbaud Customer Success Manager as well.

I hope this is helpful!

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Carlene Johnson

I'm wondering if @Shelley Weifenbach or @Carol Belair might be able to make some good recommendations here?

Mallory Burgan

@Payal Sen Honestly, past Fundamentals, the best thing you can do is just get in your own data and start experimenting. BBU has some intermediate NXT and Query courses that are worth it, but they only get you so far. Most of the real learning curve is querying, gift entry, troubleshooting, whatever weird thing your database is doing. This Community and the NXT Facebook groups are good for that too—people post into the same walls you'll hit eventually.

As for a consultant, it depends on what you actually need. If you're just trying to get comfortable with the platform generally, keep teaching yourself. You don't need to pay someone for that. It's worth bringing someone in when the problem is specific to your database, your messy data, or your reporting setup that doesn't actually answer the questions you're asking. That's the stuff that takes way longer to figure out on your own than it should.

RENXT is your system of record and where moves management lives. ResearchPoint is the research/wealth layer that feeds into it. When they're synced, wealth screening, predictive scores, and confirmed outside giving appear on the constituent record. Database view splits it across a few tabs (Financial Info, Ratings, Gifts to Other Orgs). NXT mostly dumps it into the Ratings tile under Custom Ratings, plus whatever native NXT screening you've got running alongside it. The integration doesn't pull everything into your constituent records in NXT, so if you want to run your queries on the wealth data in NXT (rather than ResearchPoint), you might want to manually import additional data into Raiser's Edge.

Happy to go deeper on any piece of this if it's useful.

Carol Belair

I hope this is helpful!

Payal Sen

@Carol Belair I am with New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. I just got a response from

Katherine.Swank@blackbaud.com and project manager Lindsay Wilson. Thank you for your response.

Carol Belair

@Payal Sen - I am so glad our team was in touch with you on this! Having a consultant available to help in utilizing these features (i.e. the integration between RP and RE) more strategicially will be incredibly productive. Thank you for letting me know!