I know that our BBSM Product Team and Dev Team are aware of this issue but am surprised this has not already been documented in an FER (could not find in my search).

We could add ALL RENXT/BBSM clients to this ticket, as ALL of those I've worked with would use the API IF this issue could be resolved.

Problem Statement:
RE NXT API uses RE Giving History to associate donor contacts to funds.

This means that ANY donor who gave any amount of money (even $10) to ANY Fund will be associated with that fund as the donor contact. Meaning they will get donor reports, can log into the donor portal and see the fund, recipient and other info.

I have not worked with ANY client yet who wants to let the API associate donors to funds in BBSM this way. It simply doesn't work for them.

As a result they are having to do manual uploads to do the association which involves a somewhat convoluted process:

Load manual file
Map the manual fields
Reload manual file
Run the API
Unmap manual fields and map api fields
Run the API again

When they get new funds/donors:

Unmap the API fields
Remap the manual fields
Load the manual file
Unmap manual fields and map api fields
Connect the API again

When they get new funds/donors again:

Unmap the API fields
Remap the manual fields
Load the manual file
Unmap manual fields and map api fields
Connect the API again

And again and again...

Using a Custom Attribute that contains a Fund Code of only those funds for which the donor is the "primary contact" seems like it should solve this problem.

Clients understand that this means a rewrite of the API, but, as Colleen from McDaniel said to me today " We are frustrated about being sold a “seamless API” and this is not worth what we paid. It's worth about 1/4 of what we paid since we have to do these manual uploads."


McDaniel's site is https://mcdanielimpact.academicworks.com


Other clients that have mentioned this recently (most are not in the shard dropdown):

Carroll College

Coe College

Fanshawe College

Polk State College

University of New Haven

University of Portland

Winston-Salem Foundation

York College of Pennsylvania

Thanks for your consideration!