Logging phone calls

Niko Segal-Wright · July 2016

Hello,

We are using RE to log all phone calls that we make to donors, to keep tabs on the progress we have made with each one. However, creating an "Action" for each phone call we make is incredibly time-consuming! There are tons of unnecessary buttons to select when we really just need a little spreadsheet to say when the call was made, by whom, and what the outcome was. Is there any more streamlined feature or add-on to Raiser's Edge that can help with this? It would save us a ton of time.

Thanks,

Niko Segal-Wright

Resource Development Associate

The Lord's Place, Inc.

Daniel Noga 2 · July 2016

I'd consider adding a single Action per Constituent to log all of the phone calls made to that donor, and keeping the simple log of calls on the Notes tab. You'd still have to create that first initial Action record, but if you're calling donors with any regularity, then this might save some time.

Joy park · July 2016

I would "bundle" these Actions to be entered weekly in an Import.

Faith Murray · July 2016

Seconding the idea to schedule these Actions to be added in bulk, daily or weekly, but through a Global Add. You can even add Notes in a Global Add, so as long as all your Actions are the same, grouping will save tons of time.

Heather MacKenzie · July 2016

My office enters them as gift attributes when the gift is what's prompting us to make that phone call. Otherwise, we enter them as actions, but this is the smaller group for us. Using the gift attribute keeps it short and sweet.

Jenny Pessereau · July 2016

How do you do this? Is a "bundle" a query of all the constituent names you intend to add a note to?

Faith Murray · July 2016

Jenny Pessereau:

How do you do this? Is a "bundle" a query of all the constituent names you intend to add a note to?

Essentially. Basically, you group all the Constituents, through a Query, who should receive Actions. (You can use Constituent ID = "one of")

If using Global Add, each group that gets identical Actions can be done on one Global Add, and should have its own Query. Or, if you are using Import, you can pull all the Constituents in one Query and add all the Actions together in one batch, even if they are not identical, by filling in the appropriate value in the Excel sheet before Importing. Which method is easier will depend how fluent you are with Importing and how uniform your Actions need to be.

Emmet O'Conlon 2 · July 2016

What about using a Default Set to pre-populate all the values that stay the same?

Elaine Tucker · July 2016

Our staff makes monthly renewal calls, so I have created an action Default set for them to use.

They just click on Action - New Action - Load Defaults from and then the only thing they need to add to the action is their name as the solicitor.

This reduces dramaticaly the number of mouse clicks and ensures accurate and consistent data entry.

Marisa Sharpe · July 2016

Elaine, where do you create an Action Default set?

Joy park · July 2016

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/46148

or more specifically: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/37566

Jenny Pessereau · July 2016

Thank you all for your answers. This was really helpful!

Jennifer Lange · July 2016

Marisa Sharpe:

Elaine, where do you create an Action Default set?

I LOVE DEFAULT SETS for Actions!!!!

Logging phone calls

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