Organizing Portfolios - Coding Tiers

Susan ShebarFioribello
Susan ShebarFioribello
Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

My Gift Officers want to organize their portfolios into tiers. My initial thought was to use Classification. The problem is, we are already using Classification for other things and use that for reporting. For example, we have Major Gift Prospect, Not a Major Gift Prospect. Adding tiers I would need to triple the classifications (ex. Major Gift Prospect 1, Major Gift Prospect 2, Major Gift Prospect 3).

Does anyone have any suggestions for another way to easily code tiers within the portfolio?

Comments

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
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    @Susan ShebarFioribello - What about a constituent attribute? Do you currently build reporting through Insight Designer?

  • Susan ShebarFioribello
    Susan ShebarFioribello
    Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Austen Brown

    We are trying to use Insight Designer but we are still learning how to get them to work. We are also doing a lot of recoding hoping to make it easier to use the “reports”.

  • Karen Diener
    Karen Diener Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Susan ShebarFioribello I haven't done this often for Organizations, but when I have we've always used a constituent attribute which works well and is easy to manage. I second Austen's suggestion!

    Karen

  • Susan ShebarFioribello
    Susan ShebarFioribello
    Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Austen Brown
    Do the gift officers have the ability to add this code themselves or does the database management team need to change the attributes? We have a small staff and I don't want to have to take on making a lot of little changes every time a GO re-evaluates their portfolio.

  • roger berg
    roger berg Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 PowerUp Challenge #3 Gift Management

    @Susan ShebarFioribello another vote for what @Austen Brown said - use attributes.

    We keep Classifications simple - very similar to what you have - but further differentiate with attributes (custom fields in NXT) There are also the wealth stars (NXT) or levels A-G (RE) that BB assigns although the two sides (surprise) don't line up exactly: 5 star = A, 4 star = B, 3 star = C, D, 2 star = E, 1 star = F,G.

    I also created a propensity score of 1 through 10 based on a bunch of fields exported to excel. Different fields are assigned number scores. For example - total number of gifts can get you 1 to 3 points, involvement with the college earns points (current or former board?, event attendance, alumni, etc.), and last gift date gets 1 to 3 points depending on how recent. It's not easy because it's a constantly moving target, but it gives gift officers another way to tier the portfolios. I try to update the propensity score twice a year.

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
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    @Susan ShebarFioribello - Gift Officers can make changes to the attribute themselves, they can even add it into their Work Center when looking at their portfolio. The only hang-up with this solution, is Insight Designer does not currently include custom fields/attributes; so if this is something you'd want to utilize in reports - you'll have to think about it.

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