Certification prep?

I took the Associates Exam in early Feb (and passed, yay!).  But now I'm not sure what to tell others on our team who are thinking about taking the new Fundamentals exam.  Someone mentioned that the optional modules are not tested in the new exam.  Are there other "headline" differences I should mention?  They all know how I prepped, so I don't want to steer anyone wrong based on my experience with the old exam. 



Debbi McGlauflin

Hospice of the Chesapeake



Ryan Mills:

 

Josh Bekerman:

Hmmm, it's listed as coming soon.  Maybe they are redoing it?



https://www.blackbaud.com/nonprofit-training/certification/raisers-edge/pricing-plans#



Josh

 

You are correct Josh. I was digging around a few weeks ago when someone from my local user group asked about certification prep and noticed the same thing. The question I was asked was about the optional modules, which I've been told aren't included in the Fundementals test. That's a new test that doesn't directly replace the Associate level test some of us took. I know the Ed Services team has been working hard rebuilding all the training courses. I was told that if those of us who took the Associate level test still wanted to take the Professional level that it's still an option. I'm sure they'll make an annoucement when they've got more of the courses and tests re-worked a bit. It should make it a lot easier to know what to study up on.

 

Gracie Schild:

Joe Moellering:

 

Terry Vyas:

Hi... I'm responsible for Blackbaud University (having joined the company 6 months ago).  Each of you have brought up valid points/questions and I wanted to provide you some background on what we are doing and preview where we are headed.



For the last few months, our team has been focused on building from the ground up brand new curriculum for RE.  In the last 90 days we have launched 40+ new courses for RE which replaced all of our previous Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT) and Regional RE Training.   We have also launched a set of Best Practices and Outcome base curriculum as well.



We also introduced the requirement for a set of pre-requisites for our advanced courses.  In addition, the Fundamental training series replaced Essentials.  We wanted to have a easy way to allow experienced Blackbaud RE users to bypass the pre-requisites - so we created the Fundamentals exam.   This exam is not equivalent to the Associate exam as the Associate exam covers additional materials.  The request to have documented on the web the Associates exam is valid and something that we will fix.



We put a hold on the professional and masters exams as we realigned the entire curriculum and we needed time to redo some of the questions in the question bank.  We will be relaunching these later in the year.  



We are currently in the transition window between the old courses/exams and the new courses/exam...my apologies if that has caused confusion.  We are heavily investing in RE courses and we will further invest in the Certification program.  More to come... but know that we are hard at work.  Our plan is to launch 2 brand new RE courses a month moving forward once we finish the rebuild process.



Happy to answer any additional questions/concerns that you might have.  

To add to Terry's note above, I'd like to clarify a few of the questions that I've seen in this chain. First of all, I like the idea of noting that the Associate level exists and users who achieved that level are still Blackbaud Certified. We will work on figuring out the best way to represent this on our webpage BlackbaudCertification.com. I also apologize for the confusion and I want to make sure that everyone who has demonstrated their strong knowledge of Raiser's Edge is appropriately recognized for it. 



I also want to clarify what is covered on the Fundamentals exam. Optional modules are not included on the Fundamentals exam. I know that there were a few questions on the Associate exam but since optional modules aren't covered in the Fundamentals Series, they are also not included on the exam. The best way to get an understanding of what is included on the Fundamentals exam would be to review our prep guide. You can download that from this page. 



Users who do not pass the first attempt are able to take it again at no additional charge. Users are also able to have Raiser's Edge open and reference it when answering questions. They can also have other help resources open like User Guides, KnowledgeBase, etc. but I'd caution that anyone who relies to heavily on these help resources will most likely run out of time and not be able to answer all of the questions.



I'm also happy to answer any questions that anyone has about the program. We are working hard to make the Professional available again as well as publishing the Master exam.

 

Hi - I was planning on taking the Associates exam and never had time to poke around in the sample database to prepare for it - and now it's gone?   I'm curious about the rationale behind taking that away -  I'm guessing that it was "too hard" for an initial test level and therefore the Fundamentals was created.  I hope that the "step" to Professional level isn't too steep for users - is there any plan to bring an intermediate level back?



I, too, am taking it more for personal accomplishment than anything else - there really aren't any career benefits to it in our community.  I have already volunteered my knowledge to the local user's group, teaching a session on Batch entry.  I hope my experience will be enough to get me through the Fundamentals, but when you take out the Optional Modules we don't have, I think I'll be OK!



Gracie Schild

IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts)

Santa Fe, NM

 

Danielle Repic:

Joe Moellering:

 

Gracie Schild:

Joe Moellering:

 

Terry Vyas:

Hi... I'm responsible for Blackbaud University (having joined the company 6 months ago).  Each of you have brought up valid points/questions and I wanted to provide you some background on what we are doing and preview where we are headed.



For the last few months, our team has been focused on building from the ground up brand new curriculum for RE.  In the last 90 days we have launched 40+ new courses for RE which replaced all of our previous Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT) and Regional RE Training.   We have also launched a set of Best Practices and Outcome base curriculum as well.



We also introduced the requirement for a set of pre-requisites for our advanced courses.  In addition, the Fundamental training series replaced Essentials.  We wanted to have a easy way to allow experienced Blackbaud RE users to bypass the pre-requisites - so we created the Fundamentals exam.   This exam is not equivalent to the Associate exam as the Associate exam covers additional materials.  The request to have documented on the web the Associates exam is valid and something that we will fix.



We put a hold on the professional and masters exams as we realigned the entire curriculum and we needed time to redo some of the questions in the question bank.  We will be relaunching these later in the year.  



We are currently in the transition window between the old courses/exams and the new courses/exam...my apologies if that has caused confusion.  We are heavily investing in RE courses and we will further invest in the Certification program.  More to come... but know that we are hard at work.  Our plan is to launch 2 brand new RE courses a month moving forward once we finish the rebuild process.



Happy to answer any additional questions/concerns that you might have.  

To add to Terry's note above, I'd like to clarify a few of the questions that I've seen in this chain. First of all, I like the idea of noting that the Associate level exists and users who achieved that level are still Blackbaud Certified. We will work on figuring out the best way to represent this on our webpage BlackbaudCertification.com. I also apologize for the confusion and I want to make sure that everyone who has demonstrated their strong knowledge of Raiser's Edge is appropriately recognized for it. 



I also want to clarify what is covered on the Fundamentals exam. Optional modules are not included on the Fundamentals exam. I know that there were a few questions on the Associate exam but since optional modules aren't covered in the Fundamentals Series, they are also not included on the exam. The best way to get an understanding of what is included on the Fundamentals exam would be to review our prep guide. You can download that from this page. 



Users who do not pass the first attempt are able to take it again at no additional charge. Users are also able to have Raiser's Edge open and reference it when answering questions. They can also have other help resources open like User Guides, KnowledgeBase, etc. but I'd caution that anyone who relies to heavily on these help resources will most likely run out of time and not be able to answer all of the questions.



I'm also happy to answer any questions that anyone has about the program. We are working hard to make the Professional available again as well as publishing the Master exam.

 

Hi - I was planning on taking the Associates exam and never had time to poke around in the sample database to prepare for it - and now it's gone?   I'm curious about the rationale behind taking that away -  I'm guessing that it was "too hard" for an initial test level and therefore the Fundamentals was created.  I hope that the "step" to Professional level isn't too steep for users - is there any plan to bring an intermediate level back?



I, too, am taking it more for personal accomplishment than anything else - there really aren't any career benefits to it in our community.  I have already volunteered my knowledge to the local user's group, teaching a session on Batch entry.  I hope my experience will be enough to get me through the Fundamentals, but when you take out the Optional Modules we don't have, I think I'll be OK!



Gracie Schild

IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts)

Santa Fe, NM

 

Hey Gracie,

I'd love to share our rationale behind changing the bCRE program. As others have noted in the thread, we've worked very hard to completely overhaul all of our Raiser's Edge curriculum (and eventually all products!) over the past few months. In order to better align the exam with the progression of the curriculum, we changed the series of exams. We wanted the Fundamentals exam to cover the functionality covered in the Fundamentals class series. Additionally, that will mean that a reorganization of the Professional and Master exams were needed as well to not only reflect the next steps in the curriculum but to also even out the steps between the exams. I hope that helps and please let me know if there is anything else I can help answer for you about the exams or the bCRE program!

 

Hi Joe,

How will the Professional Exam change for those that attempted it:( 

Danielle

 

 

Gracie Schild:

I'm glad to hear that no coursework is "required" to pass the Professional level - becasue there's no way we could pay for any of the courses from Blackbaud, and I can't afford to pay for them myself.  The maintenance fees are very high for a small tribal college like IAIA, and anything above and beyond is a luxury.  I'm thrilled and surprised that I get to go to bbcon this year; thank goodness for a thoroughly professional boss who knows how to support his staff!



One thing that I think would improve the certification process would be some kind of feedback on the test results.  I realize you'd have to have vast numbers of questions to choose from in order to actually return the questions to the test-takers, but it would have been useful to have a list of topics that I should review based on which questions I missed. I was surprised taht I had as many wrong as I did - there were only one or two where I was struggling with the semantics (the topics were pretty straightforward, it was the phrasing that was designed to trip up the test takers) but I thought I had figured out all the others about which I was a little unsure.  If I had received a list of suggested review topics based on my results, I could have checked back over weak areas.  As it stands, I think the trick wording was my main downfall, so I'm not too bent out of shape.



See you all in Austin!

Melissa Rancour:

Hi Zane,



We have worked to improve the exam to make it more focused on the best way to do things and less on knowing all the ways of doing something. 



As for preparation for the certification exams, the Fundamentals and Professional exams will not cover optional modules. 



I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have further questions. 

Denise Schlake:

Question for others. I took the Professional certification exam and did not pass. I felt that some of the questions were a bit confusing. I have worked in RE for 10 yrs and felt confident but I don't know. I even took the bootcamp class prior still no luck. Any recommendations before taking again??