Tableau Test Drive for Raiser's Edge Reporting - Installing Tableau Desktop

With the advance in all of the BI and Analytics tools in the marketplace, I thought I would give one of the most popular a test drive:  Tableau.  Below are other posts in the series:
Part II - Connecting To RE and Planning our Dashboards
Part III - Our First Worksheet

Tableau has numerous offerings in their suite of products including Tableau Desktop, which appears to be the primary one you would 'develop' your dashboards and BI reports, Tableau Server and Tableau Online, which appear to be engines where your developed dashboards and reports can be published for consumption by others in your organization.

So lets see how easy it is to get started on Tableau Desktop.  The first step is going to the Tableau website and requesting a download of Tableau Desktop:  easy.  You can go to Tableau Desktop and click on the Try It Free link to start your download.

The Tableau Desktop webpage with the Try It Free link

The size of the download was only a little over 100 mb, so not too big.  Once you have downloaded the software, just go find the setup executable on your hard drive and double click on it. The Windows installer is launched and you get a rather simple wizard.  The first screen just allows you to view the License Agreement and to provide some minimal customization of the product.

After clicking the "Install' button, you get the typical "Installing" wizard form with a status label and progress bar.  It only takes a minute or two for the actual installation to take place.

Once the installer is completed, Tableau is launched and you can start your free trial, 'start trial later' (which I recommend if you know you can't start playing around with the tool immediately so you don't waste valuable days of your trial), or activate your product.

Wow, that was easy.  Installing Tableau Desktop was that easy.  Now comes the more difficult, and much more fun, part - creating BI and Analytics dashboards and reports.  So lets give it a spin and see how it performs and the cool features it may have.

When you first start your trial, Tableau was nice enough to have some sample "workbooks" which appear to be their "projects" that you create your dashboards and reports in.  I think these samples are actually pretty good.  In addition, there are valuable links to training videos that you can watch, which are pretty darn good as well.  

Sample workbook that  comes with Tableau Desktop

All in all, a pretty positive first impression from Tableau.  I did initially install on one of my laptops running Windows 8.1 and it would crash (the blue screen of death) due to various issues, mainly memory issues even though I have enough.  My Windows 7 laptop (ironically with less memory than the Windows 8.1) had no issues whatsoever.

Up next, lets plan out our first workbook and get connected to RE.

Reporting on Raiser's Edge Recurring Gifts with the RE Recurring Gift Reporter Excel Add-In. It is so easy!

Hi everyone.  Thanks again for coming to my blog.  Recently I posted about different ways to report on The Raiser's Edge.  Then I took a deeper dive into Microsoft Excel reporting.  In this edition I am going even further, focusing on one example of a pretty cool way to integrate The Raiser’s Edge with Microsoft Excel.  I am thinking that this will be one post to highlight what I did but I could see it turn into multiple posts.

Awhile back, I saw a post on some forum about how to report on recurring gifts.  This got me to thinking about one of the challenges of reporting on recurring gifts: that it is difficult to get a report of future recurring gift installments (or future revenue from recurring gifts).  At least I don’t know of a good way to get at this info right now.  And I would be willing to bet that many organizations would like to be able to see what their expected future revenues are, and particularly for future recurring gift installments.  Having this information could result in better future planning of future fundraising success.

OK, lets cut to the chase:  What did I do?   I used Visual Studio to create a Microsoft Excel Add-In which can be installed on a pc or laptop running The Raiser’s Edge and Microsoft Excel  (disclaimer versions must be compliant; e.g. this will not run on Excel 2007 as it was built for 2010 and higher;  however also note that it has not been tested with Excel 2013 yet).  This Excel Add-In hooks into The Raiser’s Edge API, prompting the user for a RE Login if they are not already logged in and then generates the raw data, along with reports and charts (if selected) automagically in Excel. 

Lets circle back around and discuss what this stuff looks like and how it behaves.   After the Add-In is installed, the next time you open Microsoft Excel 2010 you should see a new ribbon available named RE Recurring Gift Reporter. 

Once Excel opens and you navigate to the RE Recurring Gift Reporter ribbon, you are presented with several options.  Lets take a look at the View Future Recurring Gift Installments, which is really a forecasting report.  Clicking on the button reveals the following form:

As you can see it is pretty straight-forward.  But that is the point.  Keep it simple and if anyone wants more features they can easily be added to the form.  But lets take a closer look, the user can select to create pivot tables and charts or not.  If no pivot tables are selected, then just the future recurring gift installments are exported in raw data format.  In addition, the user can select an "End Date" for future installments.  As a result however far in the future you want to report on, you can.

After you click the "Create" button then what you selected will be exported into Excel, resulting in something like the worksheet below:

Again, it really is that easy!!

The second large button, View Recurring Gifts, functions just the same as the other button, but provides reports on the recurring gifts themselves, not future installments.  When those reports are run it may look like the spreadsheet below:

It is really that easy.  Open Excel, select a report to run, click the settings, (possibly log into RE), and the report is generated.  You can run it multiple times, day after day and begin to have some intelligence about your future revenues.

A few other notes about how the Add-In works:

It exports the raw data into a spreadsheet and creates a named range from which it creates reports.  You can run it to export only the raw data and you then work with the data yourself.  Or you could select it to create the pivot tables and charts, giving yourself a starting point for how to use the raw data.

In the event that your database has a large number of recurring donations and you select a very large time period to report on, it may take a while to load the data into the spreadsheet.  This could be improved and function slightly different should you need that capability. 

Only a subset of the available columns in RE are used in this Add-In.  I focused on the core ones for now.  For a reasonable fee I can customize the Add-In for your needs, including adding more columns available in the Add-In.

 It pulls gift split information, so it can report on campaign, funds, and appeals for split gifts.  In addition, the system record id for the gift is included so that you can group gift information together to report on total gift information (e.g. the total amount for the gift not just the split amount). 

     
So what you say?  I say great question, or is that really a statement.   I would turn it back around and ask you the following questions:
     1.  Can you tell me how much expected future revenue you have coming in per month from recurring gifts over the next X number of years?
     2.  Can you tell me how much money you have coming in for a specific campaign, fund, or appeal over the next X number of years?
     3.  Can you tell me how much money you have coming in for a specific primary constituency (from the constituent record) over the next x number of years?
     4.  Can you tell me how much money you have coming in for a specific fund and gift constituency (from the recurring gifts) over the next x number of years?
     5.   If you can do any of the above, how long will it take you to pull that information?

I think these are pretty great questions to ask.  We can do 1 through 4 plus produce all other kinds of reports slicing and dicing future recurring gift installments and we can do it in a matter of seconds, maybe minutes depending on how much data you have.  I think that is pretty darn awesome. 

Guess what else?  Your Executive Director, or Development Director, could get this information without having to ask their Database Manager to “produce the report and send it to me”.   It is that easy to use.  Plus you now have the data in a workable format and you can create a lot of other reports from the data presented to you.  This data is not static, like a Crystal Report would be.  You can trust the data as it is coming directly from The Raiser’s Edge (assuming that is that you require your employees to enter this information into The Raiser’s Edge).

OK – Now the sales pitch.   I know, I know, but it is necessary for me to continue providing these great tools for non-profits.  Go check it out and request a download to see for yourself.  Even better, we can customize it further to tailor it to what you need at a great rate.   We can even do something similar with other Raiser’s Edge data or  even data that exists in other databases.  Stop struggling with getting your data into a format that is difficult to use and extend, or takes forever to produce.  Reach out to us and we can tell you more about the product and discuss how easy it would be to make it even better for your needs.

RE Users: Crystal Reports is not your only option!

Something that drives me crazy for The Raiser's Edge community is the perception that Crystal Reports is the best way to provide reports (outside of the built-in reports and dashboards) because that is what comes with The Raiser's Edge.  The Raiser's Edge is a SQL-based database and as a result there are many alternatives to reporting. Below are a few options, separate from Crystal Reports and the built-in RE Reports.  This post is just scratching the surface of what is possible.  Not covered are topics such as static vs dynamic reports, automation, integration with other data sources, KPIs and metrics, and even automatic notifications.

Microsoft Excel

One technology that nearly everyone uses, but many don't have a "super-user" grasp of, is Microsoft Excel.  Once data lands in Excel it is amazing what people can do with it.  And I would be willing to bet that many RE, non-techie users, can at least get the data into Excel via Export or Query.  Once the data is in Excel, developers, or power-users can then get very creative and write VBA macros, or leverage Pivot Tables and Charts, and use conditional formatting among other things to generate reports and dashboards that can easily be shared.  Dynamic filtering can be implemented to let users get a different picture of the data.

In addition,  through add-ins and macros, these reports can be automated such that executives and directors, or even other users, can pull the data at the click of a button, without having to log into RE and develop queries and exports.  Heck, once it is in Excel, these reports can be posted onto SharePoint and rich reports displayed on web pages in SharePoint.

Update - Go check out this Microsoft Add-In which reports on The Raiser's Edge recurring gifts that I have created to show you how you can leverage Microsoft Excel a bit better.

Microsoft Access

Another application in the Microsoft Office suite of products is Microsoft Access. Data can be imported or linked through Access and then presented in a way that can be reported on.  Queries can be written, views created, forms generated, and data can even be taken offline for times when disconnection to The Raiser's Edge ensues.  When using Access, one must be careful to not update data directly in the SQL Server backend as the database could be corrupted with "bad data" that does not adhere to The Raiser's Edge front-end application. 

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

With SQL Server Reporting Services, you can create interactive, tabular, graphical, or free-form reports from relational, multidimensional, or XML-based data sources. Reports can include rich data visualization, including charts, and maps. You can publish reports, schedule report processing, or access reports on-demand. You can select from a variety of viewing formats, export reports to other applications such as Microsoft Excel, and subscribe to published reports. The reports that you create can be viewed over a Web-based connection or as part of a Microsoft Windows application or SharePoint site. You can also create data alerts on reports published to a SharePoint site and receive email messages when report data changes.

SharePoint Web Parts

SharePoint may be a tool that many of you are already using.  It is a great way to organize content such as documents and list-type information as well as enable knowledge sharing and collaboration.  However, when one views it truly as a knowledge sharing tool, letting it provide dashboards and reports to those users that don't need access to The Raiser's Edge application, but rely on reports generated from it can be opportunity.  Web pages can be created with custom web parts, or data view web parts, that pull information from The Raiser's Edge via SQL and display these reports and dashboards within the pages themselves.  This even allows for information sharing across geographic locations, or for those people that may travel, since the content is served up via web pages.drill-down.  SharePoint presents a great opportunity to share your Raiser's Edge data.

Check out my post on displaying a webpart in SharePoint reporting on Raiser's Edge data as an example.

Custom Application Development

Having a software developer create a dashboard application, or an application that contains dashboards, is a great way to have your Raiser's Edge data tell you a story.  A Dashboard application must serve another purpose as well to be worth the investment.  Maybe these reports need to come alive and offer drill-down capabilities, such as our Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard.  Or maybe they have some further integration capabilities with the Raiser's Edge.  Even a Raiser's Edge plug-in could be created that is available from within The Raiser's Edge itself that provides additional reporting and dashboarding capabilities.  Whatever the extra requirements you have, custom application development can go a long way.

There are many other Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics tools out there, such as Tableau, Spotfire and Logi, that can access a SQL Server database (which most Raiser's Edge customers use).  What I have presented to you is just a snippet of opportunities that many of you may already have in-house.  If you are hosted by Blackbaud then your options are severely limited.  There are other options out there should you want to explore those to allow you to improve your investment in The Raiser's Edge.  Should you want to explore one of these options or see what may be best for your organization to get more out of your Raiser's Edge investment you can go to our website for Tucamino Solutions and contact us via our website.

The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part V - How to Extend It Further

OK, so we have picked apart the Tucamino Solutions Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard application a bit.  Great, so what.  Well, you may download it and give it a try and say to yourself "This is the best reporting application ever for The Raiser's Edge!!!".  OK, probably not, but you may say "you know what, this is actually pretty cool and it shows great information, but I wish it could _____________".  Thats OK.  No application, report, or dashboard is perfect. 

What we have provided is a foundation for an application that can be used out of the box and provide great information.  However, it is also designed in a way that it can be extended very easily.  What do you mean by "extending" it further?  Well, that simply means that we have a core platform or baseline to add new functionality.  Here are some ways to add new functionality:

1.  Change the actual dashboard components.  Perhaps you want to look at Raiser's Edge gift trends over 5 years, or want to show a chart based on a Constituent's or Gift's constituent code. 
2.  Add new drill-down reports.  You may need additional detailed reports that we can add for you to drill-down into more detailed. Perhaps it deals with Pledges or Recurring Gifts, or even Proposals and Actions.
3.  Add filtering and other configuration options.  As mentioned in the posts, this dashboard component only focuses on cash gifts (cash, pay-cash, etc.), but perhaps you want stocks and gift-in-kind included.  In addition, maybe you want each user that uses the application to be able to filter based on other data (constituency, solicitors, etc.).
4.  Create a whole new application.  You may have a need for something completely different but want it in a similar format, displaying completely different information, or anything else you might think of.  Because we have a starting point, and we know The Raiser's Edge, we can quickly develop applications that you can use, minimizing the total cost to you because we have a head-start.

We offer discounts on customizing this application as we want to not only provide specific updates and new functionality for paying customers, but where we see the opportunity, we will include that new functionality in our FREE product for others to use.  We can't keep adding this functionality without your help.  We want to keep this product free for all.  So it is a win for the entire non-profit community when you use us for your Raiser's Edge customizations and other technology-related efforts.

Go check out our website to see what else we can do for you and even see what other products we might have.  At the very least go to our site and request your FREE download of our Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard product and give it a spin and provide us some feedback.

Check out the other articles, coming soon, in our series:
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part I - The Overview
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 IV - True Integration with The Raiser's Edge

Welcome back.  We are in our fourth blog post in the series on the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard.  We have looked at some of the specifics of the dashboard application, form the high-level home page, or "Big Picture" to the drill-down capabilities to get more information.  We touched on briefly in our last post about the capabilities to truly integrate with The Raiser's Edge.   Integration can mean many different things to different people.  What I mean by "true integration" with The Raiser's Edge is hooking into the Raiser's Edge API, commonly called the RE:API.

The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard is designed in a way that the user can connect via the RE:API, and get access to the built-in Raiser's Edge forms, etc. or the user can connect directly to the SQL Server database.  In order to take advantage of the integration as described in this post, the option to use the RE:API must be selected (as seen at the right).  A benefit to not selecting this option, and using the "Connect directly to the SQL Server database" option, is that a Raiser's Edge concurrent license is not used and thus other users can access The Raiser's via the RE application while other people are accessing and using the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard application.  A quick  disclaimer: those organizations hosted by Blackbaud will likely not be able to take advantage of this type of Raiser's Edge customization due to constraints with using Blackbaud hosting.  This will affect nearly all customized products that integrate with The Raiser's Edge as well.   

When the Raiser's Edge API option is selected, and the user clicks on the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard to launch the application, immediately the user begins to see how integration with the RE:API takes place.  They are presented with the standard login screens provided by the out-of-the-box RE application.  First there is the option to select the database to connect to and second is the username and password login form for that database selected, as seen at the left.  A user may only open the dashboard application and view the dashboards and reports when they have successfully authenticated with that database, all via the RE:API.

After successful login to The Raiser's Edge, the main dashboard page, as described in a previous posts comes up.  On the main dashboard page additionally functionality such as the drill-down capability to other reports and dashboards, as well as access to Raiser's Edge information shown in Raiser's Edge forms is available from the right-click menu on the dashboard components.  At the right is an example:  The FY Campaign Year-To-Date component allows a user to hover over a section of the chart for a specific campaign and then select to open the campaign with the out-of-the-box Raiser's Edge Campaign form.

After selecting to open the campaign from the right-click menu on the Campaign dashboard component, the out-of-the-box Raiser's Edge campaign form opens.  As seen at the left, this is the campaign form that a user sees when a campaign is opened from the Raiser's Edge application.  How cool is that?  Well, I think it is pretty powerful considering the user is not in The Raiser's Edge, but in another application.  The user can navigate this form just as they would normally, accessing other reports and links from this campaign record.

The tight integration to The Raiser's Edge does not stop at the main dashboard page.  When a user drills down into the dashboard application, eventually a user may look at a list of gifts.  This list contains some of the details for the gifts such as Gift Amount, Gift Date, Campaign(s), etc.  When one considers this specific set of information, opportunties arise for further integration with The Raiser's Edge.   As seen at the right, when the user right-clicks on a gift they may then open the gift or the constituent which gave the gift.  You could even have campaigns available, solicitors, or other links to detailed information in The Raiser's Edge.

When the user clicks on the "Open constituent <Constituent Name>" link, more magic happens.  The user is presented with the constituent form used in The Raiser's Edge application.  For those users of The Raiser's Edge, they know that the constituent form contains a wealth of information (much more than what is aggregated and summarized in the Financial Dashboard).  And when one considers that this type of functionality can be included in an application that resides outside of The Raiser's Edge, well, I would hope they would say "That is pretty cool stuff".  Now think about the possibilities of connecting The Raiser's Edge data to other data sources but providing this powerful linking capability.  The possibilities are endless.

If you want to get more information about the Tucamino Solution's Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard application, go to the product page on our website.  You can find more products listed on our website as well..  You can request a download of the product, and many more, from our website.

Check out the other posts in our series at:
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part I - The Overview
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

The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part III - Drill-Down Analysis

In our last post about the "Big Picture" on the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard we looked at the details on the main dashboard.  However, the dashboard and reporting application also has more than the one dashboard.  In this episode we will look at the drill-down capabilites of the application.

After the Tucamino Solutions Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard opens, displaying the Main Dashboard with the charts, graphs, and data tables, the user can drill-down to get at more detail with most of the dashboard components. 

At the right is the first example.  When reviewing the 12 Month Period Comparison, the end-user may want to get more detail for a specific period.  When the user right-clicks with their mouse on a specific cell or header in the grid, they are presented with a menu of options.  As shown at the right, the end-user can view a list of gifts for the specific time period or a summary dashboard for that time period.

The Gift List, shown at the left, is an example of a drill-down report available in the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard. It provides a list of gifts for the end-user to view.  Most dashboard components with the dashboard application allow drill-down to a list of gifts.  This can be for a specific campaign, fund, time period, or other specific filters.  This drill-down report also provides summary statistics at the bottom of the report.  These gifts can be sorted by clicking on the column headers.


Once on the gift list report, there is further drill-down capabilities into data for the Raiser's Edge dashboard.  When the user right-clicks on a gift row, a menu is presented that allows the user to go to the gift or the constituent the gift is recorded under.  What is cool about this is that these menu options will open the forms from The Raiser's Edge, giving the end-user access to built-in Raiser's Edge functionality.  These forms will only be accessible when the user selects to sign-in to The Raiser's Edge via the RE:API module.  When SQL Server authentication is chosen, these menu options are not available. There is a benefit to each authentication method, such as not using an expensive RE concurrent license when chosing the SQL Server authentication.

As seen at the left, drill-down capabilities are available on the charts and graphs in the dashboard as well. For example, the user can drill down into a campaign and see the campaign details in the default Raiser's Edge campaign form via the RE:API integration.  In addition, further dashboards and reports are available via the other menu options, including the previously discussed gift list option.  If you like what the dashboard presents but want further drill-down capabilities, we can customize that and add these additional drill-down features.

One of the options for the drill-down capabilities for campaigns is to see an Active Campaign Summary dashboard.  This report and dashboard shows various summary statistics including how much has been raised, what % that is of the total goal, how much is expected due (pledge installments recorded in RE), and how much of the goal is forecasted, or committed (when adding total raised plus total expected from pledge installments).
In addition, there is a visual breakdown of how much has been raised per month over the last 12 months to see which ones may be trending in a positive or negative direction.

This post begins to highlight the power of a dashboard application.  Drill-down reports and dashboards can be created to give more detail and potentially give more information targeted at a specific role or individual to allow them to be more productive in their responsibilities.  In addition, we get an introduction to the integration possibilities with the RE:API and the custom dashboard application by being able to bring up campaigns, funds, constituents, and gifts in the out-of-the-box Raiser's Edge application-based forms.

If you want to get more information about the Tucamino Solution's Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard application, go to the product page on our website.  You can find more products listed on our website as well..  You can request a download of the product, and many more, from our website.

Check out the other posts in our series at:
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part I - The Overview
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

The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part II - The Big Picture

In our previous article we talked about the why of the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard, an interactive reporting tool designed for a wide range of Raiser's Edge organizations and their employees.  In our first more detailed peek into the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard reporting capabilities, we are going to focus on the "Big Picture" the dashboard presents. 

The Home Page, or Main Dashboard, pictured at the right is a collection of data tables/grids and graphs displaying information in such a way that an executive can get a clear idea as to how much money has been raised, where it has been allocated, as well as performance compared to last year or previous years.  In addition, it shows a forecast as to how much money will be coming in.  So lets look at each of the components of the main dashboard...


The first dashboard component is the YTD Summary.  This component in The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard gives a view as to how much actual cash has been raised this year. 

In addition, when considering what "This Year" means, we have accomodated both the Fiscal Year and Calendar Year.  In addition to total dollars raised, the average gift and the number of gifts is displayed.  Total amount raised is important, but another measure of performance is the average gift.  The lower the average gift, the more donors or actual donations are needed to meet budgets.

The second Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard component is the 12 Month Period Comparison, or recent yearly performance comparisons.  This component is meant to show multiple 1 year periods of Total Amount raised, Average Gift, and Number of Gifts.  This allows an organization to see a trend when they can compare the last 12 months (as of the day of the report) when compared to the 12 month period ending a month ago, 6 months ago, and 1 year ago.   For example, if Today were 12/1/13, the Today column shows metrics for the period of 12/2/2012 to 12/1/2013.  The Last Month column would be the period of 11/2/2012 to 11/1/2013; 6 Months Ago would be 6/2/2012 to 6/1/2013, etc.  Again, this gives a quick snapshot of how the organization is trending (few donors and more money raised, more donors and less money raised, etc).

 For each 12 month period, there is a +/- column which shows how the current 12 month period (ending today) has done against the previous 12 month period.  If the value is in red then that is bad.  For example, in our picture to the right, when we compare the 12 month period for Today against the one for 6 Months Ago, the 12 month perioding ending today has only raised 89% as much as the period from 6 Months ago but the average gift is 143% of the 6 Months Ago time period. 

The next two components, shown at the left and right, show how the money has been allocated for that which has been raised this Fiscal Year.  The two pie charts show a breakdown of donations to Campaigns and Funds.  The FY Campaign Year-To-Date has the donations for the Campaigns for the current Fiscal Year.  The Fiscal Year is determined by the setting in the Raiser's Edge Configuration General Settings.  If you believe the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard is reporting incorrect information for Fiscal Year, then contact your RE Administrator to verify the Fiscal Year is setup correctly.

These charts may give someone an indication as to where particular funds or campaigns may need special attention to meet their goals for the current year.  When mousing over the Campaigns or Funds in the charts, the amount for the respective Campaign or Fund is displayed.  This is just one of the features and designs that exists in the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard to not crowd the dashboards and reports but allow quick access to details and drill-down capabilities to more information.

To carry on the Trend Analysis capabilities of the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard, a line graph was developed which shows the last 3 years of donations, per month. 

As shown on the graph to the left, each year is given its own line and when laid on the same graph, a trend may possibly emerge. For example, a trend may emerge showing that during the month of December each year you get a spike in donations due to your donors contributing before the end of year for tax purposes.  But the key is that a trend may emerge allowing you to work smarter and more efficiently during certain times of year.


Finally, when considering the importance of cash donations, one must look at those cash donations that have not been paid but should have been, or unpaid pledge installments.

The Pledge Installments Overdue Analysis component, shown at the right captures these past due pledge installments.  It also segments these pledge installments so that someone may be able to see a total amount, average installment, etc. for a period of time (the amount of time the pledge is overdue). 
Another important consideration for the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard is the amount of cash expected, or upcoming pledge installments due.

The Pledge Installments Forecast, shown at the right of the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard, shows visually how much money is due in the next 12 months, as recorded in The Raiser's Edge.  This helps to give some indication as to expected revenue coming in so workload can be planned based on this expected revenue.

Another beauty of this is the core of dashboard is already developed.  Perhaps it doesn't fit your use 100% but with a slight tweak you can get more use from it.  We can do that for you at a fraction of the cost of building out a dashboard application from scratch.  Just contact us at Tucamino Solutions to see how we might help you.

Check out the other posts in our series at:
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part I - The Overview
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

The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part I - The Overview

As I have been thinking about what The Raiser's Edge is missing, one area jumps out more than others:  Reports, Business Intelligence, and Data Visualization.

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!!!

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! 

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 Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard is also designed in such a way that it integrates with The Raiser's Edge.  A user may select to leverage the RE:API to log into The Raiser's Edge or choose to enter the SQL Server connection details.  This gives users and organizations flexibility on how they want to deploy the solution.  By using the RE:API additional functionality, described in Part IV of our series, users will get additional functionality.  Though it comes with a cost because a concurrent license is used to view the dashboard this way.

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