In this week's blog by Kim Klein, the focus is on laying out an effective strategy for raising money, based on your organization needs and resources. I'd like to give you a few steps on how to lay out an effective training strategy for learning FundRaiser software.
First, take the Overview class, whether it's a "live" webinar or a "canned" video on our website. This gives a good overall layout of the program, going through many of the menu choices, most of the tabbed pages of the data area, and explains what data goes where, and why. One of the other important things it does is to give you a sense of what other training classes you will want, to complete your specific goals.
Next, prioritize which tasks you need to learn about. If you are setting up a database from scratch, I suggest starting with Coding & Spare Fields, in order to get a good understanding of how codes are used. Codes provide "unique" identification of people and gifts, so that we can group similar people together, or similar gifts, in order to send out letters, or create reports, etc. If, on the other hand, you are taking over the daily entry and operation tasks that someone else initiated, then you might have been given some understanding of the codes currently in use, and it might be a better use of time to study the Word Processing / Mail Merge procedures.
Finally, keep in mind that you have video training available 24/7 in the Customer Portal section of the website, covering all of the basic tasks you'll need, and if you have questions after viewing one, of course, give us a call. If you have a lot of questions, or the video just doesn't do it for you, then consider using a "training credit" for a "live" webinar where you can ask questions (and get answers) and get help with anything you don't understand in a format that allows you to see my screen during training.
Many folks may think that training sessions, at an hour each, take up too much of their valuable time, but I know from our users telling me throughout the years that the training saves hours and hours of frustration. If you want to SAVE time, by utilizing the software as efficiently as possible, then you need to INVEST time in learning the best approach to your reach your goals with the program.