Salesforce Data Migration from Raisers Edge

More and more, we here at Arkus are supporting organizations with the transition from Raiser's Edge (RE), their legacy Non-Profit development CRM, to Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). Here are things to consider and suggested steps to plan the data migration.  

Terminology

First off, when you are talking about the two different CRMs, it’s important to know and understand there’s often different terminology between them. Understanding is the first step in mapping. Although there are many ‘modules’ in Raiser's Edge, the main ones to consider are the following;

‘Constituents’ in RE are the same as Salesforce Accounts and Contacts.  They are identified using a ‘key indicator’ (O or organization, I for Individual). Make sure you have that key indicator in the export. 


‘Campaigns’, ‘Appeals’, and ‘Packages’ in RE are all typically a hierarchy of Campaigns in Salesforce. It really depends on how the organization has been using these in RE, so you need to sit with the organization and determine how they structured the relationship between these in RE in order to determine if a Campaign hierarchy is needed. 


‘Relationships’ in RE translate to a few functions in Salesforce; contact to contact relationships and contact to organization affiliations. 


‘Actions’ in RE are Activities (tasks and events) in Salesforce.


‘Media’ and ‘Constituency Notes’ in RE are notes in Salesforce.


‘Constituent Gifts’ in RE are both Opportunities and Payments in Salesforce. RE will have a ‘Type’; one may be ‘cash’ (opportunity) and the other ‘pay-cash’ (payment).  The trick is to match these together for the records in Salesforce. There isn’t a unique ID matching these records so it’s up the organization to match them up. 


Suggested Steps for Migration

1. The organization exports all metadata and sample set of data from Raiser's Edge. Each table will be it's own CSV file - Contacts, Gifts, Campaigns, Constituents, Relationships, etc. NOTE: This will not be the final extract. This is just for mapping and for identifying the transformation steps that will need to happen.

2. Create mapping instructions for the migration for each table (file) and each field.

3. Review the mapping instructions with the organization to ensure you are making the correct assumptions about where the data will go in Salesforce.

4. The organization does another full export. This is the FINAL export. At this point, the organization should NOT be editing or creating any new records in Raiser's Edge.

5. Do the final transformation and import data into Salesforce.

6. The organization should review the import and spot check records.

7. Work with organization to clean any messy data and merge duplicates.


Other Things to Consider

NPSP creates the name of households, informal, and formal greetings on the Household Account, based on the contact records associated with that account. There are times I’ve encountered a Raiser’s Edge Constituent account level record that has been created without the actual contact associated with it. In those cases, you may encounter ‘Anonymous Households’ created. It’s just one of those ‘clean up’ items you’ll want to watch out for after migration.

Sort keys (Raiser's Edge unique IDs) are really important when exporting all the spreadsheets from Raiser's Edge, basically, any reference to an Account or Contact should be accompanied by this sort key for easy reference between the multiple supporting modules. Key Indicator in Raiser’s Edge identifies if the record is an organization ‘O’ or individual ‘I’. This is another important column to have on each exported spreadsheet.

Give yourself a lot of time for the cleanup (transformation) phase of this process as, from my experience, Raiser's Edge will export a series of records along multiple columns instead of just in rows (as you need to import to Salesforce). For example, if a contact has multiple relationship records with other contacts, the spreadsheet will have each of those different relationships records across in columns repeated.

Finally, there are tools you can purchase that can make the transformation and load of this process easier, but I feel there isn’t a guarantee of catching clean up and mapping accuracy.

A Raiser's Edge data migration, while more time consuming than from other systems, is possible with proper planning and attention to detail. Do you have other recommendations on Raiser's Edge Data Migration? Please feel free to comment below, on our Facebook page, or directly at me on Twitter @LeiferAshley or in the Success Community or Power of Us Hub.