DATA MIGRATION FROM RAISER’S EDGE TO SALESFORCE’S NONPROFIT SUCCESS PACK(NPSP)

RAISER EDGE

Raiser Edge is software that is used by Nonprofits to raise funds and to do online marketing. It is helpful for non-profit organization of different scales to operate their office and generate funds. It helps in managing online donation, registration, email communications and targeted fundraising campaigns – to acquire, engage and cultivate donors.

Rather then just being a database it allows staff users to have strong bond with donors and prospects by communicating through emails. It also helps staff in making most of their time by automating tasks, providing simple navigation from one central starting point, and processing donor communications

ADDED BENEFITS OF RAISER’S EDGE SYSTEM.
  • Payment processing options to low transaction fees, security compliance etc
  • Facility to manage fund raise through gift entry, campaign Management etc.
  • Processing of any type of gifts and able to make well-informed decisions with data from easy-to-access reports.

SALESFORCE NPSP

The Nonprofit Success Pack is a managed package installed on top of Salesforce edition. It makes easier for NonProfits to use Salesforce to manage core relationships between individual donors, their households and companies they work for.

This article documents our experience of migrating data from Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce

EXPORTING DATA FROM RAISER'S EDGE SYSTEM.
  • Raiser Edge System provides the functionality to run queries on objects and export CSV files having all the information related to that object.
  • If there is need to make query containing two objects (Parent and Child), then we can also perform that in the query mode of Raiser Edge.
STEPS TO EXPORT DATA FROM RAISER EDGE
  • STEP 1. Go to Raiser Edge Home Page
  • STEP 2. Make query on object whose information we want to export.
  • STEP 3. Run that query.
  • STEP 4. Click on export to export CSV files.
HIGH LEVEL MAPPING OF RAISER’S EDGE OBJECTS TO NPSP OBJECTS (SALESFORCE)
S. No Raiser's Edge Objects NPSP Objects
1 Gifts (Records have different gift types, their names are Cash, Other, Gift-In Kind, MG Pay Cash, Pay Cash,Recurring Gift Pay Cash ) Donation (Gift of different types belongs to Donation 's record types based on the filtration criteria )
2 Gifts( Recurring Gift ) Recurring Donation
3 Donation Split GAU Allocation
4 Donation Fund General Accounting Unit
5 Soft Credits Partial Soft Credit

Note :- This is high level object mapping of Raiser’s Edge Object to NPSP Objects. Some Raiser’s Object get directly mapped with the NPSP Objects and others that do not map directly, for those we come up with a solution of creating small section on opportunity which have fields that contain information related to that child object.

IMPORTING RECORDS IN NPSP OBJECTS
  • After we have exported data from Raiser’s Edge System, next step is to filter out records based on filter criteria to map these objects to different record types of Donations.
  • After filtration of records has been done, we will have separate CSV files belonging to different record types of Donation, Recurring Donation, Partial Soft Credits, GAU Allocation, General Accounting Unit etc
  • We can do Data Import process using different data loading tools available like, Data Loader, Salesforce Import Wizard , Force.com Excel Connector, Data loader.IO, Jitter Bit etc.

BEST PRACTICES FOR MIGRATING DATA FROM RE TO NPSP


  • As we initiate the process of data migration from one system to another, we should have a thorough understanding of object and field level mapping of all the objects in which we are going to import data in data migration process.
  • While inserting records into new system, it is extremely important to identify the ordering of insertion of objects into Salesforce. As a trivial example you will need to insert all the accounts first, and then all contacts so that relationships between contacts and accounts are set up properly. In real situations, the relationships between objects can be fairly complex. Besides the ordering of objects, you will need to insert fields of the same object multiple times (again), so that all the lookups are set up properly.
  • When you insert/ update data, we should cross check if the timezone set in data loader and our local system timezone are same. If it is not same then, there may be issues with date fields, as there will be few hours difference between actual data and inserted data. If it happens then, make timezone same for system and data loader as we have for the target Salesforce Org.
  • Before doing data migration process, it’s always a good practice to deactivate workflows, process builders, triggers if there are any, so that they do not execute while doing data import.

For any additional queries contact sales@astreait.com.