By Tom Huynh, Principal Consultant In this blog post, I will share tips to make the most of Raiser's Edge NXT with some of the available tools in web view. RE NXT is a Blackbaud-hosted cloud solution. Whether you are a system administrator or a fundraiser, these tips will help you understand some key features. List Views If you are familiar with RE queries, you will find lists are straightforward to set up. You can create lists for actions, constituents, gifts, and opportunities. Users quickly create the list by selecting their data through the columns option and filtering criteria. The data can range from constituent codes, gift information, actions, and fundraisers to gift acknowledgments. The data can be exported for further analysis or fundraising touchpoints. RE NXT web view and database view pass information back and forth to each other, and sometimes there is a lag in data transfers. If you are a more advanced user, you can start with a static query and update the list using filters. In my next blog, I will create a gift list to run conditional donor acknowledgment letters using Letter Box found under the Marketplace. I filtered the list for gifts not acknowledged this week and used that to run my donor acknowledgment letters. With Letter Box, the user can generate, edit, and acknowledge the letters in the RE NXT web view. Reporting There are built-in reporting and dashboards that allow filtering of the information. The user can view records, filter the data, and create the list view at their fingertips. I like the Top Funds Analysis where you can view how much each fund received compared to the goal amount. The user can click on the fund to get the fly-out window, see the Gifts list, and drill into the constituent record. There are other reports on the dashboard. Workflow Designer Workflow designers are great for automating processes to increase fundraising efforts and goals. They can be actions, emails, or conditions for users to complete. Organizations can set conditions to send emails to constituents. Create the email first and mark the email for workflow. Users can combine actions and emails in a workflow to track constituent emails. For example, an organization can design a gift acknowledgment workflow for first-time donors using a Gifts list of the first gift. The first step is an initial thank you email to the donor for their first gift and the importance of their donation to the organization’s missions. The second step of the workflow is to create an action for a user or to the Annual Giving Director to make a follow-up phone call. This process will build stronger relationships and donor retention. There are a plethora of steps that an organization can create to connect with its donors using the workflow designer. If you have any questions about RE NXT or The Raiser's Edge, please get in touch with our team!

By Amanda Cose, Principal Consultant For students and their families, the beginning of each semester brings the promise of new opportunities. The same can also be said for the school’s development team. With each pool of new students, a school gains a wealth of information, including valuable knowledge about their parents. Parents are a great prospective donor pool for higher education. Most have a built-in affinity for a school simply by having children there. However, because the cultivation window for parents is shorter than for alum prospects, it is important to maximize your time and start engaging with them early during their student’s first year. To do this successfully, you first need to collect parent information in partnership with your Admissions office and develop a plan to import and utilize the data in your fundraising database. Data Collection Chances are, you won’t have to start from scratch in capturing parent information through the enrollment process. Your Admissions office is likely collecting some parent data. Think through what information is most meaningful in your work. While this will vary by organization, contact information (addresses, phones, emails) and current employment are a great place to start and will go a long way in your development work. Both pieces of information are helpful in screening for capacity and identifying the best parent prospects. And remember: just because you CAN collect certain information, that doesn’t always mean you should. Make sure you evaluate your business needs and prioritize what is most important for your organization. If your school is not yet collecting parent information, learn why. Is there a lack of awareness around the importance of this data? Or is there a technology roadblock? This might mean gathering with colleagues from Admissions, Information Technology, and Development to communicate needs, dig into the platform used for admissions/enrollment management, and develop a solution. Importing Parent Data Once you have captured parent information, how will you store it in Blackbaud CRM™? For many schools, this is a tedious and time-consuming process, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The BrightVine Data Link (BVDL) allows users to import data sets from a variety of sources, including direct database connections, flat files, and APIs, into Blackbaud CRM™. Throughout the process, users interact with the imported data to review what was staged and correct any exceptions. The BVDL will match to existing constituent records, ensuring you don’t end up with duplicate parent records. This can be especially helpful when importing parent data that matches an existing constituent record. A parent who is also an alumnus/alumnae of your institution and/or an existing donor may be a much warmer prospect than an incoming parent without that history. Creating relationships between the parent and student can also be a laborious process. The BVDL allows you to create those relationships at the same time as the initial constituent import and will, again, match to existing constituent records if the parent or student already has a constituent record in your system. Do you have an imperfect file and spend a lot of time cleaning up your incoming data? Don’t worry! With BVDL Orchestrations, you can perform data clean-up, transformations, translations, and more on staging field values without having to write code. Once you set up your orchestrations, you can use them each time you process a new file of parent information, saving you time and energy. In Closing Once your new parent data is in Blackbaud CRM™, there are several things you can do to ensure your organization succeeds in engaging parents early and often. Many organizations utilize wealth screening services to identify capacity within a pool of parent prospects. (Note, model scores and ratings can also be imported using the BVDL.) This first pass will help prioritize outreach for development officers before the semester begins. Pre-semester events like orientation and student/family weekends offer an opportunity to meet with parents while they are on campus. Some schools also have parent/family leadership councils, which allow parents to get involved and make connections within the school community.

By Amanda Cose, Principal Consultant If you work in development, you likely have experience with prospect plans in Blackbaud CRM™. Prospect plans allow you to document how you will work with a prospect, including the objectives, stages, dates, and steps you intend to take. While prospect plans are referred to as “major giving plans” in Blackbaud CRM™, their utility goes beyond major giving. Major gift prospect plans are often unique to the prospective donor, but you may have specific steps you wish to follow for a different group of prospects or constituents. This is where plan outlines come in handy. Within the Major Giving Setup in Blackbaud CRM™, you can create an outline of steps to apply to the plans you create. The plan outline is like a to-do list and may be used for development, stewardship, engagement, or even volunteer management. One organization I worked with created an outline for its alum award winners because there were certain steps to follow for each person, such as sending a congratulatory letter from the president, collecting a bio and photo, and emailing relevant event information. Again, these steps were standard for all award winners, so an outline was helpful to avoid the repetitive work of creating steps from scratch within each constituent record’s plan. You could also use plan outlines for: Annual giving prospects to ensure consistent cultivation steps are followed; Members of a volunteer council who will follow a defined engagement path; Donors to a specific initiative, fund, or giving society should receive the same stewardship steps. The possibilities are endless! To create a plan outline in Blackbaud CRM™, navigate to Prospects > Major Giving Setup > Plan Outlines and add. Name your outline, fill in the applicable plan objectives and contact methods, and save. Once you’ve created an outline, you can add it to records individually or in bulk if you have a selection of existing constituents who should have the same prospect plan (as in the examples mentioned above). To add prospect plans in bulk, navigate to Prospects > Manage Prospects and Plans in Bulk > Add Prospects Plans Process and add. Here you can add a prospect plan process to pull in a selection of constituents and add the plan details, narrative, and manager(s). The Plan Steps tab is where you would then link your plan outline to populate the steps you defined earlier. Next, save the process, expand the chevron underneath and start the process. You will see the plans appear in the selected constituent records once the process has finished running. If you have any questions about setting up plans, please reach out to our team.

By Dan Bourg, Sr. Director The 2022 AASP Summit is right around the corner, and we at BrightVine are excited to announce that we will be a sponsor and attending the conference this year! Are you going to be attending? If so, AWESOME - Stacey Segal, Rich Muniz, and yours truly (Dan Bourg) want to see you! You’ll be able to find us at the Blackbaud Innovation Center, so stop by to say hello and talk to us and Blackbaud about some of our exciting new products like Blackbaud CRM™ Mobile by BrightVine, Lumière, and our DataLink Integration Engine will all-new front end API mapping capabilities. This year our friends at AASP have assembled some of the brightest minds in the nonprofit industry to discuss five topics important to all nonprofit professionals: CRM Ecosystem Culture and Leadership Fundraising Strategy Program Implementation Data & Analytics These topics are near and dear to our hearts here at BrightVine, so it’s no surprise that we’ve discussed them a ton on the blog before. Here are 5 of my favorite posts that are sure to get your creative juices flowing, so you’re ready for the 2022 AASP Summit: Blackbaud CRM Integration: File Mapping Expressions - Enhance your CRM ecosystem by upping your integration game using this spiffy new feature in the BrightVine Data Link. Project Launch: Controlling the Start - Lead your projects to a successful end by setting the right culture from the onset of the project. Managing Your Membership Program - Learn how to use Blackbaud CRM™ to implement a strategic membership program. . Data Governance - What It Is and Why You Need It - Read about how to implement a data governance program to effectively use your data. Publishing Tableau Reports to Blackbaud CRM™ - So you’ve collected a ton of data and analyzed it, learn how to publish those visualizations inside of Blackbaud CRM™. We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans at the Summit!

By Amanda Cose, Principal Consultant While traditional membership programs are often structured as dues-based programs where people pay for membership levels with dues and receive certain benefits in return, nonprofit organizations have long utilized membership programs to increase giving while offering special incentives to do so. The rewards of a membership program include increased or sustained giving, loyalty, and retention. Blackbaud CRM™ makes this process easy for you by allowing you to create a contributions-based membership program. Follow along to learn how. The first step to creating a membership program is defining your membership levels, benefits associated with each level (or if there are no benefits), and the length of membership (e.g., annual, semi-annual, lifetime). Once you’ve got those details, you’re ready to set up your program in Blackbaud CRM™. Navigate to the Memberships functional area and click Add under Membership Programs. The Add a Membership Program screen appears, and you’ll see several tabs. Under the General tab, check the box for “contribution-based membership” and then set the type of membership (annual, recurring, lifetime) and term. Under Levels, specify the various levels of membership, or if there is only one level, add it here. You can add as few or as many levels as you like. Once your levels are laid out, specify the benefits for each level under the Benefits tab. This is also where you would indicate if gifts toward membership are tax-deductible, partially tax-deductible, or not at all tax-deductible. Since your membership program is contribution-based, the Contributions tab is important. This is where you should specify which contributions qualify for membership. For example, if only gifts to certain designations qualify for membership, you would indicate that here. If you prefer, you can also create a Selection and use that as the contribution basis for your program. This is also where you would define what happens when members give more than what is required for membership (considered as additional revenue or upgraded level), as well as what date to use for membership expiration (e.g., the gift date or the last day of the month in which the gift was made). Once your membership program is set, you will then need to create a membership contribution process and set a job schedule, so new memberships and upgrades are processed regularly when qualifying revenue is committed in your environment. To do this, navigate back to the Memberships functional area, and select Membership Contribution Processes. Add the process, select the applicable membership program, and save. Go back into the process you just created, click on the job schedules tab, and set a schedule (recommended daily). In a nutshell, that is how to create a contribution-based membership program in Blackbaud CRM™!

By Heather Todd Walt Whitman once said, “Simplicity is the glory of expression.” The Brightvine Data Link (BVDL) enhanced file mapping functionality enables you the simplicity to create a data expression within a file mapping. These expressions may replace the need for orchestrations or may prepare the data for more advanced orchestrations. How do I use it? Let’s say you have a data file that requires two constituent documentation note fields to be concatenated into one Blackbaud CRM Constituent Documentation Text Note field; you can now enter the Expression within the file mapping. For example purposes, the two import fields that need to be concatenated into one Documentation Text Note field are as follows: Field 1: Volunteered in the 2018 Alumni Charity Walk Event. Field 2: Member of the NYC Alumni Team. In the file mapping, similar to the way you would use a formula in Excel, an Expression will always start with "=" and then enter the Concat expression. In this example, the Expression was entered in the Constituent Note Collection Note 1 field. Then stage import records. The two note fields were concatenated into one Constituent Documentation Text Note field. Finally, process the stage data to Blackbaud CRM, and the constituent record now reflects the concatenated Constituent Documentation Text Note field. Please contact BrightVine Solutions to learn more about the BrightVine Data Link.

By: Bethany Avery, Director When it comes to managing duplicate records in Blackbaud CRM™, it's important to implement a well-rounded approach. Even the most seasoned organizations can benefit from a periodic review of their processes to minimize gaps and ensure they are taking advantage of a broad range of functionality. When holistically reviewing your processes, there are four things we recommend. 1. Have a blend of automated and manual processes: First and foremost, it's important you have a solid nightly duplicate search and merge process in place to keep up with the most egregious duplicates that have entered the system over the course of the day. This process should look for your highest match scores (many organizations use 90% and higher as the threshold), and automatically merge them so that valuable staff time is not lost reviewing obvious duplicates. Keep in mind that there are checks in place within the standard processes to exclude any types of records that you would not want to risk pulling into an automated process (such as major donors, board members, organizations, etc.), so this shouldn't be a reason to shy away from automation. It's important to run this regularly to prevent the run times from getting out of hand. It's equally important to have a process that specifically targets the types of records you do want to manually review and don't want to automate. If you are always excluding, say, major donors, child sponsors, members, or whoever your highest touch audiences are- build a process that is specifically targeted to this group so you can periodically ensure there are no duplicates on this front either. This is exceedingly common since even major donors, board members, etc., may engage with your website, virtual events, etc. 2. Leverage both out-of-the-box and low-lift custom functionality: One of the biggest pain points and downfalls with the out-of-the-box duplicate search functionality in Blackbaud CRM™ is that it is heavily dependent on a physical mailing address and not great at finding pairs that may have identical everything (including email addresses) if there is no mailing address on one or both of the records. To get around this, we have built many variations of a custom global change that can search for and stage duplicate pairs based on the criteria you need most. Some examples include where first name, last name, and email address are an exact match or where names have a fuzzy match and email addresses match. These lightweight global changes can stage these merge pairs as a "Duplicate record source" for use in the out-of-the-box merge processes, so you are effectively outsourcing the aspects of the out-of-the-box search that aren't so great while still leveraging the standard merge process itself, which works quite well. Pair targeted global changes such as these (which focus on email) with the out-of-the-box processes (which are quite strong with mailing addresses), and you have a well-rounded while, economical way to stay on top of your dupes. "The work provided by BrightVine resulted in a 98% decrease in manual work for my team. Accurate data leads to increased revenue for the organization and better stewardship of our donors." Lori Mead, Save The Children 3. Ensure your import logic doesn't add to your messes: Even with the most well-oiled nightly processes, you need to ensure that you aren't creating more duplicates at source than those processes can keep up with. Fix the problem upstream, not downstream, to the extent possible. For those leveraging the BrightVine Data Link, there are myriad ways to control for duplicates at the point of entry, from configurable weighted match scores that let you increase or decrease duplicate scores based on your particular needs to the ability to match by common formulas like Name Soundex, to point and click selection of incoming data points to use in your formula and much, much more. At a minimum, make sure that your imports are set up to take advantage of these. On top of that, it is recommended that you periodically review the duplicates that are caught in your nightly processes. Which process(es) is the origin of the bulk of them? Often you'll see that one or a few problem platforms/ integrations are responsible for the lion's share of your duplicates. Where this is the case, you'll want to take a closer look at those imports, in particular about fine-tuning the matching logic based on the particular nuances of said platforms. 4. Set up Queues: Finally, to manage the mayhem, queues are your friend! Be strategic about how you set them up. For your nightly queue, start with the automated search and merge processes that will find and process the most records at the top of the queue. This leaves fewer records for the lower-level processes to churn through. Double-check that your "End queue" and "Continue queue" dependencies are appropriately set so that if a dependency step fails, you halt your queue accordingly. When it comes to scheduling, if you're finding it challenging to fit everything into your nightly jobs timing-wise, there are ways to split it up. For instance, you can schedule the longer running out-of-the-box searches for the morning (some crossover with business hours is typically not impactful with these processes in particular) and the quick custom global change searches + merge processes for the evening. Has all of this left you thinking that your organization could use a hand with reviewing or optimizing your duplicate management processes? If so, send us a message or give us a call! We'd love to partner with you on a tailored plan or augment your existing processes wherever you have gaps.

By: Bethany Avery, Director For those who aren’t familiar with our Mobile solution for Blackbaud CRM™ Mobile by BrightVine. This tool provides fundraisers the ability to manage their prospects and other constituents quickly and easily from any mobile device, solving a common pain point for busy fundraisers who don’t often have the desk time needed to track their activity in Blackbaud CRM™. In CRM Mobile, users can: Quickly view their current prospects and prioritize outreach by reviewing pending plan steps Find constituent contact information and reach out directly from their device File contact reports to complete existing or create new steps and interactions For those who already know and love it, we’re excited to let you know that Version 2.1 was released earlier this month. This version includes the following enhancements: New panel for Relationships New panel for Group Memberships Ability to File an Unplanned Contact Report Improvements to the Home Screen List Easier ways to filter for your prospects by role Expanded recent gift filters Search by Constituency UI Enhancements Version Number visibility for easier maintenance and upgrades To upgrade, simply download the latest files and reinstall. For questions, or information on retrieving the latest files, or to schedule a demo, please reach out to our support team.

By: Chris Novak, Technical Consultant Is your organization using Tableau for reporting and analysis? As you may know, you can organize Tableau dashboards and reports into different folders in Tableau Server; however, you may want to consider embedding your Tableau solutions directly into Blackbaud CRM™ using the Web Dashboard. Doing this will allow your reporting to be directly accessible in Blackbaud CRM™ and save your users an extra click or create bookmarks to access data. Embedding reports would be incredibly convenient if you are still using some of the out-of-the-box reports from Blackbaud CRM™ or if you have other custom reports that live in Blackbaud CRM™ - why not have all of your reports in the same place? Here's a quick guide to get you started with embedding your Tableau reports. First, ensure that your Tableau report is uploaded into Tableau Server. Once the report is live and accessible in Tableau Server - follow along in Blackbaud CRM™ with the instructions below: Navigate to Analysis functional area and select the Web Dashboard Add a new folder to collocate all future Tableau reports. Use the Folder options drop-down, select Add New Folder, and give it a name and description. Once a new folder has been created, return to the Folder Options drop-down and select Add New Page. On the Add New Page pop-up, add a Page Name (no spaces here), Page Title, and Description. Keep both Context Record Type as and Default Search List blank. The layout depends on the type of content; for this example, I chose the second option, in which I will land the Tableau report in the body of that layout. Click Save and your newly created page will display. Select Page Options in the top right corner, then Edit Shared Version of this Page from the drop-down. This is where you will embed your report. Once in the editing section of the page, select Add Dashboard Item in the top right corner. From the catalogs pop-up, select Embedded Web Content Parts. Update Add To to whichever section of the report's page layout will go. Given what we decided in Step 4 above, we will select Right to embed the report in the body of the page layout. After selecting Embedded Web Content Parts, the window will expand where you can choose Embedded Web Content. After Selecting Add, the Web Content Window will appear. Open your Tableau workbook in Tableau Server, navigate to the Share Icon, copy the Embed Code, and return to the Web Content Window. With the Embed Code copied from Tableau Server, paste the code in the HTML Content Block and select Apply. This then returns to the Dashboard editing mode. After viewing the applied changes, select Edit Exit Mode in the top right corner. The embedded Tableau Dashboard can now be seen on the created Web Dashboard page. Now you can return to the Web Dashboard via the Analysis functional area and easily access a Tableau Report! This same concept can be applied to Microsoft Power BI or other reporting tools. If you'd like some help, please reach out to our team.

By Emily Walsh, Director Launching a project can be one of the most important and exciting phases - the launch sets the tone for how the project will be managed and perceived moving forward. At the start of a new project, the excitement and eagerness surrounding the new work can sometimes lead project managers to rush through the beginning, particularly if the business is eager to get results and move forward quickly. Although it can be difficult, a controlled start to a project ultimately sets the project up for long-term success. The effort you put into your project at the beginning will pay off in later stages of the project. The checklist below will help you ensure that you are controlling the start and setting up your project for long-term success. Controlling the Start: A Project Pre-Launch Checklist IDEA: All projects start with an idea. Maybe it's an idea to improve a business process, implement a new technology tool, or develop a new automation process. What is the concept that is driving your project? FEASIBILITY: Is your idea feasible? Can the goal be achieved with your staffing and resources (or is the organization willing to invest in making it happen?). If there is any uncertainty about feasibility, consider conducting a feasibility study. BUSINESS CASE: Assuming the idea is feasible, you should be able to outline the business case. A well-developed business case for a project should document the expected benefits against the project's likely costs. BUSINESS APPROVAL: Once the business case has been developed, it needs to be approved by the business users who will benefit from and support the project. Based on the cost-benefit analysis outlined in the business case, the business user should decide if the project is worth advancing and provide their endorsement and support of the work. PROJECT SPONSOR: If the business endorses the project, a senior-level individual within your organization needs to sponsor it. This person will take ultimate responsibility for the project and its outcomes. PROJECT MANAGER: One of the first tasks for a project sponsor is to identify and assign a project manager. This person ideally has an understanding of the business and project goal. They will manage the day-to-day work of the project and are accountable for ensuring that timelines are set and met, risks are escalated, and the project remains on track and within budget. PROJECT INITIATION: ONce the project manager has been assigned, a good PM should ensure that they have a clear understanding of the items in the checklist (above) before they initiate the project. If you're a project manager who's been tasked with launching a new project for your organization, it's essential to make sure you have a clear understanding of the items listed above. If you can't check these items off the list (or if you're not sure of the context or background for a few of these), then you may need to ask yourself if the project should be launched. For example, if there is no clear business case and the business is not prepared to "own" the work it will take to accomplish the project, then the project should not proceed. A controlled start is the best way to set your project up for success and ensure that you do not launch a project that may be set up for failure in later phases. If you need help launching new projects related to business processes, technology, or systems, please don't hesitate to reach out!

By: Chris Novak, Technical Consultant Whether you use Blackbaud CRM or another nonprofit constituent management solution, you may find the need for a data dictionary. What is a data dictionary? A data dictionary is a list of key business terms and metrics with specific definitions for your organization. On the surface, this sounds pretty simple - but it carries the ability to reduce confusion and improve data literacy within the organization. It is a valuable tool that a business intelligence/data team can provide to the organization. Most organizations have at least one term or metric that might be interpreted differently among different departments in fundraising. When someone asks about the funds raised in a quarter, your Annual Giving team and the Major Gift team will likely have varying definitions. For example, does the total value of gifts in this quarter mean the total value of booked gifts, including pledges and gift commitments, or actual cash that came in the door? Reports may show different numbers for the same metric from the same data source. A data dictionary will clear up this inconsistent and confusing business logic. It serves as a living document that everyone in the organization can reference. From a data/business intelligence perspective, a data dictionary provides more precise reporting requirements and KPIs. How to get started For the data/BI team, there are some best practices to go about setting up a data dictionary - Collect Key Business Terms Start with a list and go through all the business concepts, dimensions, and measures. An easy way to break this down is to meet with each department and collect their terms. Define Terms Define the terms you collected in step 1. To save time, go through existing documentation/requirements and pull any already defined definitions. As you write the description, remember that this is not an internal definition for the BI team but one that everyone in the organization should be able to understand and reference. After doing the first pass with existing documentation, circle back to each team and get their help to fill in the gaps or refine what is already there; for definitions, you may have gathered from existing documentation, don't take that as gospel; instead, ask for clarity on how this should be defined? Perhaps the existing definition is not ideal or is no longer precisely what they want. This is an excellent opportunity to receive the perfect explanation from the team. Identify Conflicts As stated earlier - the Annual Giving team and Major Gift team are likely to be using Total Fundraising as a metric. Go through the working document and identify all of these types of overlaps. Get Alignment/Come Together When the exact term or metric is being used by different departments, get together with those departments to review each word. Like the example above with Annual Giving and Major Gifts, it is clear that both of their definitions are unique to them. In this case, each of their terms should get a new name to prevent confusion in future reporting/KPS. An example would be AG Total Fundraising and MG Total Fundraising. When multiple departments are using the same term, and there is no apparent business reason for why the definitions differ, work to get the teams to agree on a definition that best serves them both. One unit can adopt the meaning of the other, or a whole new definition can be put together that they both use. Get sign off Once all the definitions are listed, and the conflicts are ironed out, circle back to the leaders and get buy-in and sign-off. Publish The data dictionary with all the terms and definitions should be made available to the entire organization and stakeholders. However, since this is a living document, there are challenges with posting it in a fixed location that may get lost in the shuffle when there are legitimate reasons to update existing definitions or add new ones. Your data dictionary can be published in a Wiki-style tool such as Confluence or WikiHow. Another route would be to load the dictionary into a database table and then surface that table in Tableau® to deliver to the users or perhaps use an intranet like SharePoint. Deciding where to publish will be different for each organization - it needs to be in a place that is both easily and readily accessible and in an expected location. Maintain As mentioned above, the data dictionary is a living document. May things won't change at all or frequently, but there will always be some business reason or new metrics that may need to be added. It is critical to maintain the dictionary, so the organization has 100% trust in the document. Ultimately, this document's trust level will reflect on the BI/Data team that assembled the record. Final words Creating a data dictionary is not a small undertaking or a quick win. It requires coordination across all departments and alignment and buy-in from leadership. That said, building a data dictionary and maintaining it will show significant benefits in the long run. Decisions can be made faster, requirements can be gathered more quickly, and there will be less confusion among reports or metrics. Ultimately, a successful data dictionary will increase the organization's data literacy and open a dialogue and establish a trusting relationship between the business intelligence/data team and the business.

By Sara Swiatlowski Everyone agrees that Marketing Efforts are a very powerful tool in Blackbaud CRM™, so powerful, in fact, that a very large effort can cause performance problems. This is because many of the steps in a marketing effort often touch other parts of the system, and the larger the effort the more potential there is for conflict with other processes that could be running throughout the course of a business day. The good news is that the BrightVine team has some tips to help you work more efficiently with your marketing efforts. Tip 1 - Instead of using the “Refresh all selections used in the communication” setting when you calculate a marketing effort, you could instead build a queue to refresh all of the selections at an off-hour. This allows you to refresh your query selections and your marketing effort segments during a time when there is less going on in the system. Just make sure that you pay attention to the order of your queue so that if a selection references a different selection, you refresh that inner selection first before the main one. You can also put all of your segments into a segment group and add that group to refresh as the last step of the queue. Tip 2 - If you are working with a large effort, you may want to calculate and export the effort at an off-hour. Even if you refresh your selections in a queue like Tip 1, we all know that sometimes an effort can just take a long time to calculate and then export, especially if the export itself is complicated. The good news is that both of these marketing effort steps can be put into a queue and scheduled to run overnight or on a weekend when things might be less busy within the database. To do this you would set up a queue with the following steps (selecting the marketing effort you’d like to run each process on in the Name field): Marketing Effort Segment Record Count Process Marketing Effort Export Process As a best practice, you would also want to make sure your Marketing Effort has a few things populated within the Effort Settings tab. First, make sure you’ve included which export definition to use on the export step. If you don’t include this, that step of your queue will fail. HINT: if it is a multi-channel effort you’ll need to specify Mail, Phone, or Email definitions depending on what type of packages you are using in the effort. Next, make sure the settings on the Activation tab are correct in the “When segment counts are calculated” area. If you aren’t using a queue to refresh your selections, you’ll want to make sure that the ‘Refresh all selection sussed in the communication’ option is checked off. If you normally utilize the marketing exclusion report, make sure the option to run that is also checked off. Tip 3 - Activating marketing efforts is another step in the process that can take time. The bigger the effort the more records need to be touched in order to write the communication entry onto each constituent. You’re also letting the rest of the system know that the marketing effort exists when you activate it, so you can reference it in other areas of the system like query, gift entry (finder numbers), etc. Again, running this process on a busy day may cause everything to slow down. Because of this, we recommend activating marketing efforts overnight or on the weekend, especially during heavy gift processing times. You can use the Marketing Effort Activate Process when setting up a queue to have one or more efforts set to activate at an off-hour for the database. Tip 4 - Use the free tool that Brightvine developed to automate the refreshing of marketing efforts. This handy tool looks for any effort that’s already been activated and needs to be refreshed because there has been new revenue that has been attributed to the effort. We hope that these tips help you to work more efficiently with your larger marketing efforts.