Since I'm no longer working full-time, I feel I'm not really qualified to speak on Blackbaud products. I'll be setting up another blog and some posts will be on working with Blackbaud products or other software apps. I am doing some consulting work and maybe some of what I learn will help others.
Best to all my followers and friends.
Nora
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
We all have a say in what our software does for us
I recently had a follow-up conversation with Jana Eggers, SVP Product Management and Marketing at Blackbaud. This was in regard to the roadmap for The Raiser's Edge. Jana expressed to me her concern that Blackbaud wasn't getting the message to its clients that it is committed to the Raiser's Edge users. She indicated to me that Blackbaud (BB) understands it has a strong client-base using RE and it will support those clients.
I don't know what is coming after RE7. I've heard the term "bluebird" - a new product that Blackbaud is not ready to discuss in detail at this point. We've seen the solution, Altru, for those in the Arts and Cultural venue. But, I will be the first to say that I wanted the enhancements that I saw in the discovery process for the now debunked RE8. Along that line, prior to speaking with Jana Eggers, I spoke with Jenn Mercer,the RE Product Manager at BB. We spoke about the concept of a household record, a record that allows one to see a household grouping with a primary address and contact info. One address to mail, one address for email, one group for overall giving - one way to identify a group of constituents and note the primary contact person for that group - what we saw during RE8 discovery - what is included in the CRM product.
I'm conflicted by the opportunity I've had to speak with such influential people at Blackbaud. I'm human, so of course, I feel good about the chance to give my opinions. However, I am one person, one set of opinions based on mostly my needs. You all have a voice in what you need and want in the solutions from Blackbaud. There are many ways to speak out. I know you are busy, but doing your job well depends on these products. Somehow, our message is getting confused when it reaches Blackbaud or we are not speaking out enough on what we really need. I also realize that there are too many places to let Blackbaud know what you need. Hopefully, that will be somewhat remedied in the future by Blackbaud creating one community online for RE users similar to the newly offered BBNC Community. Here are some ways to get involved and communicate what you want and need:
I don't know what is coming after RE7. I've heard the term "bluebird" - a new product that Blackbaud is not ready to discuss in detail at this point. We've seen the solution, Altru, for those in the Arts and Cultural venue. But, I will be the first to say that I wanted the enhancements that I saw in the discovery process for the now debunked RE8. Along that line, prior to speaking with Jana Eggers, I spoke with Jenn Mercer,the RE Product Manager at BB. We spoke about the concept of a household record, a record that allows one to see a household grouping with a primary address and contact info. One address to mail, one address for email, one group for overall giving - one way to identify a group of constituents and note the primary contact person for that group - what we saw during RE8 discovery - what is included in the CRM product.
I'm conflicted by the opportunity I've had to speak with such influential people at Blackbaud. I'm human, so of course, I feel good about the chance to give my opinions. However, I am one person, one set of opinions based on mostly my needs. You all have a voice in what you need and want in the solutions from Blackbaud. There are many ways to speak out. I know you are busy, but doing your job well depends on these products. Somehow, our message is getting confused when it reaches Blackbaud or we are not speaking out enough on what we really need. I also realize that there are too many places to let Blackbaud know what you need. Hopefully, that will be somewhat remedied in the future by Blackbaud creating one community online for RE users similar to the newly offered BBNC Community. Here are some ways to get involved and communicate what you want and need:
I really enjoy the discovery process offered by Blackbaud and highly encourage you to get involved with it. I am currently taking part in the pre-release of FE and the beta for RE certification. I recently took part in the mobile app release. If you don't know how to get involved or need to know more, contact your account managers. If your account manager doesn't respond, email me. Blackbaud is working on the account manager program to bring about improvements in communication.
There is a great Raiser's Edge User Group on Facebook. There are over 500 members in this group. You can share and learn and I do know that Blackbaud looks at this group.
There is a Blackbaud Users Forum on LinkedIn. There is also a Blackbaud Fan Club. The use of LinkedIn is really fired up these days.
I'm learning to tweet. I have been slow to go to Twitter but I realize that I can learn more and reach out to more people in a short amount of time. It is like having a finger on the pulse of the topics that interest you. Start by following Blackbaud. See what is tweeted there and you may want to join in on conversations in the future.
Just as an aside, I use Tweetdeck to get an overview of my Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
If you are not ready to speak out online, contact your account manager. Express your requirements, your suggestions to him/her. Ask that your account manager make sure your voice is heard. Blackbaud has indicated it wants to hear what you need in the products they offer, let's tell them.
I'm learning to tweet. I have been slow to go to Twitter but I realize that I can learn more and reach out to more people in a short amount of time. It is like having a finger on the pulse of the topics that interest you. Start by following Blackbaud. See what is tweeted there and you may want to join in on conversations in the future.
Just as an aside, I use Tweetdeck to get an overview of my Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
If you are not ready to speak out online, contact your account manager. Express your requirements, your suggestions to him/her. Ask that your account manager make sure your voice is heard. Blackbaud has indicated it wants to hear what you need in the products they offer, let's tell them.
Monday, October 8, 2012
BBCON 2012
I enjoyed a trip to BBCON 2012 last week. With Convio being part of the family now (or should I say Luminate), the Blackbaud conference was combined with the Convio conference. For me, there were some high points and confusing low points. I've been to many BB conferences - I can't even remember how many. This is my take on this year's conference - I'm sure many others saw it differently.
I wasn't keen on the conference starting on Sunday. I'm traditional enough to think that Sunday is a day many choose to keep special in some way. I thought three days was going to be pretty short, but actually the days were jam packed with sessions and lots to do.
As I mentioned, I've been to many BB conferences. Nothing compares with the ones that were held in Charleston - especially for having a good time. We were truly wined, dined and entertained in a huge way. Over the years, this has been toned down a bit. This year, the dining and entertaining kind of hit bottom for me. The food was pretty unremarkable. We ate breakfast the first morning in a foyer with our plates leaning on a window frame while we stood to eat (or sat on the floor). BB made a point of being into health this year with morning yoga, runs and walks; however, we were served a greasy croissant with (I think) egg on it. We did have a choice of yogurt and fruit also. The lunches were pretty much soup (mine was broth with one noodle) and salad (iceberg lettuce, yuck) - on the last day, lunch in a box was probably the best: sandwich, apple and cookie. We did get to sit at a table for most of the other meals. At the first night's reception, I enjoyed some risotto in a plate eating on a tray balanced next to the trash can. Couldn't get near the slider line - one line and lots of people. Blackbaud, if you are going to host 2,000 people we need more seating and more space.
The sessions were just ok to me; however, I'm not a CRM or Luminate (Convio) customer. The highlight was on these two products in my opinion. In fact, I erroneously went to a Best Database Practices session only to be told that the information was specifically for CRM clients - nothing for RE clients there. Over 3/4 of the room cleared after that statement. Hmmm.... sounds like we RE customers would have liked to have this type of session also.
The big failure at this conference, in my opinion, was that there was no roadmap for The Raiser's Edge. The RE roadmap session followed a fabulous BBNC roadmap session. I was so excited by what was happening and what was coming in BBNC! The RE roadmap session was a q&a session on RE7.92. This version was touted as what we clients asked for; I'm sure it suited many but not me. The ideas sound good: a way to indicate some classification of donors, a query list that allows you to add and remove people, and a duplicate checker that uses a new advanced algorithm. For me, I use Research Point, the query list doesn't allow for adding things like a constituent id or other pertinent info, and well, should we talk about the duplicate checker? There's been a lot of buzz about it on the social sites - it just doesn't work. We are told it will be fixed soon. This session was so obviously NOT a roadmap that the twitter echoed the disappointment and there was astonishment from many who attended or heard about the session.
I was very surprised and honored to spend a good 30 minutes with Marc Chardon. I'm not going to repeat the conversation because it's open for interpretation. However, I can say that I was told there would definitely be no RE 8. I also was told that there would be solutions for the RE clients and they may not be The Raiser's Edge. I had a pretty big reaction to this that got noticed. I was then truly privileged to spend a few minutes with Jana Eggers. I was assured by both people I spoke with that a roadmap will be given to the BB RE clients. My access to such influential people at BB I believe is directly related to the successful user groups we have in our area. I'm proud of that because it means we're a viable group who can help shape our own future.
I wanted to end this with the highlight of the conference for me. I met some wonderful people. It started the evening before the conference with a great dinner with friends. It continued with many happy moments hugging Blackbaud employees that I feel are friends after knowing them for years and meeting new friends and seeing "old" friends. I met a new "best friend", Janet. A big shout out to Melissa and Sage. A huge hug to the wonderful Harriet. I hope you are feeling better, Jenn. It was so fantastic to spend time with really special people at the conference.
This conference was tough for me. I usually embrace change, but I really love the Blackbaud products. I'm not convinced that clients like me will have their issues addressed or see RE enhanced any time soon. Luminate and CRM address the issues of the larger clients. We RE clients compose the heart of Blackbaud's client base - at least in the past. I hope we won't be forgotten or compartmentalized in the future.
I wasn't keen on the conference starting on Sunday. I'm traditional enough to think that Sunday is a day many choose to keep special in some way. I thought three days was going to be pretty short, but actually the days were jam packed with sessions and lots to do.
As I mentioned, I've been to many BB conferences. Nothing compares with the ones that were held in Charleston - especially for having a good time. We were truly wined, dined and entertained in a huge way. Over the years, this has been toned down a bit. This year, the dining and entertaining kind of hit bottom for me. The food was pretty unremarkable. We ate breakfast the first morning in a foyer with our plates leaning on a window frame while we stood to eat (or sat on the floor). BB made a point of being into health this year with morning yoga, runs and walks; however, we were served a greasy croissant with (I think) egg on it. We did have a choice of yogurt and fruit also. The lunches were pretty much soup (mine was broth with one noodle) and salad (iceberg lettuce, yuck) - on the last day, lunch in a box was probably the best: sandwich, apple and cookie. We did get to sit at a table for most of the other meals. At the first night's reception, I enjoyed some risotto in a plate eating on a tray balanced next to the trash can. Couldn't get near the slider line - one line and lots of people. Blackbaud, if you are going to host 2,000 people we need more seating and more space.
The sessions were just ok to me; however, I'm not a CRM or Luminate (Convio) customer. The highlight was on these two products in my opinion. In fact, I erroneously went to a Best Database Practices session only to be told that the information was specifically for CRM clients - nothing for RE clients there. Over 3/4 of the room cleared after that statement. Hmmm.... sounds like we RE customers would have liked to have this type of session also.
The big failure at this conference, in my opinion, was that there was no roadmap for The Raiser's Edge. The RE roadmap session followed a fabulous BBNC roadmap session. I was so excited by what was happening and what was coming in BBNC! The RE roadmap session was a q&a session on RE7.92. This version was touted as what we clients asked for; I'm sure it suited many but not me. The ideas sound good: a way to indicate some classification of donors, a query list that allows you to add and remove people, and a duplicate checker that uses a new advanced algorithm. For me, I use Research Point, the query list doesn't allow for adding things like a constituent id or other pertinent info, and well, should we talk about the duplicate checker? There's been a lot of buzz about it on the social sites - it just doesn't work. We are told it will be fixed soon. This session was so obviously NOT a roadmap that the twitter echoed the disappointment and there was astonishment from many who attended or heard about the session.
I was very surprised and honored to spend a good 30 minutes with Marc Chardon. I'm not going to repeat the conversation because it's open for interpretation. However, I can say that I was told there would definitely be no RE 8. I also was told that there would be solutions for the RE clients and they may not be The Raiser's Edge. I had a pretty big reaction to this that got noticed. I was then truly privileged to spend a few minutes with Jana Eggers. I was assured by both people I spoke with that a roadmap will be given to the BB RE clients. My access to such influential people at BB I believe is directly related to the successful user groups we have in our area. I'm proud of that because it means we're a viable group who can help shape our own future.
I wanted to end this with the highlight of the conference for me. I met some wonderful people. It started the evening before the conference with a great dinner with friends. It continued with many happy moments hugging Blackbaud employees that I feel are friends after knowing them for years and meeting new friends and seeing "old" friends. I met a new "best friend", Janet. A big shout out to Melissa and Sage. A huge hug to the wonderful Harriet. I hope you are feeling better, Jenn. It was so fantastic to spend time with really special people at the conference.
This conference was tough for me. I usually embrace change, but I really love the Blackbaud products. I'm not convinced that clients like me will have their issues addressed or see RE enhanced any time soon. Luminate and CRM address the issues of the larger clients. We RE clients compose the heart of Blackbaud's client base - at least in the past. I hope we won't be forgotten or compartmentalized in the future.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Let's Talk - some places to join in on the discussion
Sometimes you might not think you know enough or do enough with Blackbaud products to contribute to online discussion. That's usually not the case. Each one of us has probably had an experience that if shared, might help someone else. Here are some places I've had the opportunity to join in or just learn and some of the topics being discussed. The best way to start is to follow and listen. Before you know it, you will be contributing also. you will need to establish an account on most of the sites.
Linkedin
Raiser's Edge User Group:
Facebook
The Raiser's Edge Users Group Support Forum:
Discussion about all Blackbaud products
Blackbus.org
Raiser's Edge User Group:
- Top Monthly Reports
- Delaware Blackbaud Users Group Meeting
- Appeals, Campaigns, Funds and Finance Plus Raffle Question
- Query Lists
- Five Types of Nonprofit Tweets Guaranteed to Get Retweeted
- Nonprofits can learn to use LinkedIn to network, increase donations, and find board members who have expertise your nonprofit needs.
- Hi - saw the blog message about Social Sign on for Frineds Asking Friends....
- Free NTEN Membership Give-A-Way!
- GL Post Report
- Coding gifts for Capital Appeals
- Gifts of stocks/shares
- When attaching emails through Outlook, I get conflicting confirmation and error messages....
- Can anyone share their document retention policies? ...
The Raiser's Edge Users Group Support Forum:
- Breaking Blackbaud News: With the application of Patch 4 (Version 7.92), this now fixes the below captioned challenge. Thank you Blackbaud!;
- It's a meetup - let's put a face to these names - see you at BBCON2012
- Greetings Posters! Anyone using Square for credit card transactions? Pros? Cons? Have been reading that they hold the deposit for 30, 60 or 90 days for manual entries. Also, can you capture donor info if you swype? Looking forward to any of your experiences. Happy Weekend!
- I'm going to BBCON2012. Who will be there and when are you arriving? Anyone coming on Saturday night? Want to get together?
- Growing nonprofit out of Camp Hill, PA looking for its first Director of Development. Posting is here. http://ncaamarket.ncaa.org/
jobs/#/detail/4882196 - Charity Dynamics will be hosting a complimentary networking event on Monday night during BBCON. Go to http://www.eventbrite.com/
event/4229235758 to learn more. - Anyone else out there using/testing RE mobile yet?
I'm curious what others think.
Twitter
- 3 tips to make your end of year #fundraising campaign work harder for you
- Join me at "bbcon tweetup" on Sep 30th
- Register for our webinar about compelling year-end campaigns
- You can mark gifts as not acknowledged with a global change
Blogs
- FriendsAskingAmy
- BlackbaudKnowHow
- NetwitsThinkTank
- NonprofitTrends
- Blackbaud LearnLink
- ProspectResearch
Discussion about all Blackbaud products
Blackbus.org
Friday, September 14, 2012
Raiser's Edge Mobile Application Update
We've been using the app for a bit. We're really in the newbie phase, but I still think it is a great offering. Here is the latest update I received by email from Leah Tomaino at Blackbaud:
We've been using the app for a bit. We're really in the newbie phase, but I still think it is a great offering. Here is the latest update I received by email from Leah Tomaino at Blackbaud:
Hello RE Mobile Charter and Controlled Release Customers!
We wanted to give you two important bits of information:
·
What we’ve changed based on your feedback, and
when you’ll see those changes
·
Notification of a short, planned outage this
afternoon
Short outage this afternoon.
We are doing some backend work that will require us to pause
mobile services on our side. This should only take a few hours.
Please pass this on to anyone using the RE Mobile app at your organization.
Changes for the official release of Raiser’s Edge Mobile
The far more exciting news is what we’ve heard from you and
what we’re doing with that feedback!
·
We heard you wanted us to handle licensing
more gracefully and make it easier to log out of RE Mobile app.
We’re taking a big step in that direction by enabling auto log-out from the
mobile app when a user signs into RE proper.
·
We heard that you wanted to be able to see giving
score queries in lists. Done!
·
We heard that you needed to be able to see inactive
records in the app. Done!
·
We heard that if you have action fields
required in RE that aren’t available in the app, you would prefer to be
able to enter actions without those fields instead of not being able to add the
actions at all. Done!
·
We heard that notes entered through RE
Mobile weren’t as easy to identify as you’d like them to be. We are
updating note titles to be Mobile specific.
·
We heard Year-to-date (YTD) giving totals
weren’t aligned with your fiscal year. We are going to change the YTD
calculation from a calendar year calculation to a fiscal year calculation.
There are some requests that we heard from you that we are
investigating further, but will need some additional time and information to
incorporate. If you gave us feedback in these areas we may be reaching
out to you to get further information or talk to you about participating in discovery as we consider if/how
we build out this functionality.
·
Ability to view org records
·
Ability to view module information (membership,
events, alumni)
·
Ability to manage events
I also want to mention the bugs we are
fixing. These weren’t about the design of the app, but were
bumps in the road that some of you encountered along the way. Thank you
for your patience with us as we worked through these issues:
·
Windows Auth users will now log on with their
usual network login—no more having to include the domain name/ in the username
field.
·
International customers will see their correct
currency symbols instead of all currencies showing with $.
·
Actions and notes that were truncating have been
fixed. You will be able to scroll through results that don’t fit on the
screen as would be expected.
·
Emails that were missing will now be
available. We corrected the issue by ensuring that all phone types
designated as emails in Configuration will show up regardless of what they’re
named (email, e-mail, E mail, etc.)
·
All known timeout issues have been resolved
When can you get all these changes?
We will officially release Raiser’s Edge Mobile this
Tuesday, September 18th. Changes to the app will
be pushed through automatically, but there will be an RE patch and a web
service update that you will have to load before seeing all the changes,
including the license release change. When everyone receives the release
announcement on Tuesday, there will be update instructions. Patch 5 will
be available for on-premise customers at that time and, if all goes as planned,
hosted customers will be updated to patch 5 during the Tuesday evening
maintenance window. Any changes to these plans will be
included in Tuesday’s announcement.
Thank you so much to each of you who took the time to
pick up the phone and call us, fill out a survey, or shoot us an
email. We really appreciated hearing from you, and
appreciated knowing how we could improve your experience with RE Mobile.
We hope that your experience in the Charter/Controlled Release
program was a positive one. If you would like to be included in
other programs going forward, for any of our products or have any additional
feedback please let me know.
Best wishes,
Leah Tomaino
|
Sunday, April 29, 2012
FAF: How far can we go?
I can honestly say that Sphere Friends Asking Friends came along at exactly the right time for us. We had used Net Community's Team Fundraising for a year. Now I really like BBNC; however, the team fundraising just didn't work well for our 'thon' events. Our major issues were the synchronization (which left us never knowing our real event totals), the reporting (or should I say "lack of") and the general confusion of our constituency/users.
So, when I heard that Blackbaud acquired Kintera, I was a happy camper. I got approval for the move and signed up right away. It's been all good for us from that point forward. The first, most obvious benefit was the lack of emails and phone calls from our participants. They got it - they could use the application and it made sense. We were hosting 7 walks on our FAF site. We immediately noticed we were getting a lot more donations online. Setup was pretty easy and the reporting was huge improvement.
Our next step was to begin an email campaign that started with our past walkers, continued through the participant signups and the fundraising efforts, and ended with the outstanding results shared with all. We added Boundless Fundraising so our participants could use social media to improve their fundraising efforts. Our staff began posting to Facebook and Twitter sharing our upcoming walks. And most recently, we worked with Blackbaud to add the Essentials package to make our site even more friendly and appealing.
Sphere Friends Asking Friends has really worked for us. So much so, that we are now looking at using it for a third party event venture. We're in the feasibility stage of the project so its early times yet, but I have high hopes. If we move forward, I'll post the process here. Stay tuned and good fundraising to all!
So, when I heard that Blackbaud acquired Kintera, I was a happy camper. I got approval for the move and signed up right away. It's been all good for us from that point forward. The first, most obvious benefit was the lack of emails and phone calls from our participants. They got it - they could use the application and it made sense. We were hosting 7 walks on our FAF site. We immediately noticed we were getting a lot more donations online. Setup was pretty easy and the reporting was huge improvement.
Our next step was to begin an email campaign that started with our past walkers, continued through the participant signups and the fundraising efforts, and ended with the outstanding results shared with all. We added Boundless Fundraising so our participants could use social media to improve their fundraising efforts. Our staff began posting to Facebook and Twitter sharing our upcoming walks. And most recently, we worked with Blackbaud to add the Essentials package to make our site even more friendly and appealing.
Sphere Friends Asking Friends has really worked for us. So much so, that we are now looking at using it for a third party event venture. We're in the feasibility stage of the project so its early times yet, but I have high hopes. If we move forward, I'll post the process here. Stay tuned and good fundraising to all!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
I love Import-O-Matic!
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:
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:
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Papersave in Action and O'Matics Import
We did it - we are using Papersave. I really love it. There are so many ways to add a document to a record in Raiser's Edge. Currently, we have two scanners that our record processors use to scan in the daily mail. It's a new process so, of course, there is buy in time, but I have to say that it's working. It's amazing to have that documentation linked to a gift or appeal or constituent record.
I'd like to share a little advice for the install. Make sure you or a consultant is comfortable with your environment - understands where are your databases, has admin rights and knows passwords, including the sa password for your database server. If you decide to integrate with Sharepoint, encourage the process that the Papersave techs set up the site. Sharepoint integration is an option. We were confused about that in our initial contract. Papersave made good on it for us and did our integration and we really appreciate it. We use Sharepoint extensively. The advantage is that the user does not have to use an RE license to view the gifts and the associated documentation. You also have a search function from within RE that allows you to easily find certain gifts and the documentation.
We're really just getting in the swing of things with Papersave. Next week, we plan to train our staff on the search function and to show them how to add documentation using the dropdown in the constituent record. I'm happy to share any other info with anyone interested in using Papersave. Feel free to email me directly - nora@alsphiladelphi.org.
We had a great PBUG meeting earlier this month. We had lengthened our meeting to allow for a presentation from O'Matic Software. Jeff Montgomery and Pam Bruek joined us from Charleston and told us about some really cool tools and plugins that have built for Blackbaud products such as RE and FE. I want import-o-matic now. I had heard about import-o-matic in the past and I thought - oh yeah, it will make importing a little easier. I had no idea how this tool works. You can actually import all kinds of data at the same time from ONE and ONE import process. This means you can create a .csv file with name, address, gift amount, tribute info, event info - all kinds of data and import-o-matic figures out how to get it in the database without having to include all of those id fields in your file. AND you have a wonderful interface that lets you change search criteria, edit records on the fly, update info in either the import file or the record....I can go on and on. That search criteria - it can be multiple types of searches - first and last name (# of characters), address line, email address - all searched at the same time if you so choose.
Next step is to try to get it in the budget. I've kind of had a lot of projects this year so I may have exhausted any available funds. It will make me truly sad to not get this tool soon. I do plan to use it instead of the Sphere plugin. More on that later.
Off to do some work.... good day to all
Nora
I'd like to share a little advice for the install. Make sure you or a consultant is comfortable with your environment - understands where are your databases, has admin rights and knows passwords, including the sa password for your database server. If you decide to integrate with Sharepoint, encourage the process that the Papersave techs set up the site. Sharepoint integration is an option. We were confused about that in our initial contract. Papersave made good on it for us and did our integration and we really appreciate it. We use Sharepoint extensively. The advantage is that the user does not have to use an RE license to view the gifts and the associated documentation. You also have a search function from within RE that allows you to easily find certain gifts and the documentation.
We're really just getting in the swing of things with Papersave. Next week, we plan to train our staff on the search function and to show them how to add documentation using the dropdown in the constituent record. I'm happy to share any other info with anyone interested in using Papersave. Feel free to email me directly - nora@alsphiladelphi.org.
We had a great PBUG meeting earlier this month. We had lengthened our meeting to allow for a presentation from O'Matic Software. Jeff Montgomery and Pam Bruek joined us from Charleston and told us about some really cool tools and plugins that have built for Blackbaud products such as RE and FE. I want import-o-matic now. I had heard about import-o-matic in the past and I thought - oh yeah, it will make importing a little easier. I had no idea how this tool works. You can actually import all kinds of data at the same time from ONE and ONE import process. This means you can create a .csv file with name, address, gift amount, tribute info, event info - all kinds of data and import-o-matic figures out how to get it in the database without having to include all of those id fields in your file. AND you have a wonderful interface that lets you change search criteria, edit records on the fly, update info in either the import file or the record....I can go on and on. That search criteria - it can be multiple types of searches - first and last name (# of characters), address line, email address - all searched at the same time if you so choose.
Next step is to try to get it in the budget. I've kind of had a lot of projects this year so I may have exhausted any available funds. It will make me truly sad to not get this tool soon. I do plan to use it instead of the Sphere plugin. More on that later.
Off to do some work.... good day to all
Nora
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Papersave Pre-Reqs and Workflow/Design Process
We've had our Design call and our technical pre-requisite call. Really interesting and thorough. Note to those who plan to move forward - it's really helpful if you have a good understanding of your current process and some objectives. Our technical call went well. Basically, we had a few decisions to make. We are going to link with Sharepoint. We currently have a Sharepoint Server site we use as our Intranet. By linking Papersave with Sharepoint, we will be able to have more robust search capabilites and users who don't have RE access will still be able to see the scanned backup documentation.
Papersave has two parts: the database part will reside on our current SQL Server. Here we house all our databases related to Blackbaud. The other part - the application - will reside on our Sharepoint server that has IIS installed. You need IIS for the Papersave application. The people on this call should include anyone who handles your server environment and application implementation.
Our design call also went well. There was a bigger crowd in attendance. Here you are going to walk through your process. In our case, we started with when the mail comes in the door right through to the acknowledgements and tributes. I would suggest your group should include someone who has a thorough understanding of the process of gift entry. You should also have your RE admin present and, if you use Sphere FAF, the download processing person should be in attendance. Include the exec staff who looks at the document and your finance person.
During the design call, you will work with your consultant to document all of your processes and discuss any issues. This design call is in preparation for the configuration of your application. One of the things we had to work through was how we would handle our Sphere FAF gifts that come in the mail. Currently, all gifts for our walks must be entered into Sphere FAF and then downloaded into an RE batch. Other online gifts come down into a batch also. We wanted to be able to match the scanned documents with the manually entered FAF donations. We needed to be able to identify them in the batch. We currently mark any walk donation that is manually entered by us into FAF with an attribute: Processed in Office. This will work to identify those gifts in batch. After we make sure we have all our server/appliation pre-requisites complete, the next step is the application install and configuration. I'll post more on that as it happens.
Other news: Just read that with patch 20 for RE we will have compatibility with Office 2010. We have no big plans to move yet, but software assurance will run out soon so I'll probably update soon. Everyone out there does use Techsoup for your software purchases, I hope. Biggggg savings!
Lastly, but very important - our next user group meeting will be on June 3rd and hosted by Cora Services', Peggy Campellone. I'm excited. Hope any of you near the Philly area can join us.
Spring is in the air - get out and enjoy! Nora
Papersave has two parts: the database part will reside on our current SQL Server. Here we house all our databases related to Blackbaud. The other part - the application - will reside on our Sharepoint server that has IIS installed. You need IIS for the Papersave application. The people on this call should include anyone who handles your server environment and application implementation.
Our design call also went well. There was a bigger crowd in attendance. Here you are going to walk through your process. In our case, we started with when the mail comes in the door right through to the acknowledgements and tributes. I would suggest your group should include someone who has a thorough understanding of the process of gift entry. You should also have your RE admin present and, if you use Sphere FAF, the download processing person should be in attendance. Include the exec staff who looks at the document and your finance person.
During the design call, you will work with your consultant to document all of your processes and discuss any issues. This design call is in preparation for the configuration of your application. One of the things we had to work through was how we would handle our Sphere FAF gifts that come in the mail. Currently, all gifts for our walks must be entered into Sphere FAF and then downloaded into an RE batch. Other online gifts come down into a batch also. We wanted to be able to match the scanned documents with the manually entered FAF donations. We needed to be able to identify them in the batch. We currently mark any walk donation that is manually entered by us into FAF with an attribute: Processed in Office. This will work to identify those gifts in batch. After we make sure we have all our server/appliation pre-requisites complete, the next step is the application install and configuration. I'll post more on that as it happens.
Other news: Just read that with patch 20 for RE we will have compatibility with Office 2010. We have no big plans to move yet, but software assurance will run out soon so I'll probably update soon. Everyone out there does use Techsoup for your software purchases, I hope. Biggggg savings!
Lastly, but very important - our next user group meeting will be on June 3rd and hosted by Cora Services', Peggy Campellone. I'm excited. Hope any of you near the Philly area can join us.
Spring is in the air - get out and enjoy! Nora
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Papersave Project Moves Forward
I've been bitten by the bronchitis bug. The fight is finally turning my way so I thought I would post an update to our Papersave project. We signed the deal for the advanced implementation of Papersave for RE. We are super excited. I've been working with Mindy at Papersave to set up our design call and IT prerequisite call. We had a good kickoff call and I'm very happy with how things are going. We were told that it was helpful to send them as much info as we could ahead of time, so we did just that. We sent a Powerpoint documenting our work flow from gift receipt to acknowledgement. We've had a few internal meetings looking at our objectives. They are:
- move toward a paperless office
- improve the process related to gift entry
- make gift related and constituent related documents easily available to our staff members
- have the ability to query on gift data and bring up related documentation
We feel we will meet these objectives. Our next step in the process are a two calls and then on to install and implementation and training. I'll keep you posted.
We had a great user group meeting this month. I was so pleased by the turnout and we had lots to talk about. Check our our Philabug yahoo group to learn more.
I registered for the Blackbaud Conference. Can't wait! One of my favorite things to do for sure. I'm already planning on getting in on Saturday. I hope to spend some time with my great account manager, Mary Lehman. I also hope to catch up with some old friends.
We're going to redesign our Sphere FAF walk site. Now that's going to be a fun project. We're pretty comfortable with Net Community design, but we'll be getting help from Blackbaud to get FAF looking the way it needs to look. Wish us luck!
Best to you all - Nora
Thursday, March 10, 2011
PBUG Meeting and new projects at The ALS Association GP Chapter
Just wanted to take a few minutes to post some updated info. I'm excited. Lots going on here.
First of all - a little gem I found. Recently, Blackbaud reminded us all to make sure our users have access to the Blackbaud support site. Well, here is one great reason for that. Buried in the user group area (at least I didn't know they were here) I found some very helpful documents. I was popping around and found Online User Clinics for The Raiser's Edge. I've been working on PCI Compliance - stuff on that in there- and we are always looking for nice visual instructions. Lots of cool info here.
As I mentioned before, we are moving forward with Papersave for RE. We've got a pretty good workflow process now, but we are hoping to streamline things even more, provide more visibility to donor docs (to those with access) and keep working toward that paperless office. I've just gone through the price negotiation process - isn't that always fun. Now on to the really fun part. In future posts, I'll walk through the process step by step. So far, I've had the "hand-off" meeting. We purchased Papersave through Blackbaud, but the implementation will be handled by Papersave. I had a nice meeting with my account manager, Mary Lehman (love that lady) and Diana McGowin, the manager of the Professional Services Team at Papersave (PS). Diana worked many years for Blackbaud and now serves as a great liason between BB and PS. Kickoff meeting to come soon. We took the advanced implementation package which will allow us to work with PS to set up a workflow process using the application. More to come on that.
Last night I updated BBNC to the latest version. I will admit I spent most of the time praying that the update would finish well - and it did. I normally do all the patches and upgrades without much worry. This one had me scared. Lots of changes as we move the database up into the cloud. Everything went great and I am already impressed by some of the changes. Spent some time in email design today and it was much easier. For all of you out there looking to do this update, BB recommends doing it on a test server first. I believe in that too; however, I gave up my test server budget to put toward Papersave. We don't have any customizations in our BBNC implementation so I felt pretty confident since I had good backups. However, I imagine my nerves wouldn't have taken quite the beating they did if I had tested the upgrade first.
We've been using Blackbaud Merchant Services for a couple of months now and we like it. The online interface is good and the reports are great. Our Controller says that balancing is nice and easy. We moved everything except for Direct Debit from IATS. Currently, BBMS doesn't do direct debit - I'm told it's coming soon.
This has nothing to do with Blackbaud - but I'll share anyway. We're also looking to move to a hosted phone system. Whoa - little bit of a learning curve here for me. Last system I managed implementing was an Avaya pbx. Lots of vendors out there with hosted systems. Lots of new acronyms.
And last, but not least in today's post, our Philadelphia Blackbaud Product User Group meeting is tomorrow (no direct affiliation to Blackbaud). We are meeting near our office in the Horsham library. Go here for more details or to sign up: http://www.alsphiladelphia.org/pbug. If you don't want to sign up - come anyway. It starts at 10am. Our user group consists of almost 70 Blackbaud product users from a tri-state area. We share lots of info - I always learn new things.
I hope everyone manages to avoid any flooding today. Best to you all - Nora
First of all - a little gem I found. Recently, Blackbaud reminded us all to make sure our users have access to the Blackbaud support site. Well, here is one great reason for that. Buried in the user group area (at least I didn't know they were here) I found some very helpful documents. I was popping around and found Online User Clinics for The Raiser's Edge. I've been working on PCI Compliance - stuff on that in there- and we are always looking for nice visual instructions. Lots of cool info here.
As I mentioned before, we are moving forward with Papersave for RE. We've got a pretty good workflow process now, but we are hoping to streamline things even more, provide more visibility to donor docs (to those with access) and keep working toward that paperless office. I've just gone through the price negotiation process - isn't that always fun. Now on to the really fun part. In future posts, I'll walk through the process step by step. So far, I've had the "hand-off" meeting. We purchased Papersave through Blackbaud, but the implementation will be handled by Papersave. I had a nice meeting with my account manager, Mary Lehman (love that lady) and Diana McGowin, the manager of the Professional Services Team at Papersave (PS). Diana worked many years for Blackbaud and now serves as a great liason between BB and PS. Kickoff meeting to come soon. We took the advanced implementation package which will allow us to work with PS to set up a workflow process using the application. More to come on that.
Last night I updated BBNC to the latest version. I will admit I spent most of the time praying that the update would finish well - and it did. I normally do all the patches and upgrades without much worry. This one had me scared. Lots of changes as we move the database up into the cloud. Everything went great and I am already impressed by some of the changes. Spent some time in email design today and it was much easier. For all of you out there looking to do this update, BB recommends doing it on a test server first. I believe in that too; however, I gave up my test server budget to put toward Papersave. We don't have any customizations in our BBNC implementation so I felt pretty confident since I had good backups. However, I imagine my nerves wouldn't have taken quite the beating they did if I had tested the upgrade first.
We've been using Blackbaud Merchant Services for a couple of months now and we like it. The online interface is good and the reports are great. Our Controller says that balancing is nice and easy. We moved everything except for Direct Debit from IATS. Currently, BBMS doesn't do direct debit - I'm told it's coming soon.
This has nothing to do with Blackbaud - but I'll share anyway. We're also looking to move to a hosted phone system. Whoa - little bit of a learning curve here for me. Last system I managed implementing was an Avaya pbx. Lots of vendors out there with hosted systems. Lots of new acronyms.
And last, but not least in today's post, our Philadelphia Blackbaud Product User Group meeting is tomorrow (no direct affiliation to Blackbaud). We are meeting near our office in the Horsham library. Go here for more details or to sign up: http://www.alsphiladelphia.org/pbug. If you don't want to sign up - come anyway. It starts at 10am. Our user group consists of almost 70 Blackbaud product users from a tri-state area. We share lots of info - I always learn new things.
I hope everyone manages to avoid any flooding today. Best to you all - Nora
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Blackbaud and Papersave - Great Partners
Wow - what a holiday season. Lots going on.
We had a great user group meeting at The Philadelphia Art Museum in December. Join Philabug yahooo group to read about what went on. Our group now has 57 members - whoohoo! Our next meeting will be in March at the Horsham, PA library. All Blackbaud product users are welcome.
We implemented Terminal Server and my remote users are thanking me. We have an agreement with a great IT consulting group, Lantium, and they set it up for us. It's easy to use and really fast - loving it myself. Our only issue is with some licensing. I'm going to have to check to see if there are ts licenses for some of our software. All Blackbaud products work great. Our vmware move was a real benefit for us here as it was easy to set up another server.
We're taking on another FAF site. We will be hosting the ALS Express event on a separate FAF website. This year's event will go live very soon. FAF has really worked well for us. I speak with quite a few people as a referral source and I still think there is a lot of confusion as to what product to use when. I'm trying to get some guidance on that and hope to get a presentor for our next user group meeting. More to come on that in the future.
We're beginning our talks on how to handle our impressive amount of online donations. They bring their own issues especially with who is doing what. Normally, we have one person downloading all of our online transactions and processing them into batch. When we have two walks close together, we really suffer getting the downloads processed. The good news is that all the info on our online sites is the latest and greatest so we can get totals and reports and all that good stuff. We also e-receipt/thank all our online donors (except event registrants in BBNC) so acknowledgements are handled in a timely manner.
We have two full time gift processors. They handle all the daily mail/acknowledgements/tributes, etc. They are pushed during our very active walk season. We are heading into part 2 of that season now. I'll be posting here how our meetings go and what we decide to do.
F9 news - I'm starting to get pretty good at F9 in my very untrained manner. I'm thinking of splurging for official training, if not for me then for our controller who is ready to make the move to F9 for our financial reporting. I've set up most of our financial statements and love that I can just change the month and get a whole new report instantly - wow, very cool.
Next on my blog update will be the BBNC update to version 6.15. I've transitioned the database to the "cloud" (I'm still vague on this). This took about 3 hours for our database. It did not affect the site after the transition. During it, there may have been some slowdown. No complaints from anyone though. Wish me luck!
Nora
I'm adding on to this blog and changing the title. Never done that before and likely won't again, but is warranted here. Chalk it up to a bad week for me or just my tendency to want it all right now.... but I was mistaken by doubting the partnership between Blackbaud and Papersave. I've since seen a lot of effort between both companies to make sure that I understood what Papersave could offer and how Blackbaud could help make it happen. It looks like we will be moving forward with our Papersave implementation. We're in the final pricing phase and I'm excited. I've had great support from Holly Condon at Papersave and my account manager, Mary Lehman, at Blackbaud.
Going through this process has been so informative. It can be easy to look at Papersave as just a repository for scanned documents. It is so much more than that. I've talked to some other Papersave users and, across the board, they've spoken to how Papersave has changed the way the office manages important information related to their constituency and to the gifts.
As we worked through the feasibility of implementing Papersave, we came up with more reasons it would help us do our jobs better:
We had a great user group meeting at The Philadelphia Art Museum in December. Join Philabug yahooo group to read about what went on. Our group now has 57 members - whoohoo! Our next meeting will be in March at the Horsham, PA library. All Blackbaud product users are welcome.
We implemented Terminal Server and my remote users are thanking me. We have an agreement with a great IT consulting group, Lantium, and they set it up for us. It's easy to use and really fast - loving it myself. Our only issue is with some licensing. I'm going to have to check to see if there are ts licenses for some of our software. All Blackbaud products work great. Our vmware move was a real benefit for us here as it was easy to set up another server.
We're taking on another FAF site. We will be hosting the ALS Express event on a separate FAF website. This year's event will go live very soon. FAF has really worked well for us. I speak with quite a few people as a referral source and I still think there is a lot of confusion as to what product to use when. I'm trying to get some guidance on that and hope to get a presentor for our next user group meeting. More to come on that in the future.
We're beginning our talks on how to handle our impressive amount of online donations. They bring their own issues especially with who is doing what. Normally, we have one person downloading all of our online transactions and processing them into batch. When we have two walks close together, we really suffer getting the downloads processed. The good news is that all the info on our online sites is the latest and greatest so we can get totals and reports and all that good stuff. We also e-receipt/thank all our online donors (except event registrants in BBNC) so acknowledgements are handled in a timely manner.
We have two full time gift processors. They handle all the daily mail/acknowledgements/tributes, etc. They are pushed during our very active walk season. We are heading into part 2 of that season now. I'll be posting here how our meetings go and what we decide to do.
F9 news - I'm starting to get pretty good at F9 in my very untrained manner. I'm thinking of splurging for official training, if not for me then for our controller who is ready to make the move to F9 for our financial reporting. I've set up most of our financial statements and love that I can just change the month and get a whole new report instantly - wow, very cool.
Next on my blog update will be the BBNC update to version 6.15. I've transitioned the database to the "cloud" (I'm still vague on this). This took about 3 hours for our database. It did not affect the site after the transition. During it, there may have been some slowdown. No complaints from anyone though. Wish me luck!
Nora
I'm adding on to this blog and changing the title. Never done that before and likely won't again, but is warranted here. Chalk it up to a bad week for me or just my tendency to want it all right now.... but I was mistaken by doubting the partnership between Blackbaud and Papersave. I've since seen a lot of effort between both companies to make sure that I understood what Papersave could offer and how Blackbaud could help make it happen. It looks like we will be moving forward with our Papersave implementation. We're in the final pricing phase and I'm excited. I've had great support from Holly Condon at Papersave and my account manager, Mary Lehman, at Blackbaud.
Going through this process has been so informative. It can be easy to look at Papersave as just a repository for scanned documents. It is so much more than that. I've talked to some other Papersave users and, across the board, they've spoken to how Papersave has changed the way the office manages important information related to their constituency and to the gifts.
As we worked through the feasibility of implementing Papersave, we came up with more reasons it would help us do our jobs better:
- we can allow people who need to make decisions, contact constituents, manage our major gift programs, etc. have easy access to documentation related to those constituents or their gifts
- when the auditors show up and ask for that documentation, we can use queries to pull the gifts and related docs - no digging around
- we continuously look for ways to streamline the process related to gift receipt, data entry, acknowledgements and tributes. We can set up a work flow process that allows us tasks to be accomplished more efficiently and let's us know where we are in the process
We're looking forward to seeing the product in action. I'll post here as we move through implementation (fingers crossed for final approval).
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Scanning, Using the PDF, and Possibly Papersave
Going paperless - I don't think any office can really fulfill that dream, but certainly it benefits all to cut down on paper. We had to start by thinking about what we really needed to keep. We do use offsite storage to keep documents that are required for a certain time. We are slowly working toward eliminating that large pile of paper in favor of scanned documents.
We've been scanning our daily mail related to donations for over a year now. Our receptionist is responsible for the daily openning and scanning of mail. Everything to do with a donation - check, credit card donation form, accompanying documentation gets scanned into one file and saved in a network directory using the date for the file name. We have a cover sheet for each day's mail that is a form for future annotation.
Prior to the scanning, our receptionist runs a calculator tape totaling all of the donations received. This tape goes to our database specialist so she is aware that the day's mail has been scanned. Our DB specialist uses the pdf to enter any event registrations in RE. This assures that the registration pops up for the gift entry person when entering the gift into batch. The pdf is annotated that event registrations were accomplished.
The DB specialist moves the tape to the 'hooter line' at our gift entry area - a little clothesline of daily mail tapes. One of gift entry processors will take a tape and work on entrying that day's mail into batch in RE. We record the fund, appeal and any other notes on each page of the pdf that has a check, cc form, etc. Our gift entry personnel have dual monitors so they can have the pdf on one screen and the RE batch on the other. This person also 'blacks out' any private information on each page of the pdf. We currently use eCopy Paperworks for pdf annotation.
After the mail is entered into batch, the scanned document remains in the archive area on the network. Only certain people have access to this directory. It is organized by year, month and then each pdf is dated in the name. We also save all acknowledgements in the same structure.
This has really been working well for us. We may take it one step further - we just previewed a demo of Papersave. There was a lot we liked about it: it's built around workflow; it may shorten our batch entry process; there is a scan later function; and of course, the documentation is linked to the appropriate record in FE or RE. More to come on that later.
Happy Thanksgiving to all - Nora
We've been scanning our daily mail related to donations for over a year now. Our receptionist is responsible for the daily openning and scanning of mail. Everything to do with a donation - check, credit card donation form, accompanying documentation gets scanned into one file and saved in a network directory using the date for the file name. We have a cover sheet for each day's mail that is a form for future annotation.
Prior to the scanning, our receptionist runs a calculator tape totaling all of the donations received. This tape goes to our database specialist so she is aware that the day's mail has been scanned. Our DB specialist uses the pdf to enter any event registrations in RE. This assures that the registration pops up for the gift entry person when entering the gift into batch. The pdf is annotated that event registrations were accomplished.
The DB specialist moves the tape to the 'hooter line' at our gift entry area - a little clothesline of daily mail tapes. One of gift entry processors will take a tape and work on entrying that day's mail into batch in RE. We record the fund, appeal and any other notes on each page of the pdf that has a check, cc form, etc. Our gift entry personnel have dual monitors so they can have the pdf on one screen and the RE batch on the other. This person also 'blacks out' any private information on each page of the pdf. We currently use eCopy Paperworks for pdf annotation.
After the mail is entered into batch, the scanned document remains in the archive area on the network. Only certain people have access to this directory. It is organized by year, month and then each pdf is dated in the name. We also save all acknowledgements in the same structure.
This has really been working well for us. We may take it one step further - we just previewed a demo of Papersave. There was a lot we liked about it: it's built around workflow; it may shorten our batch entry process; there is a scan later function; and of course, the documentation is linked to the appropriate record in FE or RE. More to come on that later.
Happy Thanksgiving to all - Nora
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Back in the swing of things - the BB conference
Well, I've been away for awhile, but I'm back. Not sure if anyone reads this blog, but I hope in the long run it will help someone.
I attended the Blackbaud conference this year and was privileged to give a client presentation in the RE/FE Integration session and the F9 session. I have to say, I really enjoyed sharing my experiences with a group of people who use the products or want to use them. It was fun. Thanks to my Phillies front row in the first session for making me not feel nervous.
The conference was interesting this year - some good, some not so good. I thought the session offerings were fantastic. I do wish they were spread over three days instead of two. You had to miss a good one to go to a good one. The hotel was nice - but big. Everything is too expensive at National Harbor, but the Atrium was lovely and the water fountain show was beautiful.
The biggest no-no for me was the networking events. They were pretty bad: dark, loud music, strange entertainment - odd. I want to see the people at the conference, make new friends - really network. Also, I think having a VIP event is a contradictory idea for not for profits. We shouldn't be elitist. An event for a group that has something in common set up to share info is one thing - a private party is quite another.
So nice seeing my Blackbaud friends - hugs to you all. OK - enough of my opinions.
This blog is about sharing. We are thinking strongly about implementing Papersave next year. In preparation for this, I want to flowchart our gift entry proceedures. We have them written in text; however, we've noted that there are a lot of little sidebars that happen throughout the process. I'll include some general procedures for in some posts and then update as I move the process. I think documenting your workflow is really important when it comes to integrating FE and RE. Lots of good reasons: begins the process of communicating among departments; formalizes who is responsible for which task; helps plan for balancing; helps assure that best practices are followed.
Here is our basic mail process - this outlines how we handle the mail when it is received at our front desk.
Basic Mail Process
The Receptionist will sort through the tags and separated them by credit cards and by cash and checks. The sorted piles will then be sub totaled for balancing the data entry later on.
One of the A/R Gifts Processors will begin data entry into Raiser’s Edge at this point. After the gifts are all entered, the running total of the tape is matched to the Daily Gifts (in house) Pivot Table. If the two figures do not match, the Accounts Receivable Clerk who entered the gifts will research the reason. If both figures do match, the day is fully entered. At this time any sale items that are waiting credit card approval will be mailed by the Receptionist.
Online credit cards are downloaded from the our websites. The Accounts Receivable Gift Processor downloads them daily. They are downloaded into a grid where the donors can be matched up to a record in the database. If not in the database the donor is added at this point. When transactions are linked to a record they are brought into a batch by a click of the process transaction button. In the batch is where all the information for the donation is verified. To make sure it is going to the correct fund, receiving the correct thank you letter and if it is an honor/memorial donation all the necessary information is linked. After everything is verified the batch is committed like all other batches. For detailed instructions please see the Net Community and the Sphere Download Procedures (coming in a later post).
Following the entry of gifts the Accounts Receivable Gift Processors will print out the Tribute acknowledgements to family and friends of honor/memorial contributions. They will be put in the mail that day. The tag copy will be noted with the date it went out.
Thank you letters will then be printed out and matched to the tag copy. $50 and over donations will receive a letter and under $50 donations will receive a postcard which is put in the mail the same day and the date will be noted on the tag copy. At this point the letters and tag copies will stay with the folders to be handed off for circulation to management. This is so management can review the donations and sign the letters.
When circulation of the tag copies is finished they are handed to the Accounts Payable Coordinator. The Accounts Payable Coordinator will hand any corrections to Accounts Receivable Gift Processors, thank you letters to be mailed will go to the Receptionist to fold, stuff, and put in the mail, and the remaining tags will be put into a bin to be filled away by the Receptionist. When thank you letters are mailed, the date is noted on the tag copy.
The Accounts Payable Coordinator makes a bank deposit every Wednesday & Friday and the last day of each month. The deposit slip is verified to match the appropriate day of donations in the mail (minus the credit cards) .
We have since introduced a scanning to pdf process in our mail process. I will talk more about that in my next post.
Good day to all!
Nora
I attended the Blackbaud conference this year and was privileged to give a client presentation in the RE/FE Integration session and the F9 session. I have to say, I really enjoyed sharing my experiences with a group of people who use the products or want to use them. It was fun. Thanks to my Phillies front row in the first session for making me not feel nervous.
The conference was interesting this year - some good, some not so good. I thought the session offerings were fantastic. I do wish they were spread over three days instead of two. You had to miss a good one to go to a good one. The hotel was nice - but big. Everything is too expensive at National Harbor, but the Atrium was lovely and the water fountain show was beautiful.
The biggest no-no for me was the networking events. They were pretty bad: dark, loud music, strange entertainment - odd. I want to see the people at the conference, make new friends - really network. Also, I think having a VIP event is a contradictory idea for not for profits. We shouldn't be elitist. An event for a group that has something in common set up to share info is one thing - a private party is quite another.
So nice seeing my Blackbaud friends - hugs to you all. OK - enough of my opinions.
This blog is about sharing. We are thinking strongly about implementing Papersave next year. In preparation for this, I want to flowchart our gift entry proceedures. We have them written in text; however, we've noted that there are a lot of little sidebars that happen throughout the process. I'll include some general procedures for in some posts and then update as I move the process. I think documenting your workflow is really important when it comes to integrating FE and RE. Lots of good reasons: begins the process of communicating among departments; formalizes who is responsible for which task; helps plan for balancing; helps assure that best practices are followed.
Here is our basic mail process - this outlines how we handle the mail when it is received at our front desk.
Basic Mail Process
The Receptionist will sort through the tags and separated them by credit cards and by cash and checks. The sorted piles will then be sub totaled for balancing the data entry later on.
One of the A/R Gifts Processors will begin data entry into Raiser’s Edge at this point. After the gifts are all entered, the running total of the tape is matched to the Daily Gifts (in house) Pivot Table. If the two figures do not match, the Accounts Receivable Clerk who entered the gifts will research the reason. If both figures do match, the day is fully entered. At this time any sale items that are waiting credit card approval will be mailed by the Receptionist.
Online credit cards are downloaded from the our websites. The Accounts Receivable Gift Processor downloads them daily. They are downloaded into a grid where the donors can be matched up to a record in the database. If not in the database the donor is added at this point. When transactions are linked to a record they are brought into a batch by a click of the process transaction button. In the batch is where all the information for the donation is verified. To make sure it is going to the correct fund, receiving the correct thank you letter and if it is an honor/memorial donation all the necessary information is linked. After everything is verified the batch is committed like all other batches. For detailed instructions please see the Net Community and the Sphere Download Procedures (coming in a later post).
Following the entry of gifts the Accounts Receivable Gift Processors will print out the Tribute acknowledgements to family and friends of honor/memorial contributions. They will be put in the mail that day. The tag copy will be noted with the date it went out.
Thank you letters will then be printed out and matched to the tag copy. $50 and over donations will receive a letter and under $50 donations will receive a postcard which is put in the mail the same day and the date will be noted on the tag copy. At this point the letters and tag copies will stay with the folders to be handed off for circulation to management. This is so management can review the donations and sign the letters.
When circulation of the tag copies is finished they are handed to the Accounts Payable Coordinator. The Accounts Payable Coordinator will hand any corrections to Accounts Receivable Gift Processors, thank you letters to be mailed will go to the Receptionist to fold, stuff, and put in the mail, and the remaining tags will be put into a bin to be filled away by the Receptionist. When thank you letters are mailed, the date is noted on the tag copy.
The Accounts Payable Coordinator makes a bank deposit every Wednesday & Friday and the last day of each month. The deposit slip is verified to match the appropriate day of donations in the mail (minus the credit cards) .
We have since introduced a scanning to pdf process in our mail process. I will talk more about that in my next post.
Good day to all!
Nora
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
FE User Group Meeting and Other fun things
Sorry for being away so long from this blog. Life has presented me with lots of challenges but things are finally settling down.
Yesterday I was honored to host an FE User group for Blackbaud. It was held at our Horsham Library - thanks so much to the library for this wonderful service - a great space for no cost!
I'm not sure how many people were there but the turnout was good - I'd estimate 30-35 people. We saw a couple of quick presentations from Ben Cade and James Bradley from Blackbaud. We learned more about FE dashboards and the VCO.
We ate lots of food - no event is really good without lots of food. We also broke up into focus groups. I took part in the database management/content group. Most of our talk was about integrating RE and FE. I was somewhat surprised to see how many people have not integrated their systems. Some reasons for this include:
Yesterday I was honored to host an FE User group for Blackbaud. It was held at our Horsham Library - thanks so much to the library for this wonderful service - a great space for no cost!
I'm not sure how many people were there but the turnout was good - I'd estimate 30-35 people. We saw a couple of quick presentations from Ben Cade and James Bradley from Blackbaud. We learned more about FE dashboards and the VCO.
We ate lots of food - no event is really good without lots of food. We also broke up into focus groups. I took part in the database management/content group. Most of our talk was about integrating RE and FE. I was somewhat surprised to see how many people have not integrated their systems. Some reasons for this include:
- Difficulty with communication between Development, Finance and IT. This is undertandable - we all have different requirements for the software. It's hard to come to an understanding to be able to formulate a plan. I think a third party helps here.
- Lack of support/training. Don't we all feel this. I feel fortunate to be able to provide the IT support our organization requires. Many organizations just don't have the budget for this. I've found it helpful to assure to include in the budget consulting service from the vendor for any purchase of software. I know this is hard - we can't even afford the product. However, we don't want to buy the product, spend the money and not use it.
- Lack of information on how to set up FE to integrate with RE and vice versa before you purchase the other product. Most of us bought one product first - FE or RE. By the time we get the other product, we are entrenched in our current procedure and fight changing anything. Wouldn't it be great if we had a road map from Blackbaud on how to set up the product so it would integrate well. There are basics that will fit in with every organization. We can't decipher this from user guides and we can't pay for consulting services whenever we make a change. Give us a roadmap to help us understand how things should work.
- Lack of user groups - nothing beats sitting in a room with other users talking about how you do things. I'd love to have a small budget for snacks at the user group meetings we hold every three months. Thanks to Taylor Moore from BB for sending us goodies for our last meeting. Blackbaud needs to foster these independent user groups. They know we sell product at these meetings by showcasing our use of their products.
- Finance doesn't know RE and Development doen't know FE. This is normal but someone has to know both systems in order to integrate them. Blackbaud is now doing better at supporting integration. Bring in consulting support, if possible. I don't want to always sound like I think Blackbaud consulting is the only provider out there - it's not. I just don't have personal experience with other companies and I've good experience with Blackbaud.
I'll stop there but it really disappoints me to see systems that are not integrated. I hope I can help in some way. Email me with questions if I can.
Quick update on our move to a vmware environment. It is going well. Taking longer than I thought but that is because our consulting help is so thorough and great at doing due diligence. Anyone in the Philly suburb area, you can do no wrong going with Lantium for consulting services. Excellent! Special thanks to Ed Keiper.
Off to work now. We are working through our Major Gift campaign policies and procedures - talk about different requirements for Finance, Development and Operations. I'll share the outcome in the next post (which will be sooner than later).
Best to all - Nora
Monday, January 18, 2010
Really Cool Tool - F9 for Financial Edge/Excel
We've been looking at F9 - a great reporting tool used with Excel and Financial Edge. We've had a couple of demos and we're pretty much sold. As usual, it costs - what doesn't?
The application is basically an add-on to Excel. The cool thing - you don't use an FE license when you access reports from Excel. The uncool thing - it's licensed per desktop user.
Here's how it works. You basically set up your financial reports in Excel. You reference data in FE. You can easily set up a report using the Wizard. Changing the report is as easy as changing a date in a field or filtering on a set of date - say fund, account, etc.
Another really cool thing- F9 understand certain terminology. If you have a worksheet set up with all the months of the year except December including rows of data, you can just type December in the column heading and copy the data to that column from your November column. All fields are updated with December data when you press F9. You can use terminoly like month name, period name, budget, etc. Really helpful.
How do I plan to use this tool (hoping I get it that is) - all my financial statements for the year will be set up once and my exec director and finance director will just push F9 to see any changes. Yes, that means if I post in a journal entry in FE and they hit f9 in their Excel report, they will instantly get the latest figures. That is just a start - we plan to do a lot more analysis using F9.
I'm really excited about this product and wanted to share the excitement with you. If we get it, I'll post how it goes. I'm attempting the install and training myself using the User Guide. Gotta cut costs if we can.
The application is basically an add-on to Excel. The cool thing - you don't use an FE license when you access reports from Excel. The uncool thing - it's licensed per desktop user.
Here's how it works. You basically set up your financial reports in Excel. You reference data in FE. You can easily set up a report using the Wizard. Changing the report is as easy as changing a date in a field or filtering on a set of date - say fund, account, etc.
Another really cool thing- F9 understand certain terminology. If you have a worksheet set up with all the months of the year except December including rows of data, you can just type December in the column heading and copy the data to that column from your November column. All fields are updated with December data when you press F9. You can use terminoly like month name, period name, budget, etc. Really helpful.
How do I plan to use this tool (hoping I get it that is) - all my financial statements for the year will be set up once and my exec director and finance director will just push F9 to see any changes. Yes, that means if I post in a journal entry in FE and they hit f9 in their Excel report, they will instantly get the latest figures. That is just a start - we plan to do a lot more analysis using F9.
I'm really excited about this product and wanted to share the excitement with you. If we get it, I'll post how it goes. I'm attempting the install and training myself using the User Guide. Gotta cut costs if we can.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Shift in Focus - We're going Virtual
Sorry for the long delay in posting. No excuse other than lots to do and lots of fun after work hours.
A couple of things happening that I hope to share in the future. We're going virtual - Lord help me. I am not schooled in anything vmware. We've contracted with some great consultants - Lantium - and we're upgrading our network to an a vmware environment. Along with that, of course, we will be moving all of our Blackbaud applications to this environment.
Fortunately, I'm replacing the majority of my servers so we'll be live until we do database move. That gives me some feeling of calm. I wish I had more time to learn more about the environment, but then again who has more time.
We're also examining our Community of Hope site. Currently, we use BBNC and team fundraiser to set up an area on our website where a constituent can build an honor/memorial page or event page for fundraising. http://www.alsphiladelphia.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=503. We had a custom part built to allow for searching across the "teams" by honoree or the page owner.
Team fundraiser links to one fund in RE. We want to be able to allow our constituents to choose one of three funds when they set up a page and still be able to search across all the pages. As I've mentioned before, we are linked to Financial Edge. We want the fund in RE to be the correct fund when it is posted to FE. Yet, if we change the fund in RE on the gift to a fund other than the one linked to the team fundraiser, the gift won't show up on the page. That's the problem - I'll post more as we work toward our solution.
We're also working with e-receipting for our online donations. We have different options in BBNC and in Sphere. In BBNC, we can easily produce a pdf acknowledgement/receipt for any donation. The gift is marked receipted when it comes in through the plugin. However, that functionality isn't there for an event. We have to use the thank you as the receipt. The problem here is that we can't do this for every event - especially those that have consideration/benefits involved. So how does the person who downloads the registration into RE using the plugin know if that person has been thanked/receipted?
In Sphere, we use the online thank you as the receipt. This works, but we then have to globally update the gifts to show that they are receipted and acknowledged or we have to do that in batch. We get thousands of gifts so we don't want to do that in batch.
Well, I'm off to figure out some solutions. This is what makes it fun!
A couple of things happening that I hope to share in the future. We're going virtual - Lord help me. I am not schooled in anything vmware. We've contracted with some great consultants - Lantium - and we're upgrading our network to an a vmware environment. Along with that, of course, we will be moving all of our Blackbaud applications to this environment.
Fortunately, I'm replacing the majority of my servers so we'll be live until we do database move. That gives me some feeling of calm. I wish I had more time to learn more about the environment, but then again who has more time.
We're also examining our Community of Hope site. Currently, we use BBNC and team fundraiser to set up an area on our website where a constituent can build an honor/memorial page or event page for fundraising. http://www.alsphiladelphia.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=503. We had a custom part built to allow for searching across the "teams" by honoree or the page owner.
Team fundraiser links to one fund in RE. We want to be able to allow our constituents to choose one of three funds when they set up a page and still be able to search across all the pages. As I've mentioned before, we are linked to Financial Edge. We want the fund in RE to be the correct fund when it is posted to FE. Yet, if we change the fund in RE on the gift to a fund other than the one linked to the team fundraiser, the gift won't show up on the page. That's the problem - I'll post more as we work toward our solution.
We're also working with e-receipting for our online donations. We have different options in BBNC and in Sphere. In BBNC, we can easily produce a pdf acknowledgement/receipt for any donation. The gift is marked receipted when it comes in through the plugin. However, that functionality isn't there for an event. We have to use the thank you as the receipt. The problem here is that we can't do this for every event - especially those that have consideration/benefits involved. So how does the person who downloads the registration into RE using the plugin know if that person has been thanked/receipted?
In Sphere, we use the online thank you as the receipt. This works, but we then have to globally update the gifts to show that they are receipted and acknowledged or we have to do that in batch. We get thousands of gifts so we don't want to do that in batch.
Well, I'm off to figure out some solutions. This is what makes it fun!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
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:
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:
Next I'll go through the actual process of posting.
A little happy dance for our Phillies -
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".
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
Next I'll go through the actual process of posting.
A little happy dance for our Phillies -
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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
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
Friday, August 28, 2009
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
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
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