We are pleased to send you The Raiser's Edge 7.7. Before you begin using the program, take a moment to review the following notes, which highlight some of the new features. It is important to share this information with all Raiser's Edge users in your organization. A shortcut to the Release Notes for The Raiser's Edge has been added to your desktop, so you can access these notes at any time.
With this release, we have created a new version of the Raiser's Edge for large organizations (at least 15 users) that you can now purchase. This new version - The Raiser’s Edge Enterprise - is for organizations that depend heavily on the program to manage their fundraising needs. The Raiser’s Edge Enterprise includes everything The Raiser's Edge has and more. Click this link to see the Raiser's Edge Enterprise features.
Raiser's Edge New Feature Highlights:
We added a new optional module: PlannedGiftTracker. With PlannedGiftTracker, you can create gift records for your organization’s planned giving, including information specific to numerous types of planned gift vehicles. You can record both the initial gift value and the gift’s remainder value, store basic payout information for applicable gift vehicles, and keep track of multiple beneficiaries and relationships for a planned gift. In addition, when a planned gift consists of one or more assets, such as stock or property, you can itemize the assets. To accommodate PlannedGiftTracker, we added a number of new fields to Export, Query, and Import. We also added two new reports: Planned Gifts Report and Expected Maturity Year Report. This module is standard for The Raiser's Edge Enterprise and is also available with RE:Anywhere for Remote Access. For more information, see the Planned Gift Tracking Guide.
We also created a migration tool for planned gifts. With PlannedGiftTracker for The Raiser’s Edge, you can create gift records with a gift type of Planned Gift. These records contain fields unique to planned giving. You may have previously stored planned gifts as Other gift records using Gift attributes, Gift subtypes, or Gift codes. You can use the migration tool to migrate these records into new planned gift records using the new fields for planned giving. For more information, see the Planned Gift Migration Tool documentation saved as PGMigrationTool.pdf in the Tools\PlannedGifts folder on the Raiser's Edge CD.
Event seating has been enhanced. You can use the new Seating Setup Wizard to set up your seating according to the layout of your venue. With the wizard, you can name your sections, tables, rows, and seats for greater flexibility and more meaningful reporting. You can now add participants to groups at any time, even in advance of knowing where you want them to sit and running the Seating Setup Wizard. You can assign existing groups or individuals to seats using the new drag and drop functionality. As you assign participants to seats, you can run the new Seating Validation Report to quickly see the status of your seating and if any conflicts exist. For more information, see the Event Management Data Entry Guide.
If you fully integrate The Raiser’s Edge with Microsoft Office, a Create Action button appears on the toolbar of all e-mail. You can click the button to create an action record for each e-mail. You can also indicate settings for actions saved for incoming e-mail. For detailed instructions on how to set up business rules, see the Configuration chapter of the Configuration & Security Guide. For detailed information about setting up integration, see The Raiser’s Edge & Microsoft Office Integration Guide.
In Reports, we added a Columns Tab to several report types, giving you more flexibility in designing a report to meet your specific needs. This tab is also available with RE:Anywhere for Remote Access. For more information, see the Reports Guide.
You can set security for Business Rules. For more information see the Configuration & Security Guide.
We made a number of changes to NetSolutions. You can now assign security access to each area of NetSolutions so users may have access to some areas, but not others; opt to save constituent credit card information to the constituent record; choose to have your online donors opt in or opt out of future e-mail messages; and change the Internet Merchant or IATS account used for your NetEvents and NetMembers Web pages. For more information, see the NetSolutions Guide.
We added a number of features to RE:Anywhere for Remote Access. You can quickly view individual, organization, bank, education, and assigned solicitor relationship information for a constituent from the Relationship Tree; the new Dashboard feature provides quick and efficient overviews of information in your database; and Quick Letters provide a fast and easy way to create letters using information from The Raiser’s Edge. In addition, a number of the features included in the Release Notes are included with RE:Anywhere for Remote Access. Look for "Also available with RE:Anywhere for Remote Access" in the features list.
For the Australian version of The Raiser's Edge, the following order type entries have been added to the order type field on a gift record and in a gift batch: Recurring, E-Commerce, and Customer Present. This addition is to help those using the Batch Authorization File format for credit cards.
For Australia and New Zealand, IATS credit card processing is now available. An IATS credit card processing grid has been added to the Batch options business rules section of Configuration. In addition, on the Create Transmission Files screen, the Bank file format and Account fields have been added. For more information about processing credit cards using IATS, see the Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) Guide.
You can now
create VBA applications for use within RE:Anywhere. For
information on how to use this feature, see the VBA
Essentials Guide.
Raiser's Edge Enterprise Feature Highlights:
In addition to the features listed above, The Raiser's Edge Enterprise includes the following.
Several optional modules available with The Raiser’s Edge are standard with The Raiser’s Edge Enterprise. The enterprise version includes Alumni Tracking, Electronic Funds Transfer, Event Management, Postal Discounts, Membership Management, Prospect Research Management, Honor/Memorial Tracking, Volunteer Management, PlannedGiftTracker, and RE:Anywhere for Remote Access.
In The Raiser’s Edge Enterprise (also available with RE:Anywhere for Remote Access), the Campaign Giving Hierarchy provides you with the ability to track and report on all aspects of your fund activity under the larger umbrella of campaigns. With the giving hierarchy, you can represent different levels of fundraising initiatives. Using Reporting Hierarchies in Configuration, you can create similar hierarchical arrangements of funds outside of a campaign, enabling you to view donation activity from a perspective independent of any campaign. To maximize the Giving Hierarchies usefulness, the program also provides reports and dashboards, displaying donation activity in the context of these hierarchical arrangements (Campaign Fund Analysis and Campaign Gift Analysis). Gift entry functionality is also greatly enhanced with the implementation of Giving Hierarchies. For more information about these features, see The Raiser's Edge 7.7 Update Guide. For detailed instructions about working with Giving Hierarchies, see the Campaigns, Funds, & Appeals Data Entry Guide.
If you have The Raiser’s Edge Enterprise, you can now schedule recurring queues. A recurring queue is scheduled to run at a set interval. For example, a recurring queue can be set to run on the last day of each month or every week on Friday. You can also specify the time of day to run the recurring queue. For more information about recurring queues, see the Recurring Queue chapter in the Queue for Task Scheduling Guide.
If you have The Raiser’s Edge Enterprise, you can base a user’s login information for The Raiser’s Edge on their Windows login information. For more information, see the Security chapter in the Configuration & Security Guide.
With The Raiser’s Edge Enterprise, you can track fund relationships on the Relationships tab of an individual or organization constituent record (also available with RE:Anywhere for Remote Access). Fund relationships are the funds to which a constituent has a special affiliation. Once you save a fund relationship record, it appears automatically as an individual or organization relationship on the Relationships tab of the associated fund record. By establishing this relationship, you can quickly see who initiated the fund and the relationship’s pertinent information by viewing the fund relationship on the Relationships tab of either the constituent or fund record. For more information, see the Constituent Data Entry Guide.