Top Dashboards

Even if you're not yet on RE:NXT, I would consider aligning new reports & dashboards along what BB is planning with NXT Analyze (or NonProfit Intelligence).  For us, what is available in NXT Analyze isn't close/finished enough to be useful, but I've been trying to steer our new DoD toward using at least some of what BB is planning and then supplementing with what we really need/want that isn't in the works directly from NXT.  (Not that I've been very successful...)


My understanding is that BB is attempting to introduce some standard reporting metrics to the Nonprofit Development world sort of like Finance has General Accounting Principles, etc.  Which would be a good thing, especially in allowing NPOs to (easily) see how they measure up against other orgs.


We have 6 reports/dashboards currently.  Trending Report of giving, Giving by Gift Constituency, Giving by Campaign, Giving by Fund, Board Giving (including BOD from last year who no longer serve and Development Committee members who are not on the Board), and a Grants Report that shows what is in the works.

Hi - Your question says a lot about your organization, or at least your volume.  Since we are very small and know nearly everyone who gives, giving by constituency wouldn't mean much to us.  We have several dashboards that are basically designed for different internal constituents - Membership gets one, Capital Campaign gets one, our big event gets one, Stewardship gets one, and then the "top dog" is the "Financials FY xx". That one has a Campaign Summary and Fund Summary which HAVE to match in gifts received, or I have to start digging around!  There's also an Appeal Summary, but that isn't always as accurate (last FY's appeal sometimes produces gifts in this FY).  I also have panels for recent cash gifts and recent in-kind gifts.  Probably what we call our Stewardship dashboard is closer to what you're after - we have a panel that is only gifts of $2,500 or any level from a Board member or Trustee - these are the gifts that get an acknowledgement from the President and a note from the ED. We also have an actions panel, a recent gifts from President's Circle members panel, and the recent cash gifts list.


Our event dashboard gives a running total of cash and pledges, in-kind donations for the auction, and recent gifts.  The latter has a column for the receipt amount to make sure that benefits are "sticking", a glitch in RE that they've been working on for well over a year for us and other users (so NOT just user error!).  The Membership dashboard allows us to check on the linkages of gifts to memberships, check on the standing of the entire program, and see recent gifts.


I also have a private dashboard, which I do not share, that allows me to check on problems in data entry.  Since I NEVER (lol) make a mistake, it drives me nuts to no longer be doing the day to day gift entry.  I rarely see the gifts until I run the weekly reports and by then the letter has sometimes gone out with an error (like the receipt amount). This way I can check on things without looking over my colleague's shoulder.


What I love about Dashboards is the ability to go straight to a gift, a constituent, an appeal, fund, etc., just by clicking on it.  That's how I check on and fix mistakes that I find.  If the Fund and Campaign panels don't match, I will usually start in the Campaigns and click to the View, Gifts report and make sure that the funds shown belong in the campaign. Or I will do the same thing from the Funds to make sure they're in the right campaign.  It depends on which one has the higher number.  I wish my colleagues/boss would use these things more often - it would save my time in looking things up that are easily found.

Anne, what sort of dashboards do you use for data entry problems? 

My data entry check dashboard is looking for the errors that have caused us the most problems, and I'll give some examples, but they may not apply to you. I have panels that:


Show all gifts to our Memebership fund and whether they are linked to a membership.

Show all gifts with an attribute of Hold or Not Transferred (we use one database for two entities, a Foundation and the school, and have to show transfers from the former to the latter)

Show all recent gifts with several gift attributes (in honor/memory, credit card run location, transfer status) and the receipt amount (because of the glitch with benefits not changing the receipt amount).

Show all recently added constituents with their addressee and salutation.


All of these are based on queries as opposed to canned reports.  I definitely think that's more useful because the columns available in the canned reports are rather limited.  I tweak every once in a while to make them fit the most recent problem - and use it to not only check but to have some examples to show the data entry person what I mean.  I'm a big fan of customizing the dashboards for whatever someone wants or needs!

 

Hi - we have year-end appeal and Gala queries that look at giving sorted by date last year and this (Appeal ID = YEA14 OR YEA15, for example), but we export and compare up through the current day last year and this.  It would be nice to have "interim" snapshots available, either as Reports or saved queries, I've also wondered how the Membership dashboard panels do that for comparisons.  I would like to recreate that for other areas but haven't had time to delve into it.