How Ridley College, an Independent School, Facilitated their Incoming Parent/Student and Graduating Student Process with Importacular
Advancement Offices at most Independent Schools and Higher Ed staff bemoan the process of graduating students and importing new students and families. Primarily because importing data into the Raiser’s Edge is labor-intensive and highly detail oriented.
That was precisely the case for Ridley College, an idyllic independent school nestled in the Niagara escarpment (picture a campus like Dead Poet’s Society), when they reached out to our team. That’s when Sentinel Consulting stepped in and introduced them to Importacular by Zeidman Development, a powerful and flexible data importing tool for Raiser’s Edge.
The Challenge
Every year, the Advancement Office receives a data file from the Registrar’s Office. The Advancement Office manipulates the data to ensure the data conforms to the data requirements in the Raiser’s Edge. Below are a few examples of what was required:
Data formatting was inconsistent
Fields like home address, parent contact info, and email permissions varied between files—and between semesters.
Manually researching if a family already existed.
Creating all the 6 unique addressee/salutations e.g. alum, same last name, parents with same last name, parents with different last name, etc.
The Solution: Importacular
Using Importacular, Eight import files, 10 global changes and lots of manual entries were converted to one import template. Yes, you read that right. Importacular allows users to import student information and parent information and create relationship information, all using one import file.
Here’s how:
The admission file is imported as-is. No need to remove extra fields or change the data manually.
Smart constituent matching e.g., name + address + email to reduce duplicates and identify updates vs. new records.
Transforming admissions data to match Advancement data business rules e.g., changing Parent 1 phone number to Home Phone or adding constituent attributes (custom fields) based on specific conditions.
The Outcome
The creation of an Importacular profile. A profile configured to replace all import files and global changes in one template. A task that often took two to three days has been reduced to a 1 hour process. This year, no one fears this process. Another outcome is that Ridley College can consider adding more data to the import file. The overall capacity of the team has increased by using Importacular.
Next Steps
If your team is ready to change and use the right tool for the job, consider using Importacular. Reach out to our team and get a special discount code for Importacular. Let our team help you #movetheballforward.
