RE/BBNC Integration

It's been a crazy time for me - selling a house, moving, sick for 3 weeks, etc etc. Anyway, I'd like to talk some about the integration between Raiser's Edge and Net Community. We implemented RE awhile ago. We moved from a Microsoft Access database to RE. It was a really smooth implementation due in great part to a wonderful technician at Blackbaud. She spent a great amount of time learning about the structure of the Access db and working with me to map out the conversion.

We brought in BBNC about 2 1/2 years ago. We host all of our applications in house. We moved form an hosted website for content management and Net Solutions to BBNC. For the most part it went well - team fundraising was a whole 'nother situation though. More on that another time.

Raiser's Edge is our key application - it's our view of all those linked to our organization. Over the years, we have had to change procedures and policies, but I can say that the initial choices we made have held strong.

A few notes on what was important to us:

• Campaigns, Funds and Appeals: you really need to have a good strategy here. We followed BB's description of what these mean and it works for us. Campaigns are that big umbrella- the overall look at your fundraising. Funds belong to your financial department, especially if you integrate with FE. Appeals are the ask - we have an appeal for every type of donation/gift that we get. We set up new campaigns, Funds and Appeals each year. Every gift gets and appeal. In the appeal, we have linked to a default campaign and fund most of the time. Sometimes an appeal can get gifts for different funds. For instance, our Unsolicited Appeal. This is used for gifts that come in with no indication of a defined "ask". The donor often indicates a fund - research, in-home care, etc.
• Talk to each other!!! When you set up RE for the first time, you should have had a lot of discussion with all the departments. A database does you no good if the people who use it don't get the info they need.
• Set up procedures and policies and document them.
• Keep your security as tight as your company allows. In another blog I'll talk about our security and processes. Most of our staff only has view rights for most things.
• Listen to Finance when they tell you they need all those funds. I made the mistake of trying to convince finance to put the money in "consolidated buckets". That didn't last long. Soon I realized that I had led them down the wrong road. After spending some time with the financial statements and budget in FE, I see that the Finance department knows the view of the funds that they have to show to the people who make decisions. We have lots of funds and that works for us. So my motto now is "the fund belongs to Finance".
  

Back to integration -
The integration for RE/FE is set up in RE. In Config/General Ledger, you make that connection to the server. In each fund, the Gift type is linked to the GL distribution. The fund links directly with the project in FE. Our finance department initiates setting up new funds. They set up the project code in FE and I set up the fund in RE. Then our finance lead puts in the GL distribution.

Each gift is marked Not Posted by default. This means the data hasn't been sent to FE. All of our gifts get posted to FE. If changes need to be made to the gift after it has been posted, we have to do an adjustment. This adjustment is then posted to FE. If we need to remove a gift, we don't delete it- we reduce it to $0 and post it to FE. This way we can note in the gift why it was reduced to $0.

I'll go into more detail on the actual posting process in the next blog. Integrating RE and FE brought lots of benefits:

• we don't do double data entry
• we have fewer mistakes
• we have a great audit trail
• we can drill down from FE right into RE
• our reporting is consistent across applications
• we have a similar interface on our products
• one vendor for questions
  
• we have a great set of checks and balances as gifts are moved through the systems

Obviously, you can see we like it. I would highly recommend this integration if your development group speaks to your finance group. That may sound strange, but it seems to be a big issue out there. Finance may think they are losing control and Development may think they have to configure things differently. It took us a little while to recognize that RE is for fundraising and FE is for finance. We would say - so where should we get that report? We've straightened that out. We did make the rule to use the fiscal year in RE for our appeals. It's easier remembering one type of year for both apps. We still spend time reinforcing the idea that reporting by appeal may show something different than reporting by fund in RE.

Next I'll go through the actual process of posting.

A little happy dance for our Phillies -

Sphere E-Commerce: You know what assuming does

Going off on another side note: I've been working with Sphere a lot this week. We recently opened an online store. OK - I know assuming is wrong, however, I thought since the thons integrate, ecommerce would integrate with RE. Wrong! There is currently no integration between ecommerce and RE. So, that means we have to get the gifts out of Sphere and into RE.

I thought I'd call Blackbaud's Sphere support line to see if they had a set process for this. I spoke with a really nice person whose only choice to help me was to log a case ticket for me. I'd really like to be able to wait on hold for the CMS team to help me. That isn't an option for now. The tickets are now being logged in Case Central. That's nice - easy to work with. However, it seems that the Sphere folks are really being pushed resource-wise. Hopefully, staffing will catch up with the rollouts of Sphere. It seems to be a trend in any business that you sell your product and then have to staff your support accordingly.

I'm working on an export/import process that won't be too taxing. I'll post here when I have it completed.

On another note, I had the cookie training so to speak. It's not really a training. You have to pay $175 and they give you rights to a cookie. You run the cookie and it opens up some customization for the frontpage of your thon event. Basically you get a header, footer and menu area that you can customize. You've got to have a good bit of familiarity with html. I'm using CoffeeCup html editor and going to move on to Dreamweaver if this doesn't work. I'm not an expert at html in any way at all. I am promised another 1/2 session to get my questions answered, but I think it's pretty much up to me at this point.

More to come!

Nora

It's not really a cookie party

Just thought I'd take a pause in the implementation discussion and talk about my efforts to do some simple customization on one of our event sites in Sphere's Kinterathon application.

We wanted to "pretty up" the landing page for an event and I thought I'd take my limited experience and tackle the job. This is simple stuff so those of you who know html and Sphere customization will be bored if you read on.

I'm working in the Kinterathon/Manage website info/Front Page Customization. The first thing I learned when I called BB support to ask if I could customize the buttons is that I had to take Cookie Training. Understand there are no real cookies to be eaten so that was a let down. I haven't taken the class yet, but since I do aspire to different colored buttons at some time, I'm going to do it. So, the customizations I am making are those allowed by anyone as a standard feature.


I started by tackling moving the title front the middle of the page to the top and making the letters bigger. As you know, you get a couple of little boxes for a header and a subheader. They wouldn't do, so I opened up my trusty Adobe photoshop and created a file and typed in my text and formatted it. Then I added the logo to the bottom of this file. I had to do some image and canvas re-sizing, but I got it looking like I wanted. I loaded that into the header and graphic and voila! I had a nice big title.

My next stop was making the side menu and text follow our red, black and white color format. It's pretty easy to click on a button for Menu and pick a color. I wanted the colors to be a true red, black and white, so I went to http://cloford.com/resources/colours/500col.htm to get the hex codes for these colors. Then I just pasted them into the boxes sans the #. Looking good....

The last thing for today was editing the registration box. I am no html guru, but I get the basics. I have Dreamweaver, but I must have been dreaming when I bought it - it's just too complex. I use The HTML Editor at http://www.coffeecup.com/html-editor/. It's easy and pretty cheap. I like it. It doesn't seem to add a lot of junk to the code. I made the words look pretty and pasted my html into the window and now things are looking pretty nice.

I still can't change those buttons and I want to take care of that big space before my registration box, but I learned some new things and I wanted to share. I am the all-time generalist and I think it is great to try new things. It helps if someone has been there before you and shares.

Look forward to more on this once I graduate from cookie school.

Here is the link to the site I've been talking about: http://www.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=320354

Financial Edge Integration with Raiser's Edge

As I mentioned in my last post, I have the least amount of experience with Financial Edge (FE). I have a limited background in accounting, having worked at an accounting firm. I helped build financial statements and schedules, but was not an accountant.

I do work very closely with the person who his our Director of Finance, with the auditors and our outside accounting help. We recently (last year) moved to the accrual system. What a change in our thought process. Can I just say now that personally I'm not fond of pledges. Really, realizing that pledges count for revenue when they are made has challenged all of us and created new reporting challenges.

We produce monthly statements in FE: a summary and detail treasurer's report (income statement), a statement of functional expense, a income statement by project. We manage our budget through FE - that's another story - preparing for our budget import each year is a robust challenge. Recently, I was asked for another income statement that grouped the revenue in different categories. More on that when we talk about the VCO.

We integrate FE with the Raiser's Edge (RE). This is wonderful! The integration between RE and FE is a beautiful process. We've set some basic processess associated with the integration:

• Import payment details: currently Sphere does not include payment details in the download. We run an export from RE and use a somewhat automated process to import the payment details into the Sphere gifts.


• Pre-posting process: the db coordinator runs the pre-post in RE to match to a custom report that balances to a tape that is run for that days mail and to the downloads for that mail date. The db coordinator works in the IT group. This is a first look at all the gift data to assure that we will be posting over all of that day's mail with the appropriate payment info.


• Pre-post by finance: the finance specialist does an additional pre-post. This balances to the commitment reports for all batches for the daily mail. Then she posts to FE.


• In FE, the gifts come in as a journal batch. The Finance Director then reviews the batch. She can see funds, appeals, gl accounts, etc. She also has all the documentation, the custom report and the commit reports. When she is satisfied, she posts the journal batches into FE. All reports are put together as backup documentation.

This is really a great integration. The connection between FE and RE is the project/fund. This connection is configured in RE. As I mentioned earlier, in our company Finance controls the fund in RE. In that fund, Finance configures the links to the General Ledger in Fe.

Next post, we'll move on the RE/BBNC integration.

First came Financial Edge

Financial Edge was implemented before I started at ALS. At that time, we had one Novell server and everything ran on it. We decided to build a Microsoft network and began the move to three servers. One server was a file and print server and ran Microsoft Exchange, one was a database server and we kept our clone Novell server and converted it to Microsoft so we could run Sharepoint Services, Trackit (our helpdesk application) and Windows Update Services.

We moved from a DOS application called Champion to FE. We decided to start fresh and not bring in the history. We kept Champion running for a few years so we could pull reports if we needed them.

I am not a financial expert in any way. I support the application, administer it, do financial reporting and support the integration. I am comfortable with the Visual Chart Organizer (VCO).

The most important decision for us was developing/improving upon our chart of accounts. When I started we decided that we should do a little overhaul and add more projects. The difficult discussions always seemed to revolve around what we termed "buckets". What bucket should the money go in to. At first, I'll admit, I couldn't understand why all the general unrestricted income couldn't go into a general bucket. I soon realized that its all about the reporting. So I learned a few things come into account: what the board needed to see, what the donor needed to see, what our executives needed to see, and what our auditors expect to see.

Lessons I've learned at this point

• IT and Development need to work with the Finance department
• The Finance department needs to work with IT and Development

A note on this: I've seem this to be a big obstacle especially if you want to integrate FE and RE. As you will see in future posts, we recognize the fund in RE to belong to the Finance department. The fund directly associates with the project code in FE.

• Ask the question: what do you want to see in your reports

We are still working through issues that we thought we had planned for in our reporting needs. It isn't cut and dry as to which system you will use to pull your reports.

• Be consistent

I've learned when I'm building reports that doing things consistently across the board allows you to use logic that applies in all instances.

• Be prepared for change

No matter how much time you plan preparing - no matter how much discussion you have - you will have to change something in the future. know that you can do this. Implementing any application is and should be a dynamic, continuing experience. As applications are improved; as you learn more about your requirements and become more knowledgeable; as people change in the organization - your application will change. I've learned to be open to it - in fact, embrace the change.

More on FE in my next post...

Under the weather but gearing up for the first PBUG meeting

Sorry I didn't come back as quickly as I hoped. I've been a little under the weather.

I want to post a little bit about our journey through the implementation of Blackbaud products, but I also want to make mention of a new user group we are trying to get started in Philly. There are a few of us who have been trying to get together to share ideas and questions. Well, we're finally getting it moving along. The first meeting of the Philadelphia Blackbaud Users Group will be on September 3d in Ambler, PA. Please check out more info at http://www.alsphiladelphia.org/NetCommunity/Pbug. If you are in the area - I hope to see you there.

Now - on to our journey.... this is just an outline...I'll cover specifics in later posts.

It began with Financial Edge which was actually implemented before I came to The ALS Association, Greater Philadelphia Chapter. When I started here in 2002, I was asked to settle on a solution for a fundraising application and transfer all of the data from our Access database to this solution. We chose Raiser's Edge and used Blackbaud to help implement and transfer data. Great success!

After Raiser's Edge (RE), we then added on The Researcher's Edge (TRE). This prospect management tool really opened our eyes to some potential donors we never even considered before.

At this point, we had FE and RE integrated and TRE left not integrated though we did transfer in rating scores. We were using an independent programming group to build our website and online donor tools. We had just started using Convio for our walks. We wanted to integrate our online giving with RE so we didn't have to do double data entry. We added Net Solutions and used this application on our website. Now most of our donations were coming into RE. We could do email blasts, registrations - we felt good.

We still could not integrate Convio. We had a three year contract and there had been many mumblings and grumblings about Convio's support, difficult backend and reporting. We reviewed the process to integrate Convio with RE and found it too cumbersome. We wanted to update our website and take control. We wanted to make the changes. So we moved to Net Community (BBNC).

BBNC gave us control over changes, offered online giving, registration, targeted content and lots of good stuff. It had a little learning curve, but fortunately we have a person who understood it well. Now our giving and registrations were integrated with RE and we were going to move our walks to team fundraising in BBNC.

We ran the walks for a year in BBNC team fundraising. For us, it just wasn't working the way we wanted it to work - or should I say the way our walkers and their supporters wanted it to work. They let us know that they missed the clear path to registration offered in Convio, but we sure didn't miss the issues we had and didn't want to go back. When Blackbaud purchased Kintera, we had our solution. This year we implemented Sphere Friends Asking Friends.

This was just the right solution for us. The front end we liked, simple and typical of a team fundraising application. The back end we love - reporting galore. And we are now integrated so our donations come into RE. Next we are bringing up an online e-store in Sphere.

This is why I named this blog - All Things Blackbaud. I'm no expert, but I'm fortunate to have been part of all of the implementations since RE. I get to play server admin too so I have some understanding of the hardware side. I often get calls from people wanting to know why we use these products, how we implemented them and how we use them. We're a small nonprofit typical of many out there. I hope I can share some info with some of you that you might find interesting. If not, I have fun just talking about tech stuff - what a geek I am.

An Introduction

We started with our first Blackbaud product about 10 years ago when we implemented Financial Edge. In 2002, we brought in Raiser's Edge. Then followed The Researcher's Edge, Net Community and Sphere. The products are integrated and I hope to spend a good bit of time discussing this aspect.

My next post will take a closer look at our implementation progression. We replaced other products along the way. I'll talk about why and how we made the change. I like Blackbaud products so expect the posts to be on the positive side of using the products. I will discuss any bumps in the road.

Just a little info on me - I'm a 25 year veteran in the IT world. I started in a support capacity working for an accounting firm. I moved through the years to other industries and now work as the Senior Manager of Information Technology at The ALS Association, Greater Philadelphia Chapter. I'm hoping it's helpful for others as I work from the server side, the application side and the support side.

My goal - share with anyone who can benefit from what I've learned.