Groupable Raiser User Guide – Groupable -- Help Center

Raiser is an add-on. To subscribe, email support@groupable.com.

What is Raiser?

Raiser is Groupable's fundraising app. This guide is for the office staff of a group (the parent organization that oversees all of your locals, such as a Grand Lodge) who record donations, keep donor records, send thank-you letters, and run fundraising reports. After reading it you will be able to:

Find your way around Raiser's funds, campaigns, and batches.
Enter donations by hand, or import them from a bank lockbox file.
Find donors and add new ones.
Set up funds, campaigns, categories, and the other lists Raiser uses.
Write letter templates and print letters from the Mail Room.
Run Raiser's reports.
Record pledges, if your group has pledges turned on.

Raiser keeps its records in a few layers:

A fund is the money you raise for, such as a charity fund.
A campaign is one period of giving to a fund, such as a year. A fund can have only one active campaign at a time.
A batch is a group of donations you enter together, such as one day's mail or one bank deposit. Batches belong to a campaign.
A donation is one gift from one donor. Each donation is split across one or more categories (and their subcategories), which say what the money is for.

Getting Started

Opening Raiser

Click the app switcher (the grid icon at the top right).
Click Raiser. It carries a Beta badge.

Raiser opens on your fund's active campaign. If no campaign is active, it opens on the fund's Overview. If your group has no fund yet, it opens on the Funds list.

If Raiser is the only Groupable app you use, there is no app switcher. Raiser opens when you sign in.

If Raiser is not in the app switcher, Raiser is not turned on for your group, or your access does not include it. Email support@groupable.com.

The Raiser Menu

To open the menu, click the menu icon (three short lines) at the top left of the page. The menu has:

Home
Donors: find a donor, or add one.
The fund's own menu, shown under the fund's name while you are on one of its pages: Overview, Categories, Solicitation Types, Reports, Mail Room, Letter Templates, and Search Donations. Click Reports to open a list of the fund's reports in the menu.
Funds: every fund your group has.
Contributor Types and Organization Types, for users with Raiser Admin access.

The menu has no Batches or Pledges item. Open batches from the fund's Overview or from a campaign page (see Donations and Batches below). Open pledges from the donor's page (see Pledges below).

What You Can Do Depends on Your Access

Your Groupable administrator sets your Raiser access.

Your access	What you can do
Raiser read access for the group	See donors, funds, campaigns, batches, donations, and reports. Search donations. Print letters. Add the people in a search to your audience.
Raiser write access for the group	Everything above, plus: create batches, add, edit, and delete donations in an open batch, close batches, add donors, and add or edit pledges.
Raiser Admin for the group	The actions above, plus: set up funds, campaigns, categories, subcategories, solicitation types, contributor types, and organization types; upload lockbox files; reopen, move, and delete batches; and move donations between batches.
Raiser read access for your own local or district	Open the fund's Reports page and run its reports for your own locals. Raiser opens on that page for you.

If a button or menu item in this guide does not appear for you, your access does not include it. Ask your group's administrator if you think you need it.

Donations and Batches

Creating a Batch

You add batches to the fund's active campaign. You need Raiser write access.

Open Raiser. It opens on the active campaign.
In the Batches table, click Create A New Batch. It is a green plus sign in a circle at the top right of the table. Hover over it to see the label.
Raiser fills in today's date as the Batch Number and the Open Date. Change them if you need to. A new batch cannot take a batch number already used in the campaign.
Click Save.

You can also create a batch from the fund's Overview: click the menu icon (three short lines) at the top right of the fund's card, then click Create A New Batch. The same menu has View Batches and Active Campaign.

Adding a Donation

A batch must be open to take donations.

Open the batch. Click its number in the Batches table.
In the Donations table, click Add Donation. It is a green plus sign in a circle at the top right of the table.
In Donor, type the donor's name or member number, and pick the donor from the list. To add someone who is not in Groupable yet, see Adding a New Donor While Entering a Donation below.
Pick the Local. The list shows the donor's own locals.
Pick the Contributor Type and the Organization Type.
Check the Date. It starts as today.
Pick Cash: choose yes for cash, or no for a check.
If the gift is a check, enter the Check #. It is required for every gift that is not cash.
Pick the Solicitation Type: the mailing or appeal that brought in the gift.
Type any Donation Notes.
On the first line at the bottom, pick the Category first. Then enter that line's Amount.
To split the gift across more categories, click into the next line, pick its Category, and enter its Amount. A new blank line appears each time.
Leave Amount at the top blank. Raiser sets it to the total of the lines. If you do fill it in, it must equal the total of the lines.
Click Post.

Pick each line's category before you enter its amount. A line with an amount and no category will not save (groupable/m2#391 tracks this). A line left at zero is dropped when you post.

Adding a New Donor While Entering a Donation

On the Add Donation form, check Create New Donor.
Enter the First Name and the Last Name / Organization.
Pick the donor's Local.
Check Widow if the donor is a widow.
Enter the address: Address 1, Address 2, City, State, and Zip / Postal Code. Last name, address 1, city, zip, and state are required.
Finish the donation as above and click Post.

Raiser adds the donor to your membership records in Groupable|M2, with your site's default active status. If you picked a local, the donor is added to it as a donor (or as a widow).

Working With Donations in an Open Batch

Each row in the Donations table has icons at the left. Hover over an icon to see its label.

The pencil (Edit Donation) opens the donation's form.
The arrow (Move Donation) moves the donation to another open batch in the same campaign. Raiser Admin only.
The red trash can (Delete Donation) deletes it.

A row highlighted in yellow has a problem that must be fixed before the batch can close, such as a missing donor or a missing check number. Open it with the pencil. The form shows what is wrong.

In a closed batch the pencil and the trash can are gone. Click the amount to see the donation's details.

The Batch Menu

Click the menu icon (three short lines) at the top right of the Batch card. What you see depends on your access and on whether the batch is open.

Menu item	What it does	Who sees it
Edit Batch	Change the batch number and the open date.	Raiser write access
Upload Lockbox	Import donations from a file. See Importing a Lockbox File below.	Raiser Admin, open batch
Batch Summary Report	Totals by category for this batch, with a print button.	Everyone
Batch Detail Report	Every donation in this batch, with a print button.	Everyone
Close Batch	Close the batch.	Raiser write access, open batch with no problem rows
Delete Batch	Delete the batch and every donation in it.	Raiser Admin, open batch or empty closed batch
Reopen Batch	Open a closed batch again.	Raiser Admin, closed batch in the active campaign
Move Batch	Move a closed batch to another campaign of the same fund.	Raiser Admin, closed batch in the active campaign. For a closed batch in another campaign, use the arrow on its row in the Batches table.

The Batch card shows the fund, the campaign, the batch number, its status, the dates it opened and closed, the Donation Total, and the Donation Count. The Batch Notes card beside it holds notes about the batch.

Closing a Batch

Fix every row highlighted in yellow. Raiser will not close a batch with a problem row. It shows "Donation errors must be corrected before batch can be closed."
In the batch menu, click Close Batch.
Enter the Close Date.
Click Close.

Once a batch is closed, nobody can add, change, or delete its donations, or upload a lockbox file to it, until a Raiser Admin reopens it. To reopen it, use Reopen Batch in the batch menu. Only a batch in the fund's active campaign can be reopened.

Closed batches count. A campaign's total counts only its closed batches. So do the Donations by Local, Donation Reports, Participation by Local, and Participation by District reports. Close each batch when its donations are all entered.

Importing a Lockbox File

If your bank sends you a lockbox file of the gifts it received, a Raiser Admin can import it into an open batch.

What the File Needs

A comma-separated file (.csv, or .txt), with one gift per line and the same number of columns on every line.
Three columns are required: Name, Member Number, and Amount.
The other columns you can use are a date column, Category, Subcategory, Payment Type, Local Number, Check Number, Batch Number, Solicitation Type, and Note. Mark any other column Ignore.
Include a Category column, so each gift gets a category.
A heading line at the top is fine. Raiser skips the first line when its Amount is not a number.

Steps

Open the batch. It must be open.
In the batch menu, click Upload Lockbox.
Click Browse and choose the file.
Raiser shows an Import Preview of the file. Above each column, pick what the column holds. Pick Ignore for a column you do not want.
Click Upload.

When the import works, Raiser shows how many donations it imported, and how many of them are invalid. Invalid donations are highlighted in yellow in the batch. Fix each one with the pencil before you close the batch.

How Raiser Matches Each Line

Column	How Raiser uses it
Member Number	Finds the donor in your group. If no member has that number, or the number is 9999999, the donation comes in with no donor and is invalid. The name from the file shows on the donation form, so you can pick the right donor.
Name	Kept as the name the bank reported. It is not used to find the donor.
Category	Matched to an active category of the fund by its code and name written as "code - name", or by its name alone, or by its code alone.
Subcategory	Matched the same way, within the line's category. With no category on the line, Raiser looks in all the fund's subcategories and takes the category from the match. With no subcategory, Raiser uses the category's default subcategory.
Local Number	Matched to an active local by its number. With no local number, or a number that matches no local, Raiser uses the donor's own local. 9999999 means unknown: the gift comes in with no local and must be fixed in the batch.
Payment Type	"Cash" marks the gift as cash. Anything else is a check, which needs a Check Number.
Solicitation Type	Matched to one of the fund's solicitation types, the same way as a category.
Note	Saved as a note on the donation.
The date and Batch Number	Not used. Every imported gift gets the batch's open date.

Each imported gift gets your group's default contributor type and default organization type.

What Stops an Import

Raiser imports nothing, and shows a message, when:

A required column is not chosen, a column is chosen twice, or a line has a different number of columns from the others.
A category, subcategory, or solicitation type on any line does not match, or a local number matches no local and the donor has no local of their own. The message names the value and the line.
A subcategory does not belong to the category on the same line.
A category is named with no subcategory, and the category has no default subcategory.
An amount on any gift line is not a number. The message starts "ArgumentError while parsing CSV".
The file has no gifts in it.

Fix the file or your categories, and upload it again.

Donors

Finding Donors

In the Raiser menu, click Donors.
Fill in what you are looking for under Find Donors. Leave a box blank to include everyone.
Click Find.

Box	What it does
Donor Status	All donors; Has given; Never given; Gave last year, not this year (LYBUNT); or Gave some year, not this year (SYBUNT).
Fund and Campaign	Count only gifts to this fund or campaign.
Category and Solicitation Type	Count only gifts in this category, or from this solicitation type.
Last Name / Organization and Member Number	Look for one donor.
Donation Date From and Donation Date To	Count only gifts in these dates. Enter both or neither.
Last Donation On or After and Last Donation On or Before	Find donors whose most recent gift falls in these dates.
Locals and Districts	Only donors in these locals or districts.
Group Status and Local Status	Only members with these statuses. Active statuses are picked to begin with.
Solicitable Only	Leave out members marked not to be mailed or not to be solicited.

For LYBUNT and SYBUNT, "this year" means the dates you enter in Donation Date From and Donation Date To. If you leave the dates blank, pick a fund. Raiser then uses the fund's current campaign, the one whose dates include today:

LYBUNT finds donors who gave in the campaign before it, but not in the current one.
SYBUNT finds donors who have given to the fund, but not in the current campaign.

With no dates and no fund, both find nobody.

The results show each donor's member number, status, address, local, first and last gift, number of gifts, Total Given, and Average Per Donation. Raiser shows up to 500 donors.

To put the people you found into your audience in Groupable|M2, click Add Members to Audience instead of Find. Raiser shows "Added to Buffer" and a View Audience link, which opens your audience.

Adding a Donor

In the Raiser menu, click Donors.
Click Add Donor. It is a green plus sign in a circle at the top right of the Donors table.
Fill in the name, local, widow box, and address, as in Adding a New Donor While Entering a Donation above.
Click Save.

You need Raiser write access.

The Donor Page

Click a donor's name anywhere in Raiser to open their page. It shows:

Their name, contact information, contact preferences, and bio data.
Their Membership Status in each group on your site.
Tiles for Last Donation, Largest Donation, Average Donation, Total Donations, Donor For, Avg Per Year, and Donations Past Year.
Notes, for fundraising notes about the donor.
Charts of their gifts by year, by category, and by solicitation type.
A Donations table of every gift: date, fund, campaign, batch, and amount. Click an amount to see the gift's details.
A Pledges table, if your group has pledges turned on.

If you also use Groupable|M2 and can see the member's full profile, the View in m2 button at the top opens it there.

Funds, Campaigns, and Lists

Setting these up needs Raiser Admin access. Everyone with Raiser read access for the group can see funds, campaigns, categories, and solicitation types. Contributor types and organization types are for Raiser Admins only.

Funds

The Funds list (in the Raiser menu) shows each fund's status, its number of campaigns, and its total donations. To add a fund, click the green plus sign in a circle. To change one, click its pencil. A fund's Letter Tax Paragraph is the text that fills the [FUND_PARAGRAPH] merge field in letters.

A fund's Overview shows its charts, its top 100 donors, and its Campaigns table. The menu icon (three short lines) at the top right of the fund's card has Edit Fund, Reports, the active campaign and its batches, Manage Categories, and Manage Solicitation Types.

Campaigns

A fund can have only one Active campaign at a time, so you can add a campaign only when the fund has none. To end the current campaign:

Close all of its batches.
Open the campaign. Click the menu icon (three short lines) at the top right of its card, then click Edit Campaign.
Set the Status to Inactive and enter the End Date.
Click Save. Raiser records you as the person who closed it.

To add the new campaign:

Open the fund's Overview.
Click New Campaign, the green plus sign in a circle above the Campaigns table.
Enter its Name and Start Date. Leave the End Date blank until you end the campaign.
Leave the Status at Active.
Click Save.

A campaign can be made Inactive only when all of its batches are closed. An inactive campaign needs an end date.
New batches go into the active campaign.
A campaign can be deleted only when it has no donations.

Categories and Subcategories

Categories say what the money is for. Each category has one or more subcategories. On a donation you pick a subcategory, shown with its category.

Open the fund, then click Categories in the Raiser menu.
To add a category, click the green plus sign in a circle. Enter its Code, Name, and Status, and click Save.
To see or add a category's subcategories, click the list icon on the category's row. Hover over it to see Manage Subcategories.

Each category can have one Default subcategory. A lockbox line with a category but no subcategory goes to the default. To make a subcategory the default, click the green check icon on its row (hover to see Set Default). An Inactive subcategory is not offered on new donations. An Inactive category is not matched by a lockbox import. A subcategory can be deleted only when no donation or pledge uses it. A category can be deleted only when it has no subcategories and no donation or pledge uses it.

Solicitation Types

A solicitation type is the mailing or appeal that brought in a gift. Each fund has its own list. Open the fund, then click Solicitation Types in the Raiser menu. Add, edit, set the default, and delete them the same way as subcategories. A solicitation type can be deleted only when no donation uses it.

Contributor Types and Organization Types

These lists are for your whole group, not one fund. Every donation has one of each. Open them from the Raiser menu. Add, edit, set the default, and delete them the same way as subcategories. The defaults are used for lockbox imports. A type can be deleted only when no donation uses it.

Letters

Raiser prints thank-you letters from templates you write. Each fund has one template for each kind of letter:

Annual Letters: one letter for each donor's total giving in a year.
Donation Letters: a letter for each gift, or for each donor's gifts added together.
Pledge Acknowledgement Letters and Pledge Completion Letters, if your group has pledges turned on.

Writing a Letter Template

Open the fund, then click Letter Templates in the Raiser menu.
Click the tab for the kind of letter.
Type the letter in Body. To fill in a donor's details, type a merge field from the Merge Fields list at the right, with its square brackets, for example [FIRST_NAME].
To add a signature, upload a picture of it under Signature, and type [SIGNATURE] where it should go. Without an uploaded signature, [SIGNATURE] prints as typed, so leave it out.
Click Save.

Every letter can use: [PRESENT_DATE], [FUND], [FUND_PARAGRAPH], [FULL_NAME], [FIRST_NAME], [MIDDLE_NAME], [LAST_NAME], [NAME_PREFIX], [NAME_SUFFIX], [TITLE], [GL_NUMBER] (the member number), [ADDRESS_1], [ADDRESS_2], [CITY], [STATE], [ZIP], and [COUNTRY]. Each kind adds its own:

Letter	Its own merge fields
Annual Letters	[YEAR], [AMOUNT]
Donation Letters	[DATE], [CAMPAIGN], [AMOUNT]
Pledge Acknowledgement Letters	[PLEDGE_AMOUNT], [PLEDGE_PAID], [PLEDGE_FIRST_PAYMENT]
Pledge Completion Letters	[PLEDGE_AMOUNT], [PLEDGE_PAID], [PLEDGE_FINAL_PAYMENT]

[PLEDGE_FIRST_PAYMENT] fills in the pledge's most recent payment, not its first.

Raiser will not save a template with a merge field that is not on its list. When a donor has nothing for a merge field, Raiser leaves it out of that letter.

Printing Letters From the Mail Room

Open the fund, then click Mail Room in the Raiser menu.
Click the tab for the kind of letter.
Fill in the search (see the table below), and click Search.
Check the Recipients list.
Click Print to make one PDF with one letter per page. Or click Add to Audience to add the recipients to your audience in Groupable|M2.

Letter	Search
Annual Letters	Year and Minimum Amount. Finds each donor whose gifts, in batches opened that year, add up to at least the minimum. The year starts as last year until April 15, then this year. The minimum starts at $250.
Donation Letters	Campaign (or all), Batch Opened From and Batch Opened To (both needed), Minimum Amount, and Aggregate Member Donations. Without the aggregate box, each gift gets its own letter. With it, each donor gets one letter for their gifts added together. The minimum applies to each gift, before gifts are added together.
Pledge Acknowledgement Letters	Start Date and End Date. Finds pledges that start in those dates.
Pledge Completion Letters	Start Date and End Date. Finds pledges paid in full, with nothing written off, whose last payment falls in those dates.

Pledge letters go only to donors with a home address on file.

The Preview at the bottom shows the template filled in for the first recipient, or with sample details. It is close to the printed letter, not exact. To change the template, click the pencil at the top right of the Preview.

Reports

To see the list of reports with a description of each, open the fund's Overview, click the menu icon (three short lines) at the top right of the fund's card, and click Reports. You can also open each report from Reports in the Raiser menu.

Report	What it shows
Donor Stats	Lapsed donors: LYBUNT (gave last year, not this year) or SYBUNT (gave some year, not this year), for a category and dates you choose.
Consecutive Campaign Donors	Donors who gave in 3 to 4, 5 to 9, or 10 or more campaigns in a row, counting back from the campaign before the newest one.
Donations by Local	Every donation from a campaign's closed batches in a date range, grouped by district, local, and solicitation type, with subtotals.
Donation Reports	Dollar totals from a campaign's closed batches, by category or subcategory on one side, and by batch, month, type, donor, local, or district on the other. Dollars outside your choices show as Other.
Participation by Local	Members, contributors, and contributions by contributor type, participation, and dollars from a campaign's closed batches, one row per local, with district totals.
Participation by District	The same, one row per district. It shows when your access includes districts.
Pledge Late Payments, Pledge Reminders, Pledge Completions, Pledge Payments, and Pledges Receivable	See Pledges below.

Search Donations (in the fund's menu) finds individual gifts. You can search by campaign, category, solicitation type, last name, member number, check number, a smallest and largest amount, the dates the batch opened, locals, and districts. Fill in at least one box; Raiser will not run an empty search. Check Show Donor Totals to add a table of each donor's total. When the search finds gifts, click Add to Audience to add their donors to your audience.

Saving or printing a report table. Most report tables have buttons above them to copy the table, save it as Excel, CSV, or PDF, or print it. The menu icon (three short lines) above a table shows or hides its columns.

Pledges

A pledge is a donor's promise to give an amount over time, in installments. Pledges show in Raiser only when Groupable has turned them on for your group. To have them turned on, email support@groupable.com.

Adding a Pledge

You need Raiser write access.

Open the donor's page.
In the Pledges table, click Add Pledge. It is a green plus sign in a circle at the top right of the table.
Pick the Fund.
Enter the pledge Amount.
Enter the Date of the first installment.
Pick the Frequency: Annually, Semiannually, Quarterly, Bimonthly, Monthly, Weekly, or Custom.
Enter the Installment Count: how many payments.
Type any Comments.
On the first line at the bottom, pick a Category and a Subcategory, and enter the Percentage of the pledge that goes there. Add more lines the same way. The percentages must add up to 100%.
Click Post.

Raiser splits the amount into equal installments, one each period from the first date. Any cents left over go on the first installment. With Custom, Raiser makes no installments.

After you post, the fund, amount, date, frequency, and installment count cannot be changed.

Viewing and Editing a Pledge

The donor's Pledges table lists each pledge's date, frequency, installments, amount, and status. Click the open icon at the end of a row to see the pledge: its total, amount paid, progress, how it is split, and each installment with what was paid on it.

To edit an Active pledge, click its pencil. You can change the Status, the Comments, and the category lines. To write off what is left, enter the Write Off Amount and the Write Off Date.

Set the Status to Inactive to stop a pledge.
Raiser sets Paid In Full by itself once the amount paid reaches the pledge amount. If you choose Paid In Full before then, Raiser changes it back to Active when you save.

Recording a Pledge Payment

Raiser does not have a screen for recording a payment against a pledge today. A donation you add in a batch is not linked to a pledge, so the pledge's amount paid does not change. If you need to record pledge payments, email support@groupable.com.

Pledge Reports

Open the fund's Reports page.

Report	What it shows
Pledge Late Payments	Active pledges with an installment at least 60 days past due, as of today.
Pledge Reminders	Payment reminder slips to print, for active pledges with an installment due in the month you pick.
Pledge Completions	Pledges that finished paying (Completed Pledges) or are scheduled to finish (Open Pledges) in the dates you enter.
Pledge Payments	Every installment due in the dates you enter, with the payments applied to it. An unpaid installment shows no payment.
Pledges Receivable	Pledges still owed and pledges written off, split by the categories each pledge goes to, and every donation to the fund in the dates you enter, split by its own categories.

Tips / Good to Know

Close batches when they are done. Campaign totals and most reports count closed batches only.
Category first, then amount. On Add Donation, pick each line's category before you type its amount.
Deleting is limited on purpose. A campaign, category, subcategory, solicitation type, contributor type, or organization type that a donation uses cannot be deleted. Make it Inactive instead.
Deleting an open batch deletes its donations. Raiser asks you to confirm first.

Troubleshooting

I don't see Raiser in the app switcher. Raiser is not turned on for your group, or your access does not include it. Email support@groupable.com.

Raiser opens on the Reports page. Your access is for your own local or district. You can run the fund's reports for your locals.

I can't add a donation. The batch is closed, or your access is read only. A closed batch has no Add Donation button. A Raiser Admin can reopen it.

My donation will not save. Look for a line with an amount and no category, and pick its category. Check that the top Amount is blank or equals the total of the lines, and that a check has a Check #.

The Total on Add Donation looks doubled. This is a known display problem (groupable/m2#391). The donation saves with the right amount. Check it in the batch after you post.

I can't close a batch. One or more donations have a problem. Fix each row highlighted in yellow, then close the batch.

A lockbox import stopped. Read the message. It names the value and the line that did not match. Fix the file, or add the missing category or solicitation type, and upload again.

A campaign's total is lower than its batches. The total counts closed batches only. Close the open batches.

I don't see Pledges on a donor's page. Pledges are not turned on for your group. Email support@groupable.com.

Glossary

Group: The parent organization that oversees all locals, districts, and regions, such as a Grand Lodge.

Local: An individual unit within your organization where members hold their membership, such as a lodge.

Fund: The money you raise for, such as a charity fund.

Campaign: One period of giving to a fund. A fund has one active campaign at a time.

Batch: A group of donations entered together. A batch is open while you enter donations and closed when you are done.

Category and Subcategory: What a donation's money is for. A donation can be split across several.

Solicitation Type: The mailing or appeal that brought in a gift.

Lockbox file: A file from your bank listing the gifts it received.

Audience: Your working list of members in Groupable|M2.

LYBUNT and SYBUNT: Donors who gave last year but not this year, and donors who gave in some year but not this year.

Pledge: A donor's promise to give an amount over time, in installments.