Saving Historical Information

Francis Wyman · February 2018

Hi everyone,

This is my first message. I'm the Advancement Systems Manager at the Boston Athenaeum, a post I've held for only a few months. This is the first time I'm working with RE. My previous experience is with Millennium, and I come from a Prospect Research background (Boston College). So I'm learning RE while managing the database and serving as BA's prospect researcher.

One issue that I'm thinking through - a challenge for a RE rookie - is how to save historical information. Here's the situation: events at the Athenaeum have been treated as Funds and so as time has passed the number of Funds has exploded. As part of cleaning up Fund records, to pave the way for using Financial Edge, I've been asked to investigate where past events (each listed as a Fund) could be "saved to." Has anyone had a similar issue, but if do people have thoughts on how the situation can be managed. Please do not hesitate to contact me at the Athenaeum (617-720-7607) if the solution is requires a detailed explanation.

Many thanks and looking forward to getting to know everyone.

Francis S. Wyman

JoAnn Strommen · February 2018

If your gifts are posted clean up can be a bit more complicated.

We also began using RE before FE and we converted old gift data from previous accounting software. What we did was marked all those 'old' gifts as Do not post and marked the funds as inactive. That maintained record of what donor actually gave without pulling all that data into FE and needing FE project codes.

You possibly could do export and copy the event detail into reference or notes, then change all the event funds to one fund, and then import them back in. You'll definitely need to tread cautiously for something like this with only a bit of RE experience.

Hopefully some other users will be able to share their experience and/or suggestions.

Francis Wyman · February 2018

Hi JoAnn,

Many, many thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to share it with my
colleagues, several of whom are more advanced users of RE, to see
whether they think it might work. If we move forward on it, I think
I would hire a consultant to guide me through the process.

Once again, thank you. I truly appreciate your help.

Best wishes,

Francis

Francis S. Wyman

Advancement Systems Manager

BOSTON ATHENÆUM

10½ Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108

wyman@bostonathenaeum.org
617-720-7607 Office

Crystal Bruce · February 2018

Francis Wyman:

Hi everyone,

This is my first message. I'm the Advancement Systems Manager at the Boston Athenaeum, a post I've held for only a few months. This is the first time I'm working with RE. My previous experience is with Millennium, and I come from a Prospect Research background (Boston College). So I'm learning RE while managing the database and serving as BA's prospect researcher.

One issue that I'm thinking through - a challenge for a RE rookie - is how to save historical information. Here's the situation: events at the Athenaeum have been treated as Funds and so as time has passed the number of Funds has exploded. As part of cleaning up Fund records, to pave the way for using Financial Edge, I've been asked to investigate where past events (each listed as a Fund) could be "saved to." Has anyone had a similar issue, but if do people have thoughts on how the situation can be managed. Please do not hesitate to contact me at the Athenaeum (617-720-7607) if the solution is requires a detailed explanation.

Many thanks and looking forward to getting to know everyone.

Francis S. Wyman

Moved discussion to Raiser's Edge Community. Thank you!

Christine Cooke 2 · March 2018

Francis Wyman:

Hi everyone,

This is my first message. I'm the Advancement Systems Manager at the Boston Athenaeum, a post I've held for only a few months. This is the first time I'm working with RE. My previous experience is with Millennium, and I come from a Prospect Research background (Boston College). So I'm learning RE while managing the database and serving as BA's prospect researcher.

One issue that I'm thinking through - a challenge for a RE rookie - is how to save historical information. Here's the situation: events at the Athenaeum have been treated as Funds and so as time has passed the number of Funds has exploded. As part of cleaning up Fund records, to pave the way for using Financial Edge, I've been asked to investigate where past events (each listed as a Fund) could be "saved to." Has anyone had a similar issue, but if do people have thoughts on how the situation can be managed. Please do not hesitate to contact me at the Athenaeum (617-720-7607) if the solution is requires a detailed explanation.

Many thanks and looking forward to getting to know everyone.

Francis S. Wyman

Do you have the Event Module? If so - all of that info could be moved there and the Funds deactivated. The point about things being posted already would add a wrinkle.

If you do not have the Event Module I would suggest that you set up an Action for each Event and move the info there. It would be much more consistent and not as muddled as Constit Notes can get.

Elaine Tucker · March 2018

If you are moving to integrating with FE, then you MAY want to keep the funds where they are. We are integrated and put on over 100 events a year. Each of those events in FE is a project which is linked to a RE Fund. I know that we DBA's always want to "keep it clean and tidy" but remember that the data is there for you to USE... so if the RE funds are in place and they are working for you, then I'd say keep it as is and move on to more critical database clean up needs.

We do have the events module, but track all fees and program sponsorships for those events through the RE Funds.

Good luck!

Saving Historical Information

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