Sending a digital survey - how to get answers back into the database??

Em Siemonek
Em Siemonek
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in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Kia ora team,

My organisation is sending a donor survey shortly. All answers from donors will be tabled into an excel sheet. I wanted to know what the easiest way would be to import these answers back into Raisers Edge and apply them to the individual donor profiles? I've done it in the past as a custom field, but it was a bit of an ordeal to be honest! Does anyone have any better options? We'd want to be able to query on answers later to find trends etc.

Thanks so much! :)

Comments

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
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    @Em Siemonek
    I recommend using actions or appeal, both can be queried on in DB view, action can be filter on in action list in webview.

    As for getting the data into RE, regular RE import in db view should do the trick, unless the ordeal you are talking about is doing import.

  • Karen Diener
    Karen Diener
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    @Em Siemonek the biggest challenge for something like this is that you'll need the constituent Import ID or constituent ID on the file to be imported, in order to match it to the right constituent. You could use the “check for duplicates” option, but it is unreliable and you cannot confirm or reject potential duplicates at the time of import. But you just might have to deal with that, unfortunately.

    An action could work but you will need to create a lot of attributes to store the responses. If you need them structured in any way so that they can be easily queried or reported, that probably the best option. Attributes will not be able to store long text answers though, so you might consider Action notes with specific notepad types.

    It's a decent amount of work, and I would definitely ask how useful this information will be on a donor record in the long run. Any time I've worked somewhere that did a donor survey, it was anonymous and we were looking for broad trends rather than specific identifiable information.

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson
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    @Em Siemonek What kind of data is it? I say that because without further info, I'd say Actions, but (for example) if this were a survey to Alumni asking about their experience at their alma mater, I would then want to add it to the Education Relationship.

  • Em Siemonek
    Em Siemonek
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    @Christine Robertson Hi Christine, We are sending a survey to our donors :)

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
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    @Em Siemonek:
    I've done it in the past as a custom field, but it was a bit of an ordeal to be honest! Does anyone have any better options? We'd want to be able to query on answers later to find trends etc.

    I think this is where things get tricky. A custom field is the only way I'm aware of to be able to query on specific questions in the survey. You would have to create a custom field for each question, and then map a response. That would allow you to create a query for a specific response to a specified question. For instance, you could create a query for constituents who answered “yes” to question 4. Adding them as an action or an appeal won't allow you to query on specific questions. This can be a time consuming task, no question. I'm not sure it's worth it. In order to import this data, you would need to have the constituent ID or import ID available in the excel spreadsheet. At that stage, why import it at all? Why not just reference the document for the answers to the questions, and use those IDs in a “ONE OF” query? This would save a heap of time and aggravation IMO. As long as the spreadsheet is kept in a secure shared space, I think this could work.

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
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    @Dariel Dixon
    I think what you said aligns with Online Express donation or event registration form where each question has to map to an attribute (custom field, keep in mind that participant attribute is being “depreciated” by participant options, dont' know if BB will ever do participant custom field in webview)

    The OP seems to suggest that they are using a survey form, which at the end will have the survey results in an excel file. So processing will be done via some form of import.

    As mentioned previously, the hardest part of this is mapping survey response to the constituent record to get constituent id/import id to do importing with. That will depend on what personally identifyable information is being collected (i.e. first name, last name, email, address, phone)

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
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    @Alex Wong I 100% agree. If the pool of donors is being pulled from RE to send the survey, @Em Siemonek can pull those IDs at the same time. If it is a printed survey, you might be able to print the constituent ID in an inconspicuous place where it can be added with the results. If emailed, maybe a LOOKUP versus email on file. If it's being handled by a third party, as long as the have the IDs to begin with, they can be mandated to return the results with that data amended. Everything is based on having the IDs when creating your pool of donors to survey.

  • Em Siemonek
    Em Siemonek
    Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge Name Dropper

    @Dariel Dixon I'm thinking the exact same thing, Dariel. I did it in the past and it was a few days work. I'm not necessarily sure that its worth it with the predicted number of responses we will receive! Thanks so much for your feedback :)

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson
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    @Em Siemonek I understand that it's to your donors, but is it information that should actually live in a specific place? If there's already a field in RE, use that.

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