Tracking Public Outreach deliverables in RE

F. O.

Hello, in the last 2 years RE has been rolled out to various departments to use as a general contact management tool. One area that has been difficult for us to bring into RE is public engagement.


I'm hoping to get advice on the best way to track Public Outreach activities in RE...specifically with regards to tracking different stats.  We have tried using the Events Module together with pivot tables and that seems to be working for now but it’s a bit clunky and might get unwieldy soon…


How do you track public outreach activities whether they are meetings, networking events, conferences, etc.?


Thanks in advance!

 

Amy Dana

What sort of data are you wanting to track? My first thought is to use Events but I can see how that might get really difficult. How many activities do you average in a month?

F. O.

Hi Amy, thanks for the response!


The info we need to track are things like:

a) Focus area (based on strategic vision)

b) # attended

c) Male/Female ratio

d)  # of alumni involved

c) City

d) Lead staff

etc.

As a starting point we're using Event fields and event attributes for the above...I would say there are about 10-20 activities per month? Ranging from conferences to info sessions to meetings...




 

Zane Magnuson 2

Outside of doing basic (and manual) head counts during the event, you can track that data the following ways:


a) Focus Area - I'm not sure what you mean by this, but it can probably be an Event Attribute. Attributes are best used for things that are unique to your organization for which RE doesn't already have a field. This certainly sounds like it fits the bill for that. You could also use the Event field "Group", and make Groups that line up with your list of Focus Areas and assign Event records to those Groups.


b) # Attended - Even if the event is free, encourage people to register beforehand. If you have a company iPad floating around, download the free RE Event App (not RE Mobile) and use the app for check-in and registration. If all the people at the event have a registration record, you can mark them off as "Attended" and get an easily-generated attendance number within Raiser's Edge.


c) Male/Female Ratio - Demographic info can all be tracked on Constituent Records. Once you have that data in those records, you can easily Export/Query Constituents based on whether or not they registered or attended a specific event, then spit out the gender field from there. That said, I think a lot of organizations are moving away from tracking gender given current social sensibilities.


d) # Alumni Involved - Again, use something like a Constituent Code within Constituent Records to tag people that are alumni. Once that's up-to-date, it's the same as above: You group constituents that are registered or have attended a particular event, then you can do Excel counts from there to find out how many were alumni


c [I think you meant "e"]) City - Same deal. Track it on Constituent records, then export it from there.


d [f?]) Lead staff - Create Constituent Records for your staff (and give them a Constituent Code of something like "Current Staff"), then make then "Coordinators" within the Event record.

Amy Dana

For some of these things, I would add the data to the Event Attributes so you don't have to keep counting. Maybe monthly you can update each Event record with # attended, m/f ratio, # of alumni, etc. So that way you can run a quick report that will list number of alumni for each Event and you don't have to export the actual Participant records and then count.