The document summarizes Dan Lantz and Ken Swift's journey in implementing the Aqueduct data warehousing solution to access data stored in their Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT CRM. It describes how they moved from a hosted to on-premise and back to hosted CRM configuration, their challenges with reporting, and their process of setting up Aqueduct including building Power BI visualizations to analyze gift officer, portfolio, proposal and other data. It concludes by outlining their plans to further extend Aqueduct's capabilities.

1. OURJOURNEY
Dan Lantz, Children’s Minnesota Foundation
Ken Swift, Zuri Group
Moving data from vendor clouds to our desktops for on-premise data analytics solutions

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Presenters

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Agenda
• Introductions
• How we got here? Both my journey developing with Blackbaud and our journey implementing Aqueduct
• Introducing Aqueduct
• Our process implementing Aqueduct
• Review Children's Minnesota Foundation Data Visualizations in Power BI
• What's Next? Extending Aqueduct

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Afewnotesaswegetstarted:
This presentation highlights our journey towards finding a more advanced reporting and data solution
Let's review a few bits of technical jargon/acronyms used:
• CRM
• On-premise
• Vendor cloud
• API / Blackbaud SKY API
• RE NXT

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DanLantz,Children'sMinnesotaFoundation
• Director of Foundation Operations
• Joined Children's Minnesota in 2013
• Supervise the Strategic Information Management Team and the Prospect Management Team
• Other duties include managing vendor relationships regarding technology and data systems
• Previously worked in a similar role in higher education nonprofit at the U of M Foundation
• Past experience includes nonprofit operations which included project mgmt. and application
development, specifically RE.API development, web development and building business intelligence
solutions using SQL Server Analysis, Integration and Reporting Services

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KenSwift,ZuriGroup
• President of CRM Services
• Joined Zuri Group in 2014 to build a CRM Service Practice
• Previously managed Enterprise Technology Service at Blackbaud for 8+ years.
• Extensive IT software development career prior to becoming a consultant
• Always looking for ways to solve business challenges through the use of technology.

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Blackbaudandmyjourneyfromdeveloper
tomanager/director
2006 – Hired by U
of Minnesota
Foundation as
ColdFusion
developer
2008 – Partnering
with Blackbaud
implemented
Business
Intelligence to
support a
university-wide
campaign
2009 – Promoted
to Application
Development
Manager
2010 – Presented
at BBCON
regarding our
implementation
of BI (SSRS,
SSAS, SSIS) and
front end Excel
reports
2010 –Took RE
API developer
class at
Blackbaud,
Daniel’s Island SC
2011 – Using
Coldfusion, RE API
and RE 7
developed a
system to enter
proposals and
contact report
online
2011 –Presented
at BBCON
regarding our
contact report
and proposal
solution
2013 – Hired by
Children’s
Minnesota
Foundation
2019 – a great
idea is born
during a
conversation at
the 2019
Nashville,TN
Blackbaud
Conference for
Nonprofits
(bbcon)
2020 – Promoted
to Director of
Foundation
Operations
2021 – Aqueduct
becomes
available. Power
BI, and Power BI
Report Builder are
implemented
2021/2022 –
Visualizations
developed and
released to
Foundation
customers

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Fromhosted,toon-premise,andbackagain
2013 - Raiser's Edge
hosted by
Blackbaud
Virtualization
technology
becomes common
2015 - Raiser's Edge
7 brought back on-
premise
Substantial
partnership
conversation and
Hospital and
Foundation
Leadership changes
2019 – a great idea
is born during a
conversation at
the 2019
Nashville, TN
Blackbaud
Conference for
Nonprofits (bbcon)
Data visualization
tools are readily
available (Power
BI,Tableu, Qlik)
2019 - Move back
to hosted with
Blackbaud with
Raiser's Edge NXT
Substantial
worldwide
pandemic - COVID :(
2021 – Aqueduct
becomes available.
Power BI, and
Power BI Report
Builder are
implemented
Trend towards use
of vendor clouds
and data availability
through API's
2021/2022 –
Visualizations
developed and
released to
Foundation
customers

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Whydowewantadatawarehouse?
Our goals:
• Provide both summary data and the detailed data behind it to make data-driven decisions
• Faster response times
• Interactivity between data (date filter, primary gift solicitor, proposal type)
• Gain information on slowly changing dimensions
• Eliminate the manual effort behind the creation of a multi-page (15) Excel report combining data from
multiple on gift officer actions, proposals and portfolios

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OurAqueducttechnicalchallenges
• Sky API token management
• Sky API error handling
• Sky API performance with millions of records (i.e. gift custom fields)
• Credential management for multiple Blackbaud Sky API based products
• Deploying to Azure and Azure SQL
• Need to know how Aqueduct is running across many different clients

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WhynotjustusereportsinRENXT?
• We were presented with several challenges during our search for a way
to create complex interactive reports from data stored in RE NXT:
• Complex interactive reports weren't easily available via RE NXT lists,
Report Builder or Crystal Reports.
• We also discovered that not every field in RE NXT was available.
• RE NXT does have info on some slowly changing dimensions (prospect
status for example) but it isn’t available to export

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Overcomingourchallenge. Thecasefor
Aqueduct.
Aqueduct's key requirements
• Channel nonprofit data anywhere, anyway, and anytime:
• Host on-premise, in your own private cloud or a public cloud (i.e. Azure, AWS)
• Use any reporting or analytics of your choice; such as Power BI, Tableau, Qlik
• Schedule your data refresh as often as desired

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OurprocesstowardsimplementingAqueduct
A small team of five from both Children's Minnesota Foundation (3) and Zuri (2) met weekly to accomplish
two tasks:
1. Create components needed to run Aqueduct. Our partnership with our ITS Team was essential.
Strongly consider the cloud hosted option.
2. Determine what visualizations would be included in phase I. Using existing multi page (15) Excel
report we began to wireframe the visualizations needed for Power BI.

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Ouron-premiseAqueductcomponents
Virtual server created​ to run
Aqueduct on premise.
SQL Server database created
or our enterprise version
of SQL Server. Power BI
installed on server and access
via a web page.
Installers, RE API tokens, and
logs available on Aqueduct web
site.

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AccessingthePowerBIVisualizations/Reports

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Visualizations:PortfolioandProposalSummary
Filter by prospect
classification
Display % of
prospects within a
prospect
classification
Summary info
on portfolio
and proposals
linked to gift
officers
Visualizations
connecting portfolio
prospects,
fundraisers,
proposals and
prospect
classification
Select single or group
of fundraiser(s)

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Anddetail...

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Visualizations:ProposalDetailGrid

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Visualizations:PortfolioandProposal
SummaryGrid

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Visualizations:ActionSummary

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Visualizations:ProspectInformation

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What'snext?ExtendingAqueduct
• Here's some of the ideas we've come with so far:
• Foundation Reports - Power BI Report Builder - paginated report development
• Regular data flow to DonorSearch
• Gaining expertise on developing Power BI reports/data so that in-house we can use the data within the
data warehouse to build ad-hoc reports
• Slowly changing dimensions
• Grateful Patient

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Contactinfo
Dan Lantz
• Email: dan.lantz@childrensmn.org
• URL: childrensmn.org
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/redeftboy/
• Twitter: @redeftboy
Ken Swift
• Email: ken@zurigroup.com
• URL: zurigroup.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethswift/
More info on RE NXT products from the Zuri Group can be found at https://labs.zurigroup.com/aqueduct/

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Questions?Insights?

25. THANK YOU!