Prospect Tab and Moves Management

Anonymous Blackbaud User:
I'm new to Raiser's Edge, but not new to fundraising and data base management for Major Gifts. My question is a "new" to Raiser's Edge attempt to clarify best use of the Prospect tab. I gather that the Prospect Tab is an "add on" offered by Blackbaud, and not everyone has this particular tab. For those of you who do, I'm trying to sort out the apparent intent to manage only the Proposal phase - or Solicitation phase - of the overall moves management cycle of Major Gifts. Yes? I see that we can enter a proposal and there's pretty robust functionality around this particular activity available in the tab. But I'm puzzled about whether we could also create a "proposal" in this tab that represents the entirety of the moves management cycle - from initial Identification through Assessment to Cultivation and ultimately to Solicitation and Stewardship - by just broadening our notion use of what a "Proposal" is. My VP is wanting one screen, one Tab, where she can go and keep track of all her actions and moves for each prospect and not have to bounce around to the Action Tab for some activity, but in the Prospect Tab for only Proposal related activity. She keeps saying we ought to just use the Prospect Tab in a comprehensive manner, and I keep worrying that this is not the intended purpose of this Tab and thus the standard reporting will not work very well (somehow. I'm not entirely sure yet. Still too new). Anyone have some sage advise for me?? Many, many thanks.

 I think that what you're thinking about in terms of "moves management" is the series of actions that follows a donor from introductions to a major gift. 

https://www.blackbaud.com/kb/index?page=content&id=BB520946&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1423082900614

Anonymous Blackbaud User:
Huh, I replied to you yesterday, Nicole. But today it appears my reply didn't post. "Pilot error" no doubt. In any case, Thank you for replying. Yes, moves management is indeed what I'm puzzling over...I know what it is quite well, but I'm not clear yet how Raiser's Edge wants to handle this facet of Development work. I checked out the knowledge base and found some good stuff there like a white paper on best practices for moves management. Unfortunately, I'm not finding a RE "how-to" set it up and use Actions and the Prospect Tab in order to track and report on Gift Officer activity. (Blackbaud has for fee classes that seem to cover this, but I'm not able to spend budget for the purpose). What I'm thinking, however, is that I see a way to set it up entirely in the Prospect Tab by "bending" the intended use of "Proposal Name" to be not about Proposals per se, but about the Campaign (e.g. Capital, or Restricted Purposes, or Endowment or Planned Giving). It seems to me that this way a Gift Officer could enter all their Actions, Notes, documents and Moves Management progress in the "Proposal" screen for each prospect for each of these Campaigns. That way a prospect being worked with for multiple gifts/purposes can be at varying Moves Management stages for each Campaign a Gift Officer is talking with them about. From what I can tell, the RE standard Action and Proposal reports line up with this use (or can easily be made to line up). I don't know, but whether RE intended it or not, this seems to be the way we're headed. Any thoughts on this?

In that knowledge base solution, there are some other links for instructions on creating actions and action tracks.  Third bullet at the bottom -- What are action tracks and how to create them? (BB18724)

Basically, you can create a series of steps in your moves management process.  Assign step one, and when that is done it prompts you to assign step 2, then 3, and so one.

Your actions are going to live on the actions tab, not the prospect tab.  But you can see them on the chronology section of the prospect tab. You can also assign campaigns and solicitors to actions.  I'm sure you can adjust the way you use the prospect tab to suit this purpose, but, personally, I try to use things for their intended purpose when I can so that I can use canned reports and exports.  Actions can appear on the home page or dashboard of assigned solicitors.

It is up to you to evaluate your process and decide what works best as far as your use of the prospect tab.  Personally, I would use actions.