Accounting for soft credits in Power BI?

Adam Dunigan
Adam Dunigan
Sixth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT® APIs

Hi all!

I've been recently developing a fundraising dashboard in Power BI using the SKY API connector. I've had no issue accounting for hard-credited dollars raised, but when I want to incorporate soft credits (in order to properly measure a given donor's recognized credit), the dataset blows up. Of course, expanding the soft credits field in the gifts endpoint is the cause of this due to any given gift having more than one soft credit.

In my mind, I need to separate these soft credit records into their own table and then join to that table (i.e. left join) only on the rows that match up, so that I don't affect the hard credits but am able to incorporate soft credits where applicable.

Basically, I'm looking for input from anyone out there who has developed Power BI reports using the Gift API and incorporated soft credits without disrupting the original gifts themselves.

Thanks!

Adam

Comments

  • Lora Lowe
    Lora Lowe
    Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary Facilitator 1

    @Adam Dunigan
    I'm working through a similar issue, and I was wondering if I should export the soft credit info (gift, sift credit donor details, HC donor details) that I add to Power BI as a separate stand-alone table with a relationship with the primary dataset. It would mean exporting and refreshing that table each time, but I don't think that would be terrible.

  • Dan Snyder
    Dan Snyder Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge First Reply

    @Rebecca Sundquist @Alex Wong I don't use the Gift API/custom connector so wonder if one of you might be able to answer this for the community?

  • Rebecca Sundquist
    Rebecca Sundquist Blackbaud Employee
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Adam Dunigan, @Lora Lowe , @Dan Snyder , I took a cue from @Ellen Smith and put together this example that combines hard and soft credits into another fact table in the semantic model: Sharing my Power BI Template: Combine Queries for Hard/Soft Credit Recognition - Blackbaud Community.

    This pulls the soft credits in a separate query, then combines them with hard credits so that you can report true donor counts including soft recognition with actual donations. The original gift table is still the center of the model for reporting hard credit revenue.

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

    @Lora Lowe
    how you model power bi around direct and soft credit depends on your org's soft credit policy

    IF your org only allows one soft credit on a gift, then you can create a table/query that shows soft credit Donor ID/Name when a gift is soft credited and show direct/hard credit DOnor ID/Name when no soft credit.

    However, if your org allows for multiple soft credits and potentially soft credit amount that doesn't adds up to the gift amount total (too much or too little), then you will have to account for that. You can either do 1 table/query or 2 tables/queries. There is no “better” answer, either one would work and affect how your DAX measures will get created.

    Take a look at what Rebecca has linked, and then if you still have question, let's start with what you are trying to create.

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