By: Heather Todd Have you ever felt overwhelmed by a complex system business process? Have you read a user guide only to feel more confused after reading? Or maybe it has been a while since end-user training? Fear not! Job aids are a great tool to bridge formal learning and completing a system work task. BrightVine Solutions recently worked with a customer to create job aids for their financial accounting system rollout. The job aids were a key part of the organization’s multi-channel training strategy, supporting the system rollout and change management work activity, and providing consistent information quickly and efficiently to end-users. Here are a couple of tips to help with your job aid creation: Meet with your subject matter experts (SMEs) Determine who is the target audience. What does your audience know? what do they expect to learn from your job aid? Create a job aid for a specific task/business process. Do not create a job aid for the end to end process. List and prioritize specific tasks/business processes. What job aids are needed and in what priority should they be developed? Walkthrough and confirm the task steps. You might even want to consider recording the session so the person drafting the job aid may review the specific steps later. Format Determine what type of job aid is most effective for learning. It may be a step-by-step process, checklist, or a reference guide. Design and Content Consistent design: Select a template and stick with it. Use consistent fonts, sizes, colors, and company branding when possible. Consolidate: What do users need to know to complete the work task/process? For instance, if creating a step-by-step process, create an Infographic, combining clear, concise steps with graphics. Action-oriented: Use concise action verbs such as click, type, search, enter, or delete. Make sure the action words remain consistent throughout the job aid. For example, don’t start the job aid stating, “Select the Save button”. And then switch to “Click on the Save button”. Make it global: Use simple language that can be easily understood by users where English may be their second language, or can easily be localized into other languages. Review process Have the SMEs review and approve the job aids before publishing. Publish and Circulate Virtual Help Desk: Incorporate the job aid on a system knowledge base page. If possible, force users to search and review the knowledge base before submitting a help desk ticket. Contact BrightVine Solutions to learn more about our instructional software training services and solutions. BrightVine Solutions has experience in creating instructional training material for multiple software platforms, including Blackbaud CRM™, Workday™, and other CRM and ERP software platforms.

by: Heather Todd & Sara Swiatlowski Critical business decisions rely on accurate, reliable, and timely data. Data can become out of date quickly, just as quickly as it is entered into your database. In the United States annually: 30% of email users change their email address one or more times (Source: HubSpot) 1 in 7 people change their postal addresses (Source: USPS) 18% of all telephone numbers change (Source: Gallup) 45% of people change job titles within their organizations (Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics) Data integrity refers to the accuracy and consistency of data over its lifecycle. Data integrity is a term to understand the health and maintenance of database information. Data integrity can refer either to a state or a process. Data integrity as a state defines a data set that is both valid and accurate. Data integrity as a process describes measures used to ensure the validity and accuracy of a data set or all data contained in a database or other construct. For instance, validation methods may be referred to as data integrity processes. Inaccurate and inconsistent data can lead to lost revenue, poor decision making, missed opportunities, business in-efficiencies, just to name a few consequences. Below are some best practices and tips to maintain your Blackbaud CRM™ data integrity: De-duplication Frequency The frequency interval for de-duplication may vary depending on the size of your organization and how much data you have coming into your database on a regular basis. As you set up different types of merge possibilities you may find that some processes may need to run more frequently where others can happen less often. It is important to look at your complete picture of de-duplication process to develop a strategy that works best for your organization. Merge on email Most organizations look to de-duplicate their constituents using the basic name + address matching logic. Setting this up and running it on a regular basis is the first line of duplicate matching defense. In the digital age it is important to look for duplicates with email addresses in mind too. Since many platforms only require a name + email address to accept a donation, if you are only matching on a mailing address you may be missing out on many potential duplicates in your database. Setting up a match on the exact name (100%) match + email address will help you to match constituents where you have partial information to those where you may have more complete information. Building on that using a search on a ‘fuzzy’ name + email address match will help you to match where the name isn’t a perfect match. This type of matching is useful for finding constituents where a name had changed through marriage or where a shortened name may have been used in place of a formal name. Within BBCRM, both of these email matching options will require a Global Change customization to help identify the pairs to be matched and this may be time well spent to keep your constituent data in order. Data Audits Leverage Blackbaud CRM™user-defined data lists to create constituent data audits for address, contact, name, and other data anomalies and updates. Attribute Cleanup Attributes can easily become the database junk drawer, so to speak. They’re easily created, easily added, and are often forgotten. BrightVine has developed a Blackbaud CRM™ Attribute Cleanup Giveaway, a customized global change that can be run to delete attributes and their values so orphaned values don't remain in the database. Data enrichment through the BrightVine Data Link Data enrichment is not a “set it and forget it” action, you do once and then never do again. Constituent data, no matter how detailed, is fundamentally a snapshot in time. Jobs change, marital status may change, and email and physical address can alter. Even names may change, especially if there is a change in one’s marital status. Given the possibility of all these changes, data enrichment processes need to run on a continuous basis. The two most common types of data enrichment are demographic and geographic. Both types of data enrichment can be processed through the BrightVine Data Link. Demographic data enrichment involves acquiring new demographic data, such as marital status and employment updates, and adding that into an existing customer dataset. Geographic data enrichment involves adding postal data or latitude and longitude to an existing dataset that includes customer addresses. This may include NCOA or another geographic data set. For any data enrichment data set being imported into Blackbaud CRM™, there must be a common unique field identifier to link the two datasets. For constituents, this unique identifier could be a first name and last name, a mailing address, an email address, or constituent lookup id, or an alternative lookup id (if the id’s were exported to a third party). Without a unique identifier, the original dataset will not be enriched because there’s nothing to show that the two datasets refer to the same constituents. Data compliance Data compliance refers to any regulations that organizations must follow in order to ensure the sensitive data such as personally identifiable information and financial details, are guarded against loss, theft and misuse. These rules come in a number of forms. They may be industry standards, state or federal-level laws, or even multinational regulations such a the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Such rules and regulations will state what types of data need to be protected, what processes will be considered acceptable under the legislation, and what the penalties will be for firms that fail to follow the rules.

By: Sara Swiatlowski Marketing Effort in Blackbaud CRM™ are a powerful tool where all of your marketing campaign information lives. Within the functional area there are lots of pieces that you are using to set up a marketing effort. Even a very simple marketing effort will include a name, an appeal, a source code, segments, packages which may or may not have a letter attached to them, package costs, ask ladders, an export definition, and the list goes on. When you are doing setup for a new effort you have to pull all of these pieces together and whether you are reusing pieces that have already been setup or you are creating new pieces it all takes time before you are ready to calculate the effort. When you create the effort you have several options about how to pull it all together. You could add your segments individually one by one. You could leverage a segment group to add many segments at one time. Or you could use the Marketing Effort Import feature that is built into Blackbaud CRM™. Utilizing Import for your Marketing Effort can save you a lot of time, especially if you are working on a complicated effort. In addition to putting all of the pieces together through import, you can also create new items, like packages or segments, in this process if they don’t already exist in your system. Even better, you could set up segments and packages for more than one marketing effort in a single batch! These are the steps you will take to Import a Marketing Effort. Setup a new Marketing Effort shell and add any exclusions you may need to consider for the effort. Create your file for import, this is what you’ll use in the batch import process to create your segments, packages, lists, list vendors, and even test segments. Tip: You can Generate a Header File in the Import area to see what fields are available for import. You only need to include the fields that you want to import. In this sample below I’m bringing 2 segments into my effort. The first row is a new segment and a new package so I’ve filled out all of the fields. The second row is an existing segment and package so some fields are blank. You will always need to include Segment name even if you are adding a segment that already exists in the system, make sure it matches exactly or it’ll be treated as a new segment. 3. Configure your import utilizing the Direct Marketing Effort Batch template and mapping your fields. 4. Run the Import to create the new items and add those new items, as well as the existing ones, into your marketing effort. Now that your segments are available in the Marketing Effort, you’ll be able move forward with the effort. If you’ve created new segments you will need to attach your segment selections to them before you calculate your totals, or you can skip this step if you’ll be bringing constituents into the effort using a Segmented House File. Similarly, if the Package needs to have a letter attached to it, you’ll have to edit the newly created package to add that. As you can see, with a little bit of setup you can streamline the creation of Marketing Efforts by using an import batch!

by: Selena Fowler, Heather Todd and Aaren Ballinger Moments that matter...Saying thank you is just as important as the ask. Crafting an acknowledgement letter is one of the most important tasks that Donor Relations and Advancement staff take on. The letters set the stage for deepening relationships, and encouraging continued support. Think appreciation, engagement, retention when you put pen to paper. You are looking to advance your mission while making the donor feel appreciated and involved. While it might be tempting to use an acknowledgement to convey other messages, it’s best to write acknowledgements that clearly say what you want to express which is quite simply, “thank you for your support”. Your acknowledgement needs to be meaningful and from the heart, and it needs to be personalized for the type of relationship you have with each donor. Take your acknowledgements a step beyond just a boilerplate official tax receipt - this should be another step that’s part of a larger supporter journey. Here are 8 tips for writing effective acknowledgements. Be timely. Don’t wait to thank your donors for their support. Ideally you should be aiming for 48-72 hours to send out acknowledgement letters and emails. Set a standard business rule for your acknowledgement process - in Blackbaud CRM™ you can utilize regularly scheduled queues to run the acknowledgement process and assign the appropriate letters overnight. Personalized thank yous for high-end or high-profile donors may take a while longer, so make sure these gifts are prioritized. Follow the law. Consult IRS publication 1771, Charitable Contributions and Disclosure Requirements, for details on current legal requirements that your organization must fulfill in providing tax receipts for donations. Some organizations combine an acknowledgment letter and a tax receipt in one mailing, while others send these separately. If you are combining the two, make sure to include a statement that no goods or services were received in exchange for the donation. You might consider placing this language in a footnote or on a separate receipt slip / page so as not to distract from the message of your acknowledgment. Show you know your donor. Include the correct name of the donor in the letter or email. This might seem obvious, but it is one of the first things a reader notices, and if you get it wrong you have already lost them. Use the Blackbaud CRM™ name format functionality to address your donors correctly. For example, if the person's name is Christopher, but they have communicated to you that they prefer Chris, then use the informal name format. Try to refrain from using “Friend” or leaving it blank. Include that extra personal touch. Have the organization president, executive director or key influencer/solicitor write a handwritten note on the letter. It may not be possible for all donors, but it’s good to target board members, council members, dedicated volunteers, and major donors. In addition, you might have the key contact make a special phone call or send a personalized email note. Make your donor the star. Too often organizations make acknowledgement letters all about their accomplishments. Reframe your messaging and give specific, tangible examples of how a donor’s support is impacting the organization. If there are several different areas or programs that donors can give to, make sure you capture exactly where they have directed their gift (usually accomplished by using gift designations), and incorporate that in your letter. You can build multiple letter templates in Blackbaud CRM™, allowing you to make your acknowledgements specific and relevant to each recipient. If you are sending an email, direct donors to more information on the web about the project or program they are supporting. This can also be accomplished through the mail with a friendly URL or QR code. Invite additional involvement. An acknowledgment can be a good place to highlight other opportunities for your constituents to get involved. This could include volunteer opportunities, events, advocacy efforts, or connections on social media platforms. Make sure you are strategic about what you include and know your audience - you don’t want to ask one of your most active volunteers to “become a volunteer”, for example. Have a plan to follow up. Don’t make this the last “touch” you have with a donor before you ask them for their next gift. Integrate the acknowledgment into a wider supporter journey or stewardship plan. Give them updates on what their gift is accomplishing. Keep it fresh. Change up your message from time to time. Don’t let your message become stale. You need to consider that annual gift donors may be donating on a regular basis; they’ve seen your letter before, so perhaps consider updating news of your developing mission etc. A well-written and timely acknowledgement letter reflects well on your organization. Acknowledgements show that your organization cares not only about your mission, but also about donors that make your work possible.

By Selena Fowler Have you ever needed to capture new data in Blackbaud CRM™, but with no 1:1 field relationship felt at a loss as to where to put it? At times like these, you might consider repurposing another data form. There are a few that you could get creative with – the one we want to talk about today is the Interactions; the variety of fields in this form make it extremely flexible and a perfect choice for repurposing as a means of collecting, storing, and displaying information. So what makes this form so special? Well, you have both Summary and Comments fields for collecting text; the summary is your descriptive one-liner, and then you have a large capacity Comments field that can accommodate everything else. You also have Category and Subcategory fields as well as a Contact method and Status fields, all of which can allow for some kind of differentiation and filtering. Combine this with the ability to create new pages and data lists to house your filtered interaction and you can start to develop a layout for your new data that is both meaningful and logical. Wherever you decide to surface your data, as an interaction, of course, the data will also be available on the constituent record. And an added bonus – interactions can be added in bulk via a global change. This might prove particularly useful if you have large numbers of the same interaction to add. A few examples of this repurposing that we’ve seen recently include: 1. A way of requesting Prospect Assignment With an Interaction form, and a category of Assignment request users can request the assignment of a prospect. The interaction is added as pending until the request is completed. We’ve seen this type of request added via the Prospect Research Request form as well; either method works well. 2. An Event Waitlist Taking advantage of both the Category and Status fields in the interactions form, if someone asks to be placed on your event’s waitlist you could add a pending interaction to note the waitlisting. This will display on the constituent’s record as an interaction, and a new datalist and tab within the event record that pulls on the interaction category of Waitlist can display the list. Once someone is moved from the waitlist to being registered, the interaction can be marked as completed. 3. An Event invitation approval list Do you need staff to approve event invitations before they are sent? Create a pending interaction with a Category/Subcategory of Event/Invitation List to add the constituent to your approval list, and then use the completed status to update them to approved, and the canceled status to update them to denied. Add three new data lists to your event to differentiate between those that need approval and those that are approved or denied. 4. Importing data How about the import of Email communications? With both summary and comments fields, the interaction add form could be the perfect place to add your email send information. Create a new data list and tab to display interactions with a Category of Email, and these would fit right into the Communications tab. Perhaps you have some other great examples – or perhaps this has sparked your imagination! Reach out to us if you would like further information.

When creating your Marketing Efforts in Blackbaud CRM™ you may decide that you want to add a Seed list into your effort. A Seed is an additional person/address that you include in your mailing so that you are able to see what your mail piece looks like when it arrives to a donor. Seeds are important because it gives you a complete picture of what your donors are receiving, how fast or slow the mail piece is received once it is dropped into the mail by your mail vendor, and how it looks once it arrives. Sending out direct mail is an investment and adding yourself as a Seed to your mailing helps you to ensure that what you’ve planned for looks great when it arrives. For the purpose of this post we will focus on mail but Seeds can also be added to Telemarketing or Email effort. There are several ways in which you can add a list of Seeds to your mailing list within Blackbaud CRM™ and outside of the system. You could provide your mail vendor with a list of names to add to each mailing that they send. The downside to this is that the mail vendor has to remember that list exists for each mailing and that they are including the names in what is sent out. Within Blackbaud CRM™ your Marketing Effort has a built-in functionality to add Seeds or you could create a segment for your effort to insert the seeds. Below you’ll learn how to use each of these methods as well as the pros and cons of each one. Built-in Seed Functionality Within the Marketing & Communications functional area of the system you’ll see a link to manage your Seed list. This is where you input all of the names and addresses for the people you want to add as a Seed. Once you’ve built out your list here you’ll have to add your Seeds within your Marketing Effort by going to the Effort Settings Tab and then the Seeds sub-tab to select the names that you want to add into the effort. Pros for using this method: You can add Seeds to your effort without having to add the recipients to your database as constituents. If someone is a constituent this functionality would allow them to receive a copy of the mailing a different address other than what is listed on their constituent record. You don’t have to worry about a Seed being excluded for any reason. Seeds can receive all versions of the mailing if you are sending out different packages. If you are tracking budgeting and expenses within the systems the Seeds will be included in those totals to help you understand ROI. These Seeds won’t skew any of the KPIs that you might be tracking with your Marketing Effort. Drawbacks of this method: You have to remember to add the Seeds to the Marketing Effort which can be tedious if you have a long list of seeds. If your effort includes multiple packages then the Seed list will receive one copy of each package. This can increase your cost on high value mailings if you have a list of 10 seeds and your mailing includes 2 packages, that means an additional 20 copies of your mailing will be sent out. Brightvine Tip: If you are going to use the built-in seed functionality you can add the Seeds into your Marketing Effort Communication template so that you don’t have to remember to add the seeds into each effort. If you make changes to your seed list just remember to update the template! Using a Seed Segment If all of your seeds are already in your system with their own constituent record then you may want to create a specific segment for your seeds instead of using the built in functionality. To do this you would create a query selection for these constituents, add the selection to a segment, and then add that segment into your marketing effort. Brightvine Tip: You may consider adding a Seed Solicit Code into the system and then attaching it to the constituents you wish to add as Seeds. This may make management of the selection for the seeds easier than having to input a list of constituent lookup ids. Pros for using this method: You’ll be able to select which version of the mailing is sent to the seeds by attaching the package to the segment that you want them to receive. If you are tracking budgeting and expenses within the systems the Seeds will be included in those totals to help you understand ROI. If a seed happens to send back a donation that will be included in the reporting when you refresh your marketing effort. Brightvine Tip: Make sure the Seed segment is at the top of your list so that everyone you expect to add as a Seed is included in the specific segment for Seeds. Drawbacks of this method: The seeds can only receive one version of the mailing since you’ll have to select the package that they receive. Since the seeds actually exist in the system as constituents then they will be included in your KPI calculations and may skew those numbers. The address on the constituent record is where the mail piece will be sent so if they want to receive it at a different location then they may need an alternate constituent record in order to accomplish this. A seed could be excluded if they fall into any of your exclusion criteria for the mailing As you can see, you’ve got some things to think about when it comes to how you add your seed list to your mailing. Adding Seeds is an important part of your mail strategy so that you can see that all of your hard work and planning looks exactly how you want it to when it arrives in your donor’s mailbox.

By: Megan Constantino, Darryl Fonseca and Bethany Avery Today we want to dig into a topic that many of our current and prospective BrightVine Data Link Integration Engine for Blackbaud CRM™ (BVDL) customers have asked about. “Does your Integration Engine work with SSO”? The answer is yes, it does! The question often comes down to the fact that the Integration Engine for Blackbaud CRM™ uses Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) to make its API calls to Blackbaud CRM™. SSO on the other hand uses a completely different mechanism, more of a “stateless” call, which can pose a barrier for apps that require you to authenticate every time such as BrightVine Data Link for Blackbaud CRM™. So how do we work around this? We do so through a series of configuration updates and by populating the Windows Authentication fields on the Application User record. These fields are populated natively when you create an Application User in Blackbaud CRM™ using the “Add Domain User” form. For those using SSO however, you’ll know that you must use the “Add Custom User” form instead, which does not populate the Windows Authentication fields. It is simple to populate these fields with the relevant information via script however. The fact that the Windows Authentication fields are populated (not the mechanism by which they were populated) is enough for the BrightVine Integration Engine, giving it what it needs to move on despite the user being an SSO user. The remaining configuration is simply to update a handful of web config items to support Windows Authentication. All in all, the changes take just under a few minutes, and can be completed by BrightVine or your IT team. For follow-up questions or a walkthrough, reach out today!

Finding the Communication Vehicle that is Right for You by: Aaren Ballinger, Selena Fowler & Heather Todd Communicating effectively with constituents is one of the most critical tasks for any organization. When it comes to setting up communication vehicles in Blackbaud CRM™, there are several options - which you pick depends on the type of communication you are sending and what information you would like to track in the system. Whether it’s a fundraising appeal, stewardship campaign, or another message, there’s a communication task that will fit your needs. Three such communication vehicles in Blackbaud CRM™ are Appeal Mailings, Marketing Efforts, and Correspondence processes. They may appear to have similar functionality - maybe you have thought to yourself, well, what is the difference? Here’s a quick overview of each one to help you understand what they provide and choose the right one for your communication. Marketing Efforts Direct Marketing Efforts are the “gold standard” in Blackbaud CRM™ when building and tracking fundraising appeals. They have the most robust features and flexibility, allowing you to incorporate complex segmentation and exclusion logic, A/B testing, and even solicit through email deployed by BBIS. Below is a summary of the main benefits and unique features that Direct Marketing Efforts provide. Maximum flexibility with segmentation and exclusions Marketing efforts allow you to include multiple segments and separate each segment into test segments for A/B testing. If you vary the creative for your appeal among different segments, you can track that by attaching different packages to your segments. Each segment within a marketing effort will receive a unique source code, allowing you to track the appeal results at a very granular level. When it comes to exclusions, marketing efforts will enable you to exclude records based on specific solicit codes, or exclude whole groups of constituents through exclusion selections and previous marketing effort exclusions. Fail-proof ways to check your work Once you activate a Marketing Effort, the process writes to each constituent record part of the effort to show that they have received the appeal. It’s often a bit daunting to push that “activate” button, so Marketing Efforts provide a few features that allow you to check your work before taking that final step. First, you can calculate segment counts before activating to check that everything is looking as expected. You can also export the mail file before activating to do an even more in-depth check. Robust tracking and reporting capabilities Once a Marketing Effort is activated, each constituent in the effort is assigned a finder number. These finder numbers are typically printed on direct mail response devices, and when a gift is returned, it allows data entry teams to quickly enter that gift and link it back to the marketing effort that prompted it. As contributions roll in, results for the appeal can be monitored directly in the Marketing Effort record, which provides KPIs like response rate, average gift amount, and cost per dollar raised for each segment. In addition, several marketing effort-level reports can be run to monitor results. Ability to complete a wide variety of solicitation activities Marketing Efforts provide you the ability to do types of solicitations that you can’t do within an Appeal Mailing. One crucial example is acquisition mailings. Only Marketing Efforts allow you to add outside acquisition lists that contain individuals without a constituent record in Blackbaud CRM™. Once an individual from an acquisition list makes a gift, the finder number provided through the Marketing Effort will help link back to that individual and create a record for them using the information in the acquisition list. Another example of functionality only available in a Marketing Effort is linking with Blackbaud Internet Systems (BBIS) and sending an email appeal. By attaching an email package and the appropriate HTML code-block, you can deploy an email via BBIS and see any responses tracked back to the Marketing Effort. You can also use multiple email packages within a marketing effort to vary the content, and creative your audience sees by segment. As you can see, Marketing Efforts are ideal for organizations that are completing very complex fundraising appeals. In addition, they are often the top choice for larger organizations that have the staff and expertise to set up complex segmentation and complete things like large-scale acquisition efforts. Appeal Mailings Appeal Mailings are a more scaled-down, simpler version of Marketing Efforts. There is no complex segmentation available, as only one selection and one package can be used for the appeal. Options around exclusions are also scaled back, as only solicit code exclusions can be used. Some of the features found in Marketing Efforts remain. Most notably, the mailing is assigned an appeal, and all records in the appeal will be assigned finder numbers, which makes gift entry seamless. Once activated, the Appeal Mailing record will also be written to the constituent record for each recipient. Tracking results for Appeal Mailings is a slightly different process. There are no source codes in Appeal Mailings, so there is no source code level reporting available. Some of the same KPIs that are available within Marketing Efforts are available in an Appeal Mailing, but those KPIs only report on the mailing as a whole since there is no complex segmentation to keep track of. Overall, Appeal Mailings are ideal for very simple mailings - one message sent to one audience. A great example would be a letter to your board members asking them to pay their yearly dues. It gives you the ability to track your results but doesn’t require the setup time of a Marketing Effort. Correspondence Process If you are looking to send a non-fundraising communication, the Manage Correspondence process is a great option. This communication vehicle is not tied to an Appeal in the system, so it is perfect for tracking stewardship activities like newsletters, postcards, and impact reports. Like an Appeal Mailing, in a Correspondence process you choose one selection to pull in your recipients, and you can exclude constituents using solicit codes only. One additional feature that a Correspondence process provides is the ability to link with a letter template and complete a mail merge directly from Blackbaud CRM™. You also have the option to output a list using either an output format or an export definition. When you run the Correspondence process, it writes the communication to each constituent record. You can also add a correspondence code, which can be specified for each correspondence or kept more general if you send a particular type of correspondence more regularly. Communication Vehicle Tips Here are a few other things to consider when deciding which communication vehicle you want to use for your next communication. One way to make the process of building a Marketing Effort less time-intensive and more fool-proof is to utilize communication templates. These allow you to select default settings or parameters for every Marketing Effort you create. In addition, you can use them to build in standard exclusions and other items to save you from having to add these each time you start an effort. If you have a simple and straightforward fundraising appeal, an Appeal Mailing might be your best choice to save setup time. However, there’s plenty of instances where you might want to use a Marketing Effort to take advantage of some of the extra features. For example, maybe you need the ability to exclude a selection of constituents. There are no rules against building a simple Marketing Effort with just one segment! There are also no rules about using a Marketing Effort to set up a non-fundraising communication. While using a Correspondence process is an excellent choice for sending out more minor communications, sometimes stewardship activities can be complex too! Marketing Efforts can allow you to account for different groups through multiple segments, assign other messaging through packages, and exclude constituents in various ways.

Gender is a common data collection point that an organization may ask for when they are adding biographical information about a person to their database. You may collect this information because your system is set up to determine a person’s Title or Pronoun based on their gender selection. Or you may simply be asking if someone is male or female because that is how it has always been done. This gender binary approach to data collection can alienate persons who are non-binary right from the start of their relationship with your organization. Gender inclusiveness is not a new concept but it is something that has been slow to evolve on data collection forms and how we store this information within our databases. Changing your approach to gender identity can go a long way in building better relationships with your constituents Before you overhaul your donation forms or other data collection forms it is important to review why you’ve been asking for gender in the first place. If it isn’t a valuable piece of information then removing the question from your data collection forms might be your next step. If the information is valuable then you want to look at your approach to collecting this information and the changes that you can make to be more inclusive. A simple change that you can make without a lot of effort is to let people know why you are collecting gender information and how it is utilized. Providing transparency around how the information is utilized can go a long way to making someone more comfortable with providing the information. Next, allow for someone to provide options beyond male/female and allow someone to decline to answer. A list could include Female, Male, Other, Prefer not to say. If you are asking for gender to determine other pieces of information, make the change to ask the questions that you are really looking for. Instead of using gender to force a title prefix or pronouns onto someone, ask them for those specific pieces of information instead. You may ask someone for their preferred prefix with a list of options. Below is a good example of this in action taken from The White House website contact form. The list allows for several options including Mx which is a common honorific that does not indicate gender. By including Other they allow people to indicate other gender neutral titles such as Ind. or Misc. In addition to allowing people to tell you their preferred title, you can also allow them to tell the pronouns that they use to identify themselves. Asking someone the pronouns that they use can help you properly communicate with them in your outreach efforts. Collecting this information may be a challenge if your database is setup using binary logic. You may have to store information in customized tables or as a personal attribute instead of utilizing an out of the box field for the information. Making the change will also require training your staff on where to find the information, how to use it, and the importance of why you are collecting it.

Have you ever found yourself building an ad-hoc query in Blackbaud CRM™, and frustrated with the “duplicate" results? This is a common issue that users encounter when building queries, and there are multiple ways to tackle this problem. One reason this occurs is because of a lack of understanding about how the queries function. When you add output fields to a query, you need to be aware of whether the output field is a one-to-one field, or a one-to-many field. For example, the “First Name” field is a one-to-one field, because a constituent can only have one assigned first name in the system. However, something like “Phone Number” is a one-to-many field, because a constituent can have multiple phone numbers recorded in their record. When you put a field like phone number in the output of your query, it will return the results to you with multiple rows for the same constituent, one row for each phone number on their record. There are several ways that you can prevent getting duplicate results in query: Use “Primary” Fields Several nodes offer the ability to pull the information that has been marked as primary - for example, Address(Primary), Business (Primary), Contact (Primary), and Education (Primary). For fields like email address and phone number, you will need to do a little extra work to get to the primary record. When trying to get a list of Board Member phone numbers, you may build the query below: Unfortunately, your output is going to show multiple rows for each board member, as it will output any and all phone numbers on their constituent record. To make things a little cleaner, add the filter “Phones\Primary phone number is equal to Yes”. This will give you output that will show one like per board member, with their primary phone number listed in the second column. Use the Summarize Query Output Function The summarize query output feature enables you to view a calculation of field results rather than the actual contents of that field. This could be a helpful tool in removing excessive rows in your query. For example, say you were trying to look at Board Members who made donations to your organization in a certain period of time. When you build the query shown to the left, you will potentially have multiple rows for each board member, showing each donation that they made during that time period. To simplify your results, apply the SUM function to the Revenue\Application Details\Amount field. This will result in one row per board member, with a total giving amount for that time period. The COUNT function can also be helpful when trying to remove duplicate rows in your query. Add a system record ID field like “Revenue Record” or “Constituent Record” to your output (depending on what kind of information you are querying on), and then apply the COUNT function to that field. This will clean up your query output and show a count of each record in the query. Minimize Your Output Fields Overall, it is best to make your query output as simple as possible. Don’t overload it by throwing the kitchen sink into your output fields, especially when it comes to those one-to-many fields. If you find that you need more output fields and your query is becoming cumbersome, it might be time to... Run Your Query Through an Export The export tool in Blackbaud CRM™ has way more power to get you the output you need. It allows you to place filters on top of each output field so that you get exactly what you are looking for. So before you tear your hair out while building your next query, try one of these four solutions and see if they can give you the clean and duplicate-free results you are seeking.

One of our most popular Blackbaud CRM™ give-away items is the Marketing Effort Refresh Process. With this process, instead of manually building a queue to refresh your activated marketing efforts, we created a global change that dynamically builds the queue for you. Our tool looks for any activated marketing effort that has had new revenue entered since the last refresh date and adds that effort to the queue. The benefit of using the tool is that it will only refresh the marketing efforts that need to be refreshed, instead of every single effort in the queue. This saves on processing time so that you can refresh your marketing efforts in the most efficient way possible. We recently gave the process a little tune up to make sure that everything under the hood is in tip top shape. We also added a new parameter to give you better control over which marketing efforts are considered for potential refresh. Sometimes quite old marketing efforts were being picked up for a refresh. This is likely due to a constituent sending in a reply device from years ago. To address this, we added a Global Change parameter where you can specify that you only want to refresh marketing efforts that have been activated within a specific period of time. This way if someone does send back a response from an effort from 2015, that you are no longer need to report on, the effort will be ignored and not refreshed. If you’ve downloaded the Marketing Effort Refresh Process in the past, you’ll want to make sure to grab the updated copy. If you haven’t downloaded it previously, now is a great time to give it a try. You can find more information about this and other freebies that the BrightVine Team has created on our giveaway page https://www.brightvinesolutions.com/resources

By Aaren Ballinger Here’s a hack that can save you time and frustration in many areas of Blackbaud CRM ™ - using wildcard characters. These can be used in search tools or in query to help you expand results and find the information that you are looking for. But what are wildcard characters? And what are the benefits of using them in Blackbaud CRM™? Wildcard Character Purpose Question Mark (?) or Underscore (_) Replace a single character Asterisk (*) or Percent (%) Replace a series of characters Brackets ([ ]) Indicate a range or specific characters Here are a few examples of how to use these wildcard characters in your work in Blackbaud CRM™ . Constituent Search One place where it can be helpful to utilize these wildcard characters is in the main constituent search tool. For example, say that you get a voicemail message from a constituent who says their name is Janet Meyer. You type that spelling into the constituent search tool and get a few hits, but none of them seem to be the constituent you were looking for - perhaps the spelling is different. Instead, you can type “Me?er” in the Last/Org/Group name field of the search tool and expand your results. This will return anyone with a last name that starts with “Me” and ends with “er”, with only one letter in between. If you still aren’t finding the correct constituent, you could expand even further using the percentage sign wild card. Searching for “M%er” in the Last/Org/Group name field expands your results to include constituents with a last name that starts with “M” and ends with “er”, with any number and combination of letters in between. Now you find the constituent you were searching for - Janet Myer! One word of caution - the percentage sign can take the place of any number of characters, so if you have a large number of constituents in your database, this could return an unwieldy amount of results to wade through. Including any other information you might have about the constituent - like city, state, zip, or phone number, could help narrow things down even further. Activating Keyword Search Have you ever encountered a search tool in Blackbaud CRM™ that returns no results even when you are searching for something that you know exists? Many search tools throughout the system do not run a “keyword search” like you might be familiar with in Google - you search for a word and the engine returns webpages that contain that word anywhere on the page. Instead, Blackbaud CRM™ wants you to enter the name of the item you are searching for exactly. An example of this is the package search tool found within Marketing and Communications > Packages. Say you are searching for a package related to a mailing you sent to your board members last fall. You type “Board” in the name field of the search tool, but that returns no results. As you can see, the search tool is only returning the results of packages that begin with the word “Board”. To convert this into a keyword search and find any packages that contain the word “Board”, you simply add a percentage sign before the word “Board”. As you can see, running the search with the percentage sign returns an additional result, which is the package you were looking for. Expanding Query Results You can use brackets in query to represent a range or set of characters. In the query below, we are looking for constituents with last names that begin with S, T, or U and that have made a recent gift. You could also filter for a set of values by listing values inside the brackets separated by commas, i.e. [M, S, V]. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ways that you can use wildcard characters in Blackbaud CRM™ . They are a great trick to keep in your back pocket to help you more easily navigate through the system and find what you are looking for.