As you know if you read this blog, we use Sphere FAF extensively. We have at least 7 walks a year as well as an assortment of other thon type events. The FAF/RE plugin worked great, but it brought in a lot of data we didn't need in RE and processing profile updates was a pain! Our thoughts are that FAF is our walk database. The thon donors really have a loyalty to the person they support not necessarily to us. We don't solicit them in the same manner that we do our other donors. We email them through Sphere. We do want the donations in RE however.
We implemented Import-O-Matic (IOM) and now we bring in only what we need and we have a tool that does so much more on import. For example, those pesky little entries that are all in caps or not capitalized where they should be - IOM fixes the entries on the fly. I have dictionaries set up to correct things like Capt where I want Captain. I apply the correct letter type by associating it in a dictionary to the payment type. I can merge records during import - yes, during import. I could go on and on but I just want you to know that it has cut our processing time for getting those gifts in RE dramatically. We never could stay up to date on all of our donations - we do now. If you bring in lots of gifts from FAF, you will love IOM.
We're moving right along with Papersave. We are starting to see some good benefit. It's really nice to be able to open up a gift and see the documentation right there. Our process is refined and working well. We have 2 gift processors (they do so much more) and I ended up setting up a series of queues for each person. They alternate the daily scans. We use a ticketing system so they set up tickets for each day's tasks. Here is an example:
