Integrating with Raiser's Edge

Silvia Neal

What good is a camera without a lens? Not much, I suppose. Likewise, what can you really do with just a lens and no camera? Sure, you can look through a lens, but without the camera to capture and store what you see, it’s just a fancy telescope. 


In a way, your NetCommunity website and Raiser’s Edge database are similar. I mean, when you really think about it, a NetCommunity website is an online portal into and out of your database. Just like the lens of a camera, NetCommunity can reach out and find information that you could never see with Raiser’s Edge, and without Raiser’s Edge to store that information, your website would not be nearly as useful.


It’s in the integration between NetCommunity and Raiser’s edge where real synergy happens. Learning how these two powerful tools integrate can take your online presence to the next level. I have some tips and tricks for taking advantage of this integration. But first… 


Pop quiz: What do the following things all have in common? 

• Anniversary
• Pet’s name
• Dietary restrictions
• Favorite color

They’re all solid gold pieces of information for your organization to have about your constituents. We are, after all, in the information age. Building lasting relationships with constituents requires you to get to know them, what they like, what they care about, their preferences and passions, and their personal stories. How can you scale this sort of data collection to include as many opportunities and interactions as possible?


You already know that with online forms, you can collect donations, registration fees, and other types of transactions. But did you know that you can also collect extremely valuable personal information in the form of Raiser’s Edge attributes?


Got an event coming up? Use participant attributes generated in Raiser’s Edge on your event registration form. Give your participants a T-shirt in exactly their size, the meal choices they prefer, and customized activities. Do you allow constituents to sign up for your website or newsletters? Collecting constituent attributes lets you assemble a highly effective welcome series of emails that speak directly to their individual interests. Use gift attributes to thank and target donors with precision accuracy. 


At the end of the day, you’ll have all this information from NetCommunity. But this isn’t where the integration ends! In Raiser’s Edge, you can process all that information into good clean data, store it in the best possible way, and use it to your advantage later. 


Not sure how this works? Check out our latest eLearning course, Integration: Basics of Blackbaud NetCommunity and Raiser’s Edge Integration, to take full advantage of the tools already in your toolkit.