In the last post about Blackbaud CRM™ (Inconceivable! Recognition Credits in Blackbaud CRM ™ ), we explored how giving recognition credits to both the donor and other entities and how distinguishing recognition credits by type were superior to the standard hard credit/soft credit model. In this post, we have more examples of how using different types of recognition credits can and have been used for reporting. The first example is of an organization with a recognition program that counts only gifts that are “the donor’s money”. Included in the definition of “the donor’s money” are gifts from a donor advised fund or made through a company owned by the donor. (Remember we are talking about a recognition, not IRS recognized donations/not tax deductions, etc.) If all the recognition credits from someone-who-is-not-the-donor and not-the-donor’s-spouse were simply “Third Party” and “Spouse Third Party”, this might not be so easy to figure out. Some “Third Party” credits would count, but most wouldn’t, but they’d all read “Third Party”. To solve this problem, we can have additional recognition credit types of “Business Owner”, “Spouse Owner”, “DAF” (Donor Advised Fund), and “Spouse DAF”. (To understand why we need “Spouse” versions of these credit types, see the previous post.) Going back to our friends Doug and Mary, if they have been making gifts to our organization with “their own money”, through their donor advised fund, and through their company, The Clothing Emporium, their recognition history tab would look like this. Mary Doug $10,000 DAF $10,000 Spouse DAF $1,000 Spouse $1,000 Self $5,000 Owner $5,000 Spouse Owner $500 Self $500 Spouse All of these credits happen to count toward the giving society because they meet the rule about “the donor’s money”. “Third Party” and “Spouse Third Party” credits do not count for this giving society, and Westley and Buttercup don’t have any. But if I wanted to know how much of this money actually came from Mary and Doug directly (and not indirectly via their DAF or their business), I can tell that from the recognition credit types (“Self” and “Spouse”). “That IS madness! That is going to kill the gift processors,” you may be thinking. Ah, but it will not! It is possible to set up a relationship between Doug and Mary and the Clothing Emporium and their donor advised fund so that a default is in place regarding the recognition credit types and the behavior when gifts are made. Every time the Emporium makes a gift, the system can automatically add the “Owner” and “Spouse Owner” recognition credits for Doug and Mary. Every time their donor advised fund makes a gift, the system can automatically add the “DAF” and “Spouse DAF” recognition credits for Westley and Buttercup. The gift processors don’t have to do anything extra when processing the gifts. Another example of creative recognition credit use has to do with making a gift “for” another person. Let’s say that it is the policy at our organization to allow people to make gifts of gifts. Aunt Betty is making a gift “for” Niece Suzie so Niece Suzie can buy her magical football tickets and get a really good seat in the stadium. Aunt Betty also has her own football tickets and her own really good seat in the stadium, so Aunt Betty also has a gift “for” herself. In addition, our organization likes to calculate points based on total dollars given for athletics, and the gift that Aunt Betty gave “for” Niece Suzie counts for Niece Suzie, not for Aunt Betty (although it is Aunt Betty’s money). What are we to do with that? As I am sure you know, if Aunt Betty is making the gift, we must record the gift on Aunt Betty’s record. She needs to get a tax receipt. When we calculate the points, we can do it based on recognition credits, not on the revenue history. For the gift that Aunt Betty made “for” herself and her magical football tickets and her really good seat in the stadium, she gets “Self” credit. For the gift that Aunt Betty made “for” Niece Suzie, she gets “Self-Do Not Count” credit. Niece Suzie gets a credit type of whatever we want to use that we will know means “not-her-money-but-will-pull-for-points-calculations-only”, so let’s say “Points-Third Party”. Madness again, right? Why on earth would anyone do that? Why not just leave the credits that go to Niece Suzie off Aunt Betty’s record altogether instead of making up another recognition credit type and editing it during entry, and then having to exclude it when pulling information for points calculations? This is bonkers! No, it’s not bonkers. We are doing this because we will be using recognition credits for lots of things, including running reports for prospecting. There are many things that come into play when building prospect lists, and past giving is one of them. If we pull our giving totals based solely on what is on the revenue history tab, we will miss all those donor advised fund gifts and all those gifts through donor-owned businesses or family-run foundations. All of that lives on the recognition credit tab. Therefore, we should be pulling that information from the recognition history and filtering out the recognition credit types that are irrelevant (“Third Party”). If we have not been giving people credit for their own gifts because we “weren’t going to recognize them”, we are going to be short-changing ourselves when it comes to seeing their complete giving. And the whole beauty of the recognition credit system is we don’t have to be torturing ourselves with untangling the mess of revenue plus recognition and what is a duplicate of what and which belongs to whom (which was explained in the previous “Inconceivable!” post). With the “Self-Do Not Count” credit, Aunt Betty’s gift “for” her niece will not get counted toward Aunt Betty’s own priority point calculations, but for anything else under the sun we may be doing (because we know that that recognition credit type only means do-not-count-for-priority-points), that gift will be included. We know she made it and can see it in her recognition history. If Aunt Betty was very generous and was paying for Niece Suzie to have a $5,000 gift for several years, and we didn’t give Aunt Betty her “Self-Do Not Count” credit, when we ran a giving total based on recognition credits (for anything other than priority points), Aunt Betty’s giving totals would be inaccurately low by thousands and thousands of dollars. Having shared these examples, let me also say this. Do not go hog-wild and create a bunch of recognition credit types for everything under the sun. (One of my big rules: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.) They should not be used to describe why someone got recognition credit. You don’t want to end up with “Birthday”, “Spouse Birthday”, “Graduation”, “Spouse Graduation”, “Tribute”, “Spouse Tribute”, etc. The purpose of the recognition credit types is for filtering when reporting or building recognition societies. Remember that the more you have, the more your query and report writers are going to have to contend with. These (simplified) examples are to demonstrate how recognition credits can be used in creative ways to filter on the recognition credit tab or include or exclude certain transactions without having to jump through a lot of hoops that you might have had to otherwise. I am not suggesting that you run out and implement any of the above complications for your giving societies or priority points policies if you don’t already have them. Not, of course, that there is anything wrong with them, but if your life is simple and carefree, be happy and keep it that way. You may not be an organization that has to worry about magical football tickets or seats in a stadium, or complex rules for recognition societies, but just about everybody has as situation where gifts are credited and counted in unusual ways depending on the situation. Recognition credits can help you manage that. If you’d like to learn more about how Brightvine can help you, or you’d like to discuss your direct marketing/marketing communications efforts, please feel free to connect with us.

Blackbaud CRM™ has a rich library of specs which allow your organization to easily extend the software to add and modify functionality. At the heart of most CRM customizations is the XML spec architecture, which provide a neat, human-readable definition allowing great power with very traditional coding. Despite this power, organizations will often need to modify CRM functionality at a deeper level, and the UI Model provides architecture for developers to “get under the hood” and work with real CLR code, often to extend business logic and handle UI events. Prerequisite Blackbaud Infinity SDK™ basic training, knowledge of Microsoft Visual Studio™ with some VB.NET of C# experience. When working in VB/C# in the UI Model, it’s frequently the case that a developer will want to call a custom data form, view, etc. from code. As these specs, when loaded, become available as web service endpoints, a developer with web service experience could access them through regular service references. However, when creating a custom data form, view, etc, that will be called from code, it’s helpful to run a utility called BBMetalWeb™, which may be unfamiliar to your organization if your developers have only had basic SDK training. BBMetalWeb™ will parse an XML spec, and create a .NET class which can be used as a first class object in code. This means when you’re calling the View form that was just created, you have the nice early-bound .NET “dot” notation for properties, and intelligence, so coding and step-through debugging are a lot easier. Create CodeGen Class Library Project Although you could just create code-generated classes and bring them into your UI Model project, we feel it’s better practice to create a new project (that would sit alongside the existing catalog and UI Model projects) – a class library called “YOURPROJECTNAME.CodeGen” For our purposes here, let’s say we have a hypothetical View Data Form which works with the Attribute Category table. (We will have a separate blog post for this later today, so stay tuned!) To do this, first go to your catalog project and make sure your View Data Form is loaded (use Load Spec in VS “Tools”), then select BBMetalWeb™ from Tools. You’ll probably be prompted for the location to the web service, as well as the DB name. Select View Data Forms and then in the Record Type tab, select “Attribute Category”. BBMetalWeb™ will create a new class in your catalog project. (You may need to toggle “view all files” to see it). Our hypothetical file “AttributeCategoryGetDefaultViewDataForm.codegen.vb” is the one you’re interested in, although a couple others may come along for the ride. We won’t be able to use AttributeCategoryGetDefaultViewDataForm.codegen.vb in the catalog project. The best practice here will be to create a new project called MyProject.CodeGen, and the type should be “class library”. You can simply drag the code gen file into your new project, then delete the entire “ViewForms” folder that got created in the catalog. One thing to note is that you’ll need some references added to the Code Gen project. Back to the UI Model Project From the UI Model project, add a reference to your Code Gen project. From here, you’ll want code to create a provider, which will provide the plumbing to our custom View Form: Private Const serviceUrlBasePath As String = "http://localhost/crm40/" Private Const databaseName As String = "BBInfinity_BB_3.0" Private Shared _provider As AppFxWebServiceProvider Friend Shared Function GetProvider() As AppFxWebServiceProvider If _provider Is Nothing Then _provider = New Blackbaud.AppFx.WebAPI.AppFxWebServiceProvider _provider.Url = String.Concat(serviceUrlBasePath, "appfxwebservice.asmx") _provider.Database = databaseName _provider.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials '_provider.Credentials = New System.Net.NetworkCredential("USERNAME", "PASSWORD", "DOMAIN") End If Return _provider End Function Your call to the View Form becomes very simple: Dim provider = GetProvider() Dim data As BrightVine.CustomFx.AttributeDefaults.CodeGen.ViewForms.AttributeCategory.AttributeCategoryGetDefaultViewDataFormData = BrightVine.CustomFx.AttributeDefaults.CodeGen.ViewForms.AttributeCategory.AttributeCategoryGetDefaultViewDataForm.LoadData(provider, ATTRIBUTECATEGORYID.Value.ToString) From here, you’ll have an object named “data” where you can use regular dot-notation to pull out all the custom fields from the View Form, as first class properties. We hope this tutorial helps you get going with code generation using BBMetalWeb. If you have any questions you can contact me at christopher.keene@brightvinesolutions.com and I’ll be glad to help.

If you’ve been in fundraising or have ever used a gift management system to record charitable donations, you are no doubt familiar with the concept of “hard credit” and “soft credit” for donors. The “hard credit” is the amount on the constituent’s record where the gift actually lives; it’s for the donor who actually gave the money. The “soft credit” is the amount on the record of anyone else who should be recognized for the gift, but they didn’t make the gift. Most gift management systems apply soft credit to additional constituents besides the donor making the gift. In Blackbaud CRM (™) the donor also gets recognition credit, as well as anyone else the user chooses to grant recognition credit to. That means if I make a gift, the gift goes on my record (hard credit) and I get recognition credit for it (soft credit). To many people seeing this for the first time, this appears to be double-counting credit for the gift. But that, as Inigo Montoya, might say, is because recognition credit does not mean what you think it means. Or at least it doesn’t work how you probably think it does. Where other systems have a hard and soft method of counting and recognizing donors, Blackbaud CRM (™) has two parallel systems of counting gifts, and you use one or the other, but not both, depending on what you are doing. In most gift management systems, if you are running a financial fundraising report, you run it based on hard credits only, and if you are running an honor roll report or a report for a donor wall, you run it based on hard and soft credits. This works differently in Blackbaud CRM (™) . The fundraising report is based on the actual gifts, the hard credits. Honor roll reports, donor wall reports, etc. are run strictly based on recognition credits. There is no reason to mix hard and soft credits, and you are just making your life more difficult if you do so. Here is an illustration comparing typical gift management systems’ hard and soft credits with the recognition credits system of counting in Blackbaud CRM (™). In most gift management systems, if Westley and his lovely wife Buttercup make gifts to an organization, and according to the charity’s policies it happens that sometimes the gifts are recorded on Westley’s record and sometimes on Buttercup’s, their records will look like this. Westley Buttercup $25 hard credit $25 soft credit $10 hard credit $10 soft credit $50 soft credit $50 hard credit $20 hard credit $20 soft credit If we are running a financial report, we would only count the hard credits. If we wanted to know the actual total dollars given by Westley and Buttercup jointly, we would count hard credits to get $105. On Westley’s record, the actual amount represented by hard credits is $55. On Buttercup’s record, the actual amount represented by hard credits is $50. If we want to know how much they are each recognized for, we arrive at that figure by adding the hard and soft credits on each of their records. We can look at either Westley’s or Buttercup’s record and tell that they are recognized as $105 donors. This is what the same scenario would look like in Blackbaud CRM (™). On the revenue history tab we see this. Westley Buttercup $25 gift $50 gift $10 gift $20 gift On the recognition history tab we see this. Westley Buttercup $25 gift Self credit $25 gift Spouse credit $10 gift Self credit $10 gift Spouse credit $50 gift Spouse credit $50 gift Self credit $20 gift Self credit $20 gift Spouse credit There is far more information gained more readily in Blackbaud CRM (™) . If we just want to see straight, hard dollars, the revenue tab is the place to go. This is where the gift processing staff typically goes to find a transaction on someone’s record. If we want to get an overall picture of someone’s giving, or find a transaction that we know someone was a part of and we aren’t as concerned who the “hard credit” donor was, the recognition tab is the place to go. Fundraisers tend to use this tab. What Blackbaud CRM (™) also has that most other gift management systems don’t is the ability to give recognition credits types or names. Donors always get recognized for their own gifts, and it is easy to tell which these are, because they have their own type. Users can call these whatever they like at a system level; it can be “Self”, “Donor”, “Hard Credit”, “Super-Awesome Giver”, whatever. The other recognition credits that are applied to a gift can also be defined by the users (again, at a system level). They should be broad categories for filtering and reporting purposes (the whys and wherefores to be covered in another post). Examples are “Spouse”, “Third-Party”, and, yes, “Does Not Count” (and you’ll have to read the next recognition credits post to find out why anyone would do that). But back to Westley and Buttercup. If we want to know how much Westley should be recognized for, we look at his recognition credits, add them all up, and get $105. And we can go to Buttercup’s record and do the same thing. But let’s say that their recognition history tabs actually look like this. Westley Buttercup $25 gift Self credit $100 gift Self credit $25 gift Self credit $25 gift Spouse credit $10 gift Self credit $10 gift Spouse credit $50 gift Spouse credit $50 gift Self credit $20 gift Self credit $20 gift Spouse credit Those recognition credits now are not the same. There is not an opposite Spouse credit for each of the other’s Self credit. Maybe Westley and Buttercup each made a gift before they got married, so no one else got recognition credit on their first gifts. Now if I add up all the credits on Westley’s record, I get $140 for Westley’s lifetime giving, and if I add up all the credits on Buttercup’s record I get $205 for Buttercup’s lifetime giving. If the question is, “How much actual money have Westley and Buttercup given us jointly?” if we go to the recognition credit history tab and filter on just the Self credits for both of them we will have $80 for Westley, $150 for Buttercup. That means $230 that they both have given. And you’re still thinking, “Uh, so what? That is still the same thing I could have gotten with hard credits and soft credits!” But here’s where we can really make recognition credits work for us when we are talking about recognition and “fundraising”, not strictly an accounting and legal whose-money-was-it perspective. Let’s throw in one more thing. Westley got credit for a gift, pre-Buttercup, made by the Dread Pirate Roberts Clothing Emporium, which Westley owns. Here are their recognition history tabs. Westley Buttercup $1,000 Third-Party Credit $100 gift Self credit $25 gift Self credit $25 gift Spouse credit $25 gift Self credit $10 gift Spouse credit $10 gift Self credit $50 gift Self credit $50 gift Spouse credit $20 gift Spouse credit $20 gift Self credit Westley’s lifetime giving, on a recognition basis, is $1,130. Buttercup’s lifetime giving, on a recognition basis, is $205. Together, if we are recognizing them jointly they should be recognized for $1,230. One more scenario. the Dread Pirate Roberts Clothing Emporium gives again, but Westley’s married to Buttercup this time, and their recognition history tab looks like this. Westley Buttercup $1,000 gift Third-Party Credit $100 gift Self credit $25 gift Self credit $25 gift Spouse credit $25 gift Self credit $10 gift Spouse credit $10 gift Self credit $50 gift Self credit $50 gift Spouse credit $20 gift Spouse credit $20 gift Self credit $1,000 gift Spouse Third-Party Credit $1,000 gift Third-Party Credit Westley’s lifetime recognition total, for just him, is $2,130. Buttercup’s lifetime recognition total, based solely on her recognition history, is $1,205. Together, their lifetime recognition total is $2,230. In other words, the two of them are responsible for either giving themselves, or through their business, $2,230. In a hard credit/soft credit world, we would have done one of two things. We would have soft credits for both Westley and Buttercup for the second Dread Pirate Roberts Clothing emporium gift, and we wouldn’t be able to tell that those two soft credits were pointing to the same gift and that we shouldn’t count them from both of their records. The other alternative would be to only have a soft credit on Westley’s record, and Buttercup’s giving total, on her record alone, would make it look like she had no part of the gift and her total would not be $1,205 in recognition credit but $205. The benefit of this recognition credit system over the hard credit/soft credit method is we don’t have to mix where we are pulling information from in Blackbaud CRM ™ , particularly when writing queries or reports. All the data can be pulled from the Recognition Credit area and all we have to do is filter on credit types to include or exclude the transactions we want to count. We can always tell that a Spouse credit is a duplicate of a Self credit, so we can exclude the Spouse credits from totals when looking at Westley’s and Buttercup’s joint giving. Same goes for Spouse Third-Party and Third-Party. Spouse Third-Party credits are already noted on the other spouse’s record, so they can be filtered away when we are trying to get joint giving totals. But we want them on Buttercup’s record so we can see them when we are looking solely at her, or we are pulling a prospect list of “women who have given $1,000 or more”, or “people whose names start with ‘B’ who have given $1,000 or more”, for whatever reason. We can’t get that kind of detail from the revenue history tab. We can’t get that kind of detail from regular old hard credits/soft credits, because we can’t filter by type with those and we can’t get rid of duplicates between spouses and see which credits should only be counted once when gathering joint giving numbers. And we lose valuable information potentially, if we leave credits off Westley’s or Buttercup’s records. And that would be inconceivable!

Blackbaud CRM™ Marketing Efforts and other marketing & communications tools are often viewed as complex, challenging and extremely time-consuming. But, are you really using this powerful functionality to its fullest extent or are you just bogged down in the minutiae? Tips to make Marketing Efforts easier: Ensure that your Source Code meets the needs for ALL of your marketing efforts. Build frequently-used Creatives, Packages, Email Templates, Ask Ladders, Segments and Seeds up front so that you can reuse them across mailings. Build a Standard Mail and Email Export Definition. You can always edit/add the fields as needed within the the mailings. Identify selections (or groups) of Constituents you frequently mail, email or call and build the most basic queries possible, i.e. “All Alumni”, “All Parents”, “Grateful Patients”, “All Donors”,“Recency”, “Frequency”, Monetary”. Always use the same Query Source View for your Selections and Export Definitions. We recommend the Constituent Marketing Source View because it allows you to use the “Segment Builder”. Build selections as broadly as possible. The functionality was designed to create broad groups. Avoid using “Exists In” criteria in your Selections. This will bog down the system and cause your Marketing Effort calculations, and the entire system, to run slower. Utilize the Exclusion Selections and Universe in the Marketing Effort to limit your pool rather than building exclusion/inclusion criteria into the Selection. Now it’s time to create the Segments: After building your Selections, use the “Segment Builder” to create multiple segments. This is a powerful feature and will cut your time dramatically. NOTE: Back in the early days of Blackbaud CRM ™, this functionality was called the Segment Builder. Now you can find it in Segments>Create Multiple Segments on the Taskbar. Create a Selection and Segment worksheet to give your users standardization around the Segment Code values. Make sure your Segment Code length matches the Segment length in your Source Code. Use the “Alias” field to shorten the name of your selections. There is a character limit in the Segment Builder. Remember that the order of the Selections within the Segment Builder tool is hierarchical, so build your sets with than in mind. Use Segment Groups. This will allow you to pull all the Segments into a Marketing Effort at once rather than adding Segments one at a time. If you don’t need complex Segments in a Marketing Effort, there is nothing wrong with building a Segment with only one Selection. Marketing Effort Selection and Segments Fun Fact: Do you only use Marketing Efforts for solicitations? Why not use them to dedupe non-solicitations as well? To dramatically cut down on your effort-building time (and the related headaches) here are 3 key points to remember: Build as much standardization into your process as possible. Identify frequently used Selections and Segments and build them early in the process - in advance of Go Live, if possible. They can be copied between environments using the Blackbaud Configuration Manager Utility. If you don’t have the tool, ask your engagement manager or find it on the BB website under the downloads section. Marketing Efforts can be copied. The “Copy” feature tends to be under-utilized and it is a powerful tool. If you send multiple mailings year to year with similar criteria to the same audience, copy one of your previous efforts rather than starting a new one from scratch. Still getting that migraine? Direct marketing efforts or communications efforts don't have to be a pain! The proper design and configuration can take the ache away. A company that specializes in managed services for nonprofits can help your organization become highly organized, increase production and response time, and ensure you meet deadlines. Managed services vendors can administer many aspects of your marketing and communications programs. From creating segmentation to exporting the data, to serving as the liaison between client and vendors, a managed services group can ensure that timelines and objectives are being met. “We hired Brightvine in 2014 to help us assess and rebuild the work processes around data management We found Brightvine to be incredibly knowledgeable, easy to work with and flexible. We were so pleased with their work that we placed them on retainer to provide ongoing support and had them takeover our DMS services and BBDM management. They are consummate professionals, flexible, knowledgeable and are more concerned with getting the job done right than they are about billable hours." BrightVine can help you find significant efficiencies, giving your staff the freedom to fundraise and strategize on appropriate stewardship plans, prepare for future marketing & communications efforts and focus on the donors. Leveraging years of industry expertise and deep knowledge of best practices, we can ensure your program runs much more efficiently – allowing you to focus on your mission, not the software. If you’d like to learn more about how Brightvine can help you, or you’d like to discuss your direct marketing/marketing communications efforts, please feel free to connect with us.