Hierarchies in Raiser's Edge

When doing the important work of cleaning up your data in Raiser's Edge, it helps to organize your efforts around three critical hierarchies.

Hierarchies in relational databases bring processing power and speed to a complex set of data. In this post we'll be looking at these hierarchies in Raiser's Edge, but there are versions of these built into whatever system you use.

Let's take a closer look at these hierarchies.  

1. Records, Tabs, and Fields
   These are the basic building blocks Raiser's Edge database view is built around (in web view these become records, tiles, and fields). This hierarchy organizes your data in a logical, searchable way. When you build reports, queries, exports and other outputs you are simply answering questions the system needs in order to give you what you told it you wanted. You are saying, "Hey RE. Go to these types of records. Then look on these tabs. Then dive deeper into these fields and tell me what you see." 
2. Constituent Codes
   A constituent code represents a constituent's most important relationship to you as an organization. In Raiser's Edge database view constituent codes are stored on the Bio 2 tab. The code in the first row of the constituent code area is considered the record's primary constituent code. In other words, it tells you the record's most important relationship. If I'm a current board member at your organization but I was first a volunteer and then became a staff member, you would want to see my constituent codes in hierarchical order on my record with board member in the primary position, staff second, and volunteer third. The order in which constituent codes are listed on a record can impact reports and dashboards that show giving by constituent codes. For those of you using web view, constituent codes are located at the top right of a record.
3. Campaigns, Funds, and Appeals
   Campaigns, funds, and appeals are your development structure in Raiser's Edge. Ideally it should translate the fundraising initiatives your team is working on in the real world into RE-speak. I say "ideally" because many of the organizations I work with don't have their development structure by way of campaigns, funds, and appeals setup to translate real-world work into Raiser's Edge. This usually means they've over complicated this hierarchy. Think of campaigns as the overarching reason for raising money (capital, events, scholarships), funds as the accounting buckets gifts fall into (the "new building" fund, a specific event, specific scholarships), and appeals as the vehicles or solicitation types you used to bring in the gifts (personal solicitation, ticket sales, fundraising letter). When this hierarchy is setup properly, you should be able to see at any point in the fiscal year the total raised by appeals roll up and reconcile with the total amount by funds and the total amount raised by funds roll up and reconcile with the total amount raised by campaigns.

These three hierarchies give you a built-in outline or map that will guide your system cleanup efforts.