As I talk to other users of the Raiser's Edge and view blog posts, questions posed in user groups and online forums, it strikes me how limited people are in how they can actually use data. They have no idea how to take action on the data they have to do something that is going to help move their organization to action in a way that will IMPACT their organization.
In order to impact their organization, an employee needs to be able to focus their time and attention on something that will make an impact. That means different things to different people. But in order for someone to do their job effectively they need to be able to see data in way that tells them a story, tells them what to do, and brings attention to areas that need it.
Circling back to The Raiser's Edge, the built in reports are really inadequate. They are mostly textual static reports. The "Custom Reports" feature is limited by the fact that Crystal Reports is a flawed reporting tool itself and is encumbered by having to deal with data that is limited by the export feature of The Raiser's Edge. The dashboards are nice but after a while they get stale and they are pretty limited as well. And it is sad, most organizations think this is what they have to work with. I bet many have individuals on staff that "compile" reports in a labor intensive process to get something that is in a better format than what they have available to them.
So that got me thinking about developing an example of one way to tell a story about the financial health of an organization. As I think about financial health, what I would want to know is:
1. What is our revenue, or cash gifts, for this year? This tells me raw numbers so I can see what the organization has generated in cash.
2. How is that revenue broken down (by campaign and by fund)?
3. How are we doing over the last 12 months compared to other, recent 12 month periods?
4. What is our expected revenue? So this is what someone has told us they are going to give us in the future. In RE lingo, this would be my Pledge Installments or possibly Recurring Gifts "Installments".
5. What is my overdue revenue? This can be thought of as the money someone pledged to us and did not pay. They may not have paid because they lost their job, or perhaps they forgot, or God forbid, we forgot to remind them!!!
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| Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Main Dashboard Screen |
All of the above focuses on CASH!!! In my opinion, coming from the perspective of the amount of cash raised and cash expected is the bottom line for an organization in terms of sustainability and the ability to continue to fulfill a mission. So I purposely did not add a "pledge" as revenue, or cash, for this year. A pledge is great but it might not get fulfilled. In addition, recording the pledge and the expected installments allows for forecasting of cash (another huge piece of information to tell an organization how their future financial health is looking).
OK, so what. When you take the above, you get a picture of financial health (current status, current compared to recent, aka Trend Analysis, plus expected future money). Again, so what? Well, then if that Dashboard is interactive then the "reports" come alive. Imagine being able to drill down into other dashboards or summary reports, see the details behind a segment of data (e.g. list of gifts over a period of time or for a campaign), then being able to drill down into a gift itself. That can be pretty powerful!
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| Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Year Summary |
Not to mention, an Executive Director or VP of Development, or Board Member, can view these dashboards in a way that helps them make decisions, to align resources to what the organization needs, and not have to rely on static reports sent by email, followed up by more email "requests for information", etc. The people that are typically responsible for making those reports can then spend their time on carrying out the actions that are going to benefit the organization.
The next few articles in this series will focus on the details of the RE Financial Dashboard. I hope you get the value out of them and want to try it out.
Check out the other articles, coming soon, in our series:
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part II - The Big Picture
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part III - Drill-Down Analysis
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part IV - True Integration with The Raiser's Edge
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part V - How to Extend It Further
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