Reading manual useful for brand new user?

Lisette,

I guess it depends on what type of position/role you are trying to get and how you best learn


I learn best by doing. So when I first got training for RE it was the most grueling, mind numbing 2 hours of my life (ok maybe not that bad, but at the time it felt that way) and it was all meaningless until I got to play with the product in a real life situation


That said I did find a helpful RE7 for Beginners PDF that I really love - it is almost 7 MB or I'd upload it. 


If you are interested PM me with your email and I can send it your way.


Joanne

I started in fundraising 6 years ago at my current ogranization and had never heard of Raiser's Edge before my first day as a temp. I got some very general instruction on gift entry from someone who didn't really know how to do it, and started the very first day catching up on the backlog of gifts from the year-end appeal that had been accumulating in the month since my predecessor left.

I think RE is a little like English (I have been teaching ESL for many years) - it's not that hard to figure out and use the progrma/language at a very basic, tourist kind of level. But it takes quite a lot to really make it jump through hoops. For the major gifts officer position, I think you need a basic understanding of how things like gift entry and Mail work and where to find information (including how to run Reports and Queries), but you really need some serious training on Actions, the Prospect module if used, and some of the lesser-known things like Constituent Profiles or Ratings. I was lucky enough to get training (later, once I had a pretty good grasp of the basics!) from Ed Hohlbein, who presents at bbcon with Bill Connors. I haven't read Bill's book, but I've seen him present and I think it would be a great resource for understanding what RE can do, even if you can't use it yet. 

Another resource for the absolute beginner is YouTube - there are a handful of videos out there addressing various topics. And much as I'd like to claim (for professional reasons) that using RE is different and requires specialized skills that command higher pay ;-) , my own experience is that if you can handle some other database, you can probably handle RE. I came out of admissions and registrations, with a long gap of living overseas and not doing any data work at all. Grasping the basics of RE was a piece of cake, but I didn't really fall in love till I grasped the intricacies, aka the possibilities.