Exporting Raiser's Edge for CiviCRM¶

You can export all of the data using the Raiser's Edge Export tool. You'll see it on the left toolbar when you first enter Raiser's Edge.

From the tool, you will create a number of exports. When you first create an export, you'll be asked a number of questions, including Export Type (Constituent, Gift, etc.), a checkbox to include inactive records (check this), and an export file type (select CSV).

For the Export type, start with Constituent. This is the "base table" - all records will be joined relative to it.

Constituent Export¶

Create a new export.
Tab 1. General:
- Include all records.
- Head of Household processing: Export both constituents separately.
- Check all of the "Include these Constitutents": Inactive, deceased, no valid address

Tab 2: Output.
First, expand the "Constituent Information" in the left pane, and add every field to the export. Do the export (as a CSV).

Subsequent constituent exports:
Skip these tables:

• Spouse
• Gifts
• First Gift, Last gift, Largest Gift
• Actions
• First Action, Last Action
• Summary Information

Open each CSV file in Excel or similar. Sort each field by ascending AND descending to see if any data is stored in that field. If every record has no data or the same data, delete it - it's not being tracked in the current system. If you see only one or two records with a particular field, they're also probably fine to go, but check with the client first.

Next, strip out all of the constituent information except for primary/foreign keys. I like to keep in First/Middle/Last name just for human readability though. So leave in those three fields, plus any field with the word "ID" in it. This is your base constituent info, and will be in every other export you do.

Now comes the fun part! Export each table, one at a time, by adding those fields to an export that already includes the base constituent info.

For one-to-many relationships, the system will ask you how many instances of the information to export. I default to 12, then look over the data to see how many are actually used, then re-export with a higher or lower number.

I also remove records that don't contain the relevant data. For instance, when exporting Solicit Codes, I sort by the first Solicit Code. Then I scroll down past the folks that have Solicit Codes to those who have none, and delete the rows for folks who have none.

Note that for simplicity's sake, RE contains many views of the tables that, if you export them all, you'll have redundant data. There's no need to export "First Gift", "Last Gift", or "Largest Gift" - simply export all gifts. Likewise for "Preferred Address".

When exporting one-to-many tables that themselves contain one-to-many tables (e.g. Addresses contains Phones), do NOT select 12 of each! That means you're exporting 144 phone numbers per record. First determine the maximum number of addresses being tracked, re-export with that number, THEN export with phone numbers. Also, it's reasonable to export with 5 phone numbers per address.

NOTE: Letters sent is incomplete, there's more than 12 letters to some folks!

GIFTS is related to constituent on the last column (Constituent System Record ID)