Raiser's Edge Certification (Fundamentals)

Mitchell We 2 · July 2016

Hello, I plan to take this test soon and I need some advice anyone who took this test and passed.

How did you prepare for this? Any comments or feedback would be great.

Thank you.

Jen Claudy · July 2016

If you are a DBA and have been working with RE for 10-14 years, you should have no real problem passing Fundamentals. If you feel fairly confident in the basics of RE, you could take it cold-turkey, and then if you don't pass, it will tell you what areas you missed questions in, and you get another chance to take it within the next 90 days (from when you first register). At no cost, you have access to BB Learn videos, and if your org has a Learn More or Learn Everything subscription (which also covers the cost of all bCRE exams), you can also take the instructor-led classes. Click here for the BB University Curriculum (interactive pdf). For Fundamentals, there is a series of 6 classes (the Fundamentals Series) that will prep you for the exam. Also, have your computer set up with RE open, as you can test/check things in the database, although you won't have time to do that for every question. Fundamentals is 40 questions in 90 minutes and passing is 80%.

John Cioni · July 2016

I'm relativley new to my position and have been using RE for about 5 months. I took the test last week and passed with no issues. There were a few questions I had to dig around in my RE environment to find the answer to but for the most part if you have been using it on a regular basis you should be fine. The odd part was the answers I missed were in the areas I thought I had the best understanding of. Just make sure you understand what the question is asking before putting your answer down.

Amy Dana · July 2016

Mitchell We:

Hello, I plan to take this test soon and I need some advice anyone who took this test and passed.

How did you prepare for this? Any comments or feedback would be great.

Thank you.

Definitely take the entire time allowed to re-read each question. A lot of the questions have multiple answers so if there are four correct answers and you only select three, you will not get credit for the question. I had the same issue as John - I've been using RE for over 10 years and almost all the questions I missed were in the same category.

Good luck!

Faith Murray · July 2016

Agree with Jen. If you've been using RE for 10-14 years, you should have no trouble. The test asks questions on each of the main areas of RE: Queries, Exports, Mail, Constituent records, etc., so if your org is like mine and never used Mail (up until a year ago, we used Export for all mailings except thank-you letters), you might brush up on that area that you haven't used much. I used Knowledgebase to brush up on weak spots since we don't have a Learn subscription, but when it really came down to it, I knew almost all the answers already. It is handy to have RE open while taking the test, to double-check if you're not sure about something. Unless you're very new to RE, you won't need anywhere near the full 90 minutes for the exam. I'd advise just jumping in and taking the test cold-turkey. You'll probably ace it, and if you don't you have 90 days to brush up and re-take the exam at no charge.

Edited to Add: If you're very new to RE, I'd advise checking out this page describing the knowledge areas tested in the exam. Click on the course descriptions and dowload the course abstract for each knowledge area. If you can answer the learning objectives in the Course Abstracts, you are ready to take the exam. If you see a learning objective you don't understand, read up in that area, on the Forums or Knowledgebase, (or take the e-course) until you feel comfortable performing that task in RE.

Raiser's Edge Certification (Fundamentals)

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