Success Story | Managing a Consolidated Raiser’s Edge: Lessons from AdventHealth

Imagine six families all moving into one home. Sound challenging?

For the six hospital foundations that make up AdventHealth East Florida Division (AdventHealth), this type of challenge is all too familiar.

Headquartered in Orange City, Florida, the AdventHealth East Florida Division is the largest hospital system in the region, comprising seven hospitals with a total of 1,397 beds in Daytona Beach, DeLand, Orange City, New Smyrna Beach, Palm Coast and Tavares.

In 2020, a decision was made to consolidate their six different Raiser’s Edge NXT (RE NXT) instances into a single shared instance. And while there was no fighting over bedrooms, cupboards, and closets, this major consolidation presented a whole list of data governance issues for AdventHealth to tackle.

Desperately in Need of a Housekeeper

Data hygiene and governance are pain points for many organizations. That pain escalates dramatically when six different organizations share a database without shared strategies.

AdventHealth’s newly consolidated RE NXT system suffered from an overload of codes and structures. Data entry staff struggled to find what they needed and lacked clear guidelines. Each foundation operated under its own processes that didn’t all match or adhere to best practice system usage. 

“Having six different campuses using one system had resulted in various different ways of inputting data which made it difficult to pull reporting results accurately,” noted Mabel Valdivia, Executive Director of AdventHealth Waterman Foundation.

Recognizing that they weren’t going to be able to solve these issues on their own, AdventHealth’s foundation leaders sought external expertise to guide their teams. The goal was to strike a balance between meeting the distinct needs of each foundation and interjecting data standards and consistency into system usage.

In the Spring of 2024, AdventHealth partnered with JCA to perform a system assessment, deliver custom training, and support data cleansing activities.

Understanding the Layout

To better understand AdventHealth’s specific needs and data challenges, JCA performed a Raiser’s Edge System Assessment and Codes Frequency Analysis. This involved interviewing foundation teams to understand how they used the system and an evaluation of all coding structures and their usage within the consolidated system. 

The outcome of the assessment was a list of prioritized data strategy and cleansing recommendations that included 51 distinct action items. These included writing off long lapsed outstanding pledges, consolidating nearly 200 constituency codes, and revamping all security roles to protect data integrity.

Creating a Better Shared Space

Following the assessment, JCA worked with AdventHealth to create a plan for implementing the recommendations. The first step was a full-day custom training session to review recommendations and begin building a shared understanding of system usage. The second step was the formation of a data governance committee, comprised of representatives from each foundation.

The Data Governance team was tasked with validating and approving data cleansing plans and formulating policy around system usage. Each improvement project required input, review, and consensus from the data team.

With guidance from JCA, the AdventHealth Data Governance Team tackled several key challenges:

1. Standardized Fundraising Structure: The team formulated a policy for campaign, appeal, and package usage that allowed performance tracking at both the division and the local foundation level. A key strategy involved using attributes to track appeals by channel (event, mail, etc.) and category codes to group funds and appeals for easy reporting by foundation site.
   
2. Managing Duplicate Records: The merging of six databases resulted in a large backlog of duplicate records across donors, employees, and sponsors who had relationships with more than one foundation. Addressing the duplicates involved creating a policy and procedure for merging duplicates manually and accessing the Raiser’s Edge Mass Merge Utility to identify and correct duplicates in bulk.
   
3. Updating Solicitors and Solicitor Assignments. All sites suffered from unmaintained solicitor relationships which made curating portfolios challenging. JCA end dated historic relationships and solicitors which led to accurate portfolios, a pool of prospects for re-review and assignment.  

To date, the Data Governance Team, with JCA’s assistance, has tackled 39 of the original assessment recommendations over an eight-month period. The team is now confidently transitioning to independently leading ongoing governance work. This includes addressing new data concerns as they come up, crafting policy in additional system areas like events, and opportunities and regularly reviewing new system updates to ensure consistent and informed usage. 

“I continue to be impressed by the professionalism of the JCA team,” said Sherrie Douglas, Foundation Operations Manager, who has been with AdventHealth throughout the consolidations and changes. “Combining six databases into one and getting all users on the same page for data standardization is not a small task. JCA has helped create written data policies and best practice documentation for the six teams. JCA’s guidance has positioned us to be more successful with our database management and reporting.”

Valdivia added, “Working with JCA made the process less painful, created a sense of buy-in for proposed changes and helped the team feel confident in taking next steps in our data growth journey. Moreover, having a resource point of contact to call with questions, concerns or requests for help was very reassuring.”

Let Us Help You Bring Order to Your Data

Are you struggling with data integrity issues and need an impartial third party to help you sort it out? Reach out to our team! We have a proven track record of untangling complex challenges and coaching teams toward more streamlined processes for system usage.