[andrea.bbbs]

Hi All,

I am goin' shoppin' - first for modules, then for a grant to pay for them. So - right now we are out of maintenance, and working on an older version (7.61) and I am pushing to get our agency back to legal and to pick up some helpful modules while we are at it.

I don't think I have anything but the stripped down model right now, and am interested in finding out how useful the prospect research, wealthpoint, and other tools are. Since I am still waiting for a call from the salesperson who re-ups folks, I have no concept re: what all that stuff costs.

What do you use? What do you like? What is worth the money and what isn't?

Thanks,

a

[CChesler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrea.bbbs

Hi All,

I am goin' shoppin' - first for modules, then for a grant to pay for them.

What do you use? What do you like? What is worth the money and what isn't?

Thanks,

a

Andrea -
Great question - I"m looking forward to see how everyone else responds. I guess I'll jump in first.

In terms of "what is worth the money and what isn't?" - It all depends on how you are going to use the module. Do you really need all the functionality that the module provides?
Right now I am working with a membership based association - but we don't have the membership module. For what this agency needs - that's the right decision. They can manage their constituent relationships just fine without it.
Same thing with the Events Module. I LOVE the Events Module - couldn't live without it at my previous agency. But here - we run two events a year - with 150 to 200 attendees. Not worth the cost of the Events module.

Prospect Module - from a database standpoint - I love the Prospect Module - but if the Fund Development staff won't complete the information - or keep it up to date - it's not worth it.

Honor/Memorial - if your agency receives Honor/Memorial contributions - then this module - if used properly - is fantastic.

Volunteer Module - if you have a lot of volunteer positions and jobs that you need to track - it's great. I think you could probably track the hours that the Big Brothers/Sisters are spending through here. Even if you consider the Bigs and the Littles to be "members" - you might find that through Constituent Codes and the volunteer module, you can track the data you need.

That's a quick stream of consciousness answer for you. Hope it helps!

Candace Chesler

[andrea.bbbs]

Events and Volunteers are probably the two modules I wouldn't need - National is switching us over to a custom web-hosted app that will be used to track Bigs and Littles. I don't know how good it is, but it will sure beat the puny Access app we use now - although they wanted us to switch from RE to Kintera....

And for Events - we use Auction! - which works really well.

Since we haven't had a maintenance contract the whole year I have been here, all my learning has been via users groups and trial and error. I am sure I am not even getting the max out of the stuff I have!

I would love to hear more about the Prospect module - how is it used? What does it do for me?

What about the other ones - WealthPoint? Researcher's Edge? Are those modules, or separate apps? I am concerned that when (if?) the sales rep contacts me, I won't get straight honest answers about what is and isn't right for me.

I do hope there are a lot of responses to me - I think this could turn into a very interesting thread....

[RobertWild]

Required for us - Alum and Events.
I'm pushing for Prospect, and in an ideal world would like Queue for all those pesky weekly routine stuff.

cheers

Rob

[hullsa]

I couldn't live without the Prospect / Search module (but I'm a researcher). With the level of prospect and proposal tracking that we do, it has become an integral part of our prospect management system. If you will need to track staff contact with your constituents and linking (linking being the point here) those contacts with asks and grants - this module will save you much time and aggravation when it comes to pulling numbers and reporting. However, if these are not big things at your org, pass on it. You can always track in Attributes and Appeals. I believe the Action tab is part of the main set up. Do you have a prospect researcher at your org, s/he may have some thoughts?

[andrea.bbbs]

Actually Sarah, in addition to maintaining the database, the website, the Grant/Grant Report calendar and assisting the Event Coordinator - I am also doing Prospect/Research, but since I am just learning it I have no idea what I want or need. I would love to hear from a real Researcher who uses the module - because right now I am somewhere between a Pseudo and a Wannabee.

[Matthew]

(to avoid prefacing individual statements with "in my opinion"..i'm saying it once: it's my opinion)

the P R O S P E C T module should be included in the basic install. . .similar software and must less robust and less expensive software include integrated prospect tracking as matter of course. . .For any RE-owning org that conducts fundraising, I would consider it the first purchasing priority. There are ways around it, as there are ways around everything. . .the number of fields and the flexibility in using them are hugely valuable to me and my org. I use the proposal piece of the Prospect module not only for Funding Proposals but for a variety of other non-fundraising related purposes in different types of records in our database.

If you have a significant number of events (*whatever significant means to you...) the Events module is definitely worth it. why? because as a totally non-"legacy" core type of solution, it integrates very well with the rest of the software and that functionality is probably the most difficult to manage within the software if you don't own it (combining actions and attributes, and ccodes, etc.) it's a special kind of information and muddies the waters of already crowded areas on constit records, and I would imagine that querying and reporting on something like that would be maddening. If you have an event manager, I would definitely consider it a necessity.

not necessary: NetSolutions: even if you accept online donations, website/newsletter registrations, etc. I t ' s NOT w o r t h THEMONEY! In this instance you can develop your own solution with inside staff or outside consultants and get it done cheaper. The technology they sale in NetSolutions is outdated and, while they're welcome to contradict me, since they're very focused on NetCommunity, i seriously doubt they'll ever devote time to bringing it up to speed. It's stale.. don't waste your money...most of the cost is for not-very-helpful training anyway.

I don't know anything about the specific information needs of your organization...so these are off the top of my head, things I would recommend to anyone.

[andrea.bbbs]

Matthew - thank you so much - I was so hoping you would find my question - I value your opinion.

It sounds like I MUST have Prospect. We are relatively small - a budget of 1.5 mil, serving about 900 kids a year. Our funding right now is grant-heavy, and our new CDO is ready to do some donor cultivating. She dubbed me Prospect Researcher and gave me a book, and she just points me at a possible donor and I try to find out what I can. Very hit or miss.

I tried contacting my BB Rep yesterday - haven't heard anything yet....I think the one they gave me is in charge of reinstatements. I haven't even a clue what Prospect costs.... but I am going to price it and then work on a grant for it - yeah - I have to do some of that stuff too.

I really appreciate all the advice that I get from the BUS.

Thanx

[Peter Gulka]

andrea, given your last post, I think Prospect is must for you.

[hullsa]

Andrea, I agree with Matthew and Peter - this is really a must for your. BUT, since you asked for a researcher's opinion - (and maybe to help make a case for the cost). I love the Prospect Tab. It helps with both prospect research and management. We've been using it for about 7 years, and here's what I think about it's 7 (really 6) core parts:

1 - General: includes p mgmt functions for classifying prospects and where they stand in the solicitation cycle (but not with dates). Also good for research and listing funding interests and limitations. No place for types of support tracking so we use Attributes. Great for Corps & Fdns research! You can list all the interests (children services, community development, etc) for your org prospects, and then run searches for grant prospects from within your own database. At this point, we can supplement (often completely) searches from other sources ( i.e. Foundation Center Directory, Guidestar or MetaSoft etc) with our own tracked data. It Rocks!

2 - Gifts to Other Orgs - kind of lame. We use mostly for individual major gift prospects to record & highlight their large gifts. For long grant lists for Corp & Fdn profiles we use the Notes Tab. Also, doesn't print so well on the Profile Reports. I'd like to see a better use of this space - maybe for tracking types of support, a checklist for research sources used, a research request log (I could go on). But anyway...

3 - Financial Data - good to have. Useful for monitoring such info. We track the usual: real estate values, stock, salary, and other hard assets and indications of wealth. The aggravating thing is the calculator only goes to $9,999,999,999. So you can't enter, for example, the sales figure for a $10 billion dollar company. This is particularly sucky because it is the FINANCIAL DATA portion of the Tab.

4. Financial Graph - You can run graphs and charts based on the financials, but we never used them (the pie charts) for any serious purpose.

5. Proposals - this is the bridge from Actions to Gifts. As was mentioned, you can track much more than the typical grant. Replicates Action Tab and links to specific gifts. Has it's own Attributes, Media, and Notes. Lot's of bells and whistles - too bad canned reporting and exporting is so bad for this feature.

6. Ratings - also a good feature. You can track any type of rating and it comes (or used to) with an assortment of vendor names, which wasn't very helpful to me, but....This feature is important to any good prosp res & mgmt program, but you can recreate it elsewhere. Also, the Rating Notes don't print on the Profiles. Many screening vendors publicize how easy it is to import all their results into RE; they mostly mean the ratings. Word of caution - mess around with how you'll pull and sort on the rating fields before deciding where to put everything ( i.e. capability, inclination, affinity, and their respective codes and tables). I know that's a given, but I'm only mentioning it because many orgs track similar to this: A1 = High Inclination and High Capability; E5 = low. Do you pull these separately, as just a list of As or just 1s, or always together? Also, will you distinguish between the ratings that you as a researcher calculate and those you've gained from a screening service or will they all be "capability" etc?

7. Chronology - nice chrono summary combining Actions, Gifts, Proposals, Events and Appeals.

All in all, I think that with all the hats you wear, you would find this module worth the cost.

Sorry for the book,
S.

[Karenw]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matthew

the P R O S P E C T module should be included in the basic install. . .

I agree wholeheartedly. I'd give my right arm for the Prospect Module, but we can't get it in the budget. Definitely get it if you can, while you're going through this process.

[Peter Gulka]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karenw

I agree wholeheartedly. I'd give my right arm for the Prospect Module, but we can't get it in the budget. Definitely get it if you can, while you're going through this process.

I've never accepted "It's not in the budget" as a reason not to get something.

It is pretty easy to prove that there will be a net gain in donations and productivity with the use of the Prospect module. When you present something like that, it makes TPTB look like they are actually saying "NO!" to the ability to raise more money.

[Karenw]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Gulka

I've never accepted "It's not in the budget" as a reason not to get something.

It is pretty easy to prove that there will be a net gain in donations and productivity with the use of the Prospect module. When you present something like that, it makes TPTB look like they are actually saying "NO!" to the ability to raise more money.

I tend to agree; we just haven't yet come up with the right argument to tip the scale in our favor.

[andrea.bbbs]

Boy - that must be one expensive module! Since I am basically clueless - no word from the Rep yet - I am totally in the dark with regard to costs of modules. I think we only have one extra module - Mail - which may now be called Postal Discount or something? I use it to create acknowledgement letters from batches - easier than cranking them out one by one - but if I have 10 letters in a batch it is a lot (except around Xmas and events) so maybe I can "give back" Mail and get a break on Prospect?

Anyway, I am still trying to understand the module from Sarah's description. You can use it to track grants? And it has Action tabs? Does that mean that I can use it for scheduling Report due dates, the next application or LOI deadline, and the like? I had to write something in Access to use for that!

I appreciate all advice, am hoping to hear from the Rep eventually..... and someday I will understand most of what all of you are saying!