Reporting in The Raiser’s Edge: You must KNOW in order to GROW!

Did you know there are a multitude of different reports that can be extremely helpful for your different needs? If you are willing to put in the proper research time and create a strategy for cultivation, your solicitation efforts can be directed very specifically to provide the appropriate level of stewardship for regular and increased giving.

Raiser’s Edge (RE) Reports:

There are 14 different categories of reports that you are able to select from depending on the type of information that your organization needs. If you work with Memberships, you may mostly focus on the Membership, Tribute, Action, and Profile reports. A member of your organization that works specifically with cultivation may focus more on Prospect Research, Volunteer, Demographic and Statistical, and Financial reports. Whatever the need may be, RE does a great job of providing flexibility in the categories of reporting for what your team needs to know in order to grow! Below you will find the top reports from each report category offered in The Raiser’s Edge that other RE users find to work the best for their organizations.

1. Action Reports: One of the top choices under this category is the Tickler Report. This report will provide a bird’s eye view of actions assigned to a solicitor. Using this report will provide you with a list of all action priority levels and action progress for Constituents, Appeals, and Events on variable dates or ranges of time.

2. Analytical Reports: There are a bevy of valuable reports under this category. The reports below are among the most utilized ones within this area.

• Comparative Report: This unique report allows users to compare two different time periods for the purpose of determining whether a donor has decreased or increased their giving based on the specified dates.
• First/Greatest/Latest Gift Report: This is great report that many create as a query without knowing this information is available as a canned report in RE. The purpose of this report is to do exactly as its name implies: provide information on the First, Greatest, and Latest Gifts that have been given.
• LYBUNT/SYBUNT Reports: These reports are named after the popular acronyms that stand for “Last Year but Unfortunately Not This” and “Some Year but Unfortunately Not This.” “This” in both of the report names is referring to the time period that you are running the report based on. This report will allow you to review a donor’s giving habits.
• New Donor Report: This is an important report to run daily that will show new, first-time donors based on date range specifications.
• Top Donor Report: This is another essential report that should be used on a daily basis like the New Donor Report. The Top Donor report will allow you to track your biggest donors in RE for specific date ranges.

3. Campaigns, Funds, and Appeals Reports: This category allows you to look at specific campaigns, funds, and/or appeals in report format.

• Comparison Summary: Compares different campaigns, funds, or appeals to one another.
• Cost Breakdown: Shows all expenses related to specific campaigns, funds, or appeals.
• Detail Report:
  • For Appeals- Shows information about the Appeal record and has an option of including expense information as well as package information if needed.
  • For Campaigns- Provides information directly from the campaign record for printing and maintaining hard copy records.
  • For Funds- Provides information directly from the fund record for printing and maintaining hard copy records.

4. Custom Reports: Provides users with the ability to work with custom crystal report templates to produce custom report views. These reporting options are valuable to organizations that need a more customized view of certain reporting elements than what is pre-built within RE.

5. Demographic and Statistical Reports: The reports in this category are based on time periods, counts, and comparisons. The top report pick from this category is the Comparisons and Summaries Report because it works double duty to get you the view you need. This report can be specified to show a comparison variance as a percentage or dollar amount for two different time periods. When the report is used to summarize, these summaries can be done for up to five periods of time. This is a perfect report for the number-centric staffers at your organization for sure!

6. Event Management Reports: Each of these reports are useful on their own. The only drawback to these reports is the lack of combined detailed and summary data within one report. However, when the name of the game is delegation, these reports are the winning hand. Issue reports to specific members of your organization for specific functions before, during, and after your events.

7. Financial Reports: This category provides reports that your organization’s upper management and board are interested in. The most well rounded and helpful views of your financial information can be found within a very popular report that lives in this category.

• Gift Detail and Summary Report: This is a comprehensive report that will show you in summarized values or detailed values what your donor’s giving history and present giving looks like at a glance.This report provides a 360 degree view of your donor’s giving. Whether a user is new or a power RE user, they will return to this report over and over again, even if they never use another report in the database.

8. Membership Reports: The collective use of the membership reports will make you a membership whiz! Use these reports to keep up with New, Expired, Rejoined, and Dropped Memberships and keep your renewal rates up.

• Lapsed Member Report: This report provides you with a listing of members who are considered “Lapsed.” This information helps you persuade the members to renew before they become expired.
• Expired Membership Report: This report provides you with a listing of expired memberships so you know who to call and get to rejoin.

9. Pivot Reports: These reports function just like they do in Excel, except they use a query within RE, instead of outside of the system. Pivot reports allow you to take data and view it from different angles to understand and categorize the data as you wish.

10. Pledge and Recurring Gift Reports: These reports provide a great foundation for managing pledges and recurring gifts. The top and most utilized report in this category is the Activity Report. The Activity Report will allow you to generate a report showing pledges and recurring gifts, their activity and installments during a specific date range, as well as information on any balance due. There are even check box selections available to include outstanding pledges or outstanding recurring gifts only and the gift balance can also be calculated based on date range, campaign,fund, and appeal.

11. Profiles, Lists, and Directories Reports: These reports give the user a printable hard copy view of every tab of a constituent, appeal, event, fund, campaign, organization, membership,or Honor/Memorial record. This type of comprehensive report can be invaluable when you have donors to contact and need to have all of their info at your fingertips in a transportable fashion.

12. Prospect Research Reports: The reports in this category are intended to provide a tool for managing proposals. Depending on your needs any of these reports can be equally beneficial to the management of your existing proposals as they relate to your prospects.

13. Tribute Reports: These reports provide a 360 degree view of the honor/memorial, the tribute itself, and the contributors that have given gifts to honor/memorials.

14. Volunteer Reports: This report category is only available when the volunteer module is in place within RE. The reports that are offered here cover all aspects of the volunteer record.Providing information on job assignments, courses and training, time sheet information and even skills and experience.

In conclusion, it is easy to see that there are untapped report resources available to you within The Raiser’s Edge. There are available reports that can provide us with the daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly information needed.

Remember, it is important to keep your data as accurate as possible in order to report on the correct information! For more information on reports in The Raiser’s Edge visit the Blackbaud knowledge base.