Constituent Data Collection Solutions - BB Native or Third Party

Jordan Hebert
Jordan Hebert
Participant Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

I am exploring ways to streamline our data collection process for constituents without having to rely on them making a gift through online donation forms, or event registration form signups.

Currently, we send a Microsoft Form to medical students before their graduation date so they can provide us with up-to-date info. We also use a web form on our Word Press website for alumni to submit updated information. These solutions are not ideal because they require me to look through a spreadsheet that does not have any constituent IDs then search one-by-one each individual in RE NXT in order to update their records. Also, we ask them for custom field info such as medical specialty. We do not want to pay for Microsoft Power Platform at this time, but we would consider it if there are no other solutions.

I would love to hear what others are using to simplify this workflow, or if there is a tool in RE NXT that I am just missing.

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Answers

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Facilitator 4 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    You might want to explore RE NXT Donor Portal where some of what you want to do is already there. Other data collection can be done using SKY API, SKY Add-in, and Power Automate. It does have a learning curve, some find it easy to hands on, some doesn't. you can check out developer.blackbaud.com for more info. PM me if you want to have a more in-depth discussion on what's possible

  • Jack Briggs
    Jack Briggs
    Second Anniversary PowerUp Challenge: Data Health #3 Kudos 1 Name Dropper

    We do the same as you - MS Forms for all data (Portal doesn't meet our needs). We do add our 'Alumni ID' to all outgoing emails and are kind of training people to quote it on any event forms/donation forms/update forms, which has significantly trimmed my manual search time, but yeah… end of the day, I'm doing a lot of searching!

    You might already be doing this, but if you have emails on your form, you can always use VLOOKUP for your RE ID - this cuts down a lot of time too!

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