Add Manual and Scheduled Refresh as a Standard Feature in Fundraising Dashboards

The problem:

Fundraising dashboards can be hours, days, or even more than a month behind current data. Once a dashboard is accessed, it may take up to 24 hours to update (see the "Fundraising dashboard refresh message" screenshot attached).

The solution:

Please add manual refresh and scheduled refresh capabilities to fundraising dashboards. These features exist in Database View dashboards (see the "DBV Dashboard..." screenshots attached).

I believe this functionality would provide broad value to organizations and should be included as part of the standard product experience.

Background:

I recently shared my screen with a user to demonstrate a fundraising dashboard that would address a reporting need. During this session, I was surprised to discover that fundraising dashboards do not refresh at all if they have not been accessed in over a month. Once accessed, they may still take up to 24 hours to refresh.

As a result, I was unable to effectively demo and train this user because the data was outdated and could not be refreshed during the session.

This is also a challenge for organizations that rely on dashboards for quarterly or annual reporting but may not access them on a regular basis. When users open a dashboard, they need access to current data immediately, not the following day. Providing manual and scheduled refresh options would make fundraising dashboards more reliable and useful for reporting, analysis, training, and day-to-day decision-making.

DBV Dashboard s...
DBV Dashboard r...
Fundraising das...
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  • Sunshine Reinken Watson ⭐Community All-Star
  • Oct 22 2026
Dashboards
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  • Laura Easterly commented
    23 Oct 15:39

    People need to be able to trust that a dashboard is correct when you look at it. Having no way to be able to see newly added things in a dashboard erodes trust and makes people less likely to use them.

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  • Susan Walters commented
    23 Oct 15:18

    It is frustrating that you cannot force a data refresh. As a DBA, many times we fine-tune reports and dashboards by trial and error. But waiting some indeterminate period for the data refresh impairs our ability to do the work. It also erodes trust between DBAs and fundraisers, as they can't trust the dashboards to be a current representation of the data.

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  • Karen Diener commented
    23 Oct 12:43

    Fundraising dashboards are basically useless if you cannot confirm the date / time of data refresh. They have some value, but development efforts would be so much more importantly focused on having reports that work. Raiser's Edge has always been behind on reporting.

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  • Ashley Budde commented
    23 Oct 10:44

    Having a dashboard where you have no idea how accurate or up to date the data is, is basically useless.

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  • Diana Gray commented
    22 Oct 20:03

    RE-NXT Dashboards offer wonderful time-saving reports, and when the results refresh in within the hour, they are fantastic. This benefit is entirely lost when there are these long data update delays. You might as well do it all manually.

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  • Rochelle Toomer commented
    22 Oct 19:22

    The delay is a HUGE pain. I rely on several custom dashboards I've built with Insight Designer because of how well they work and how easy they are to drill down. Their one flaw is the lag time. If I spot an inconsistency in a gift and fix it, I'm at the mercy of the refresh schedule before I can verify the edit in the insight. Argh.

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  • Sue Christensen Community All-Star commented
    22 Oct 18:56

    This should be a priority for BB so that we can see real time data in webview reports and dashboards

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  • Elaine Tucker commented
    22 Oct 18:46

    ditto on everything that has been mentioned already. This is expected functionality !

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  • Jaclyn Whitelock commented
    22 Oct 18:44

    Waiting for data to refresh for so long means that data is essentially incorrect in many cases, and I don't think there should be much need to emphasize why having incorrect data is a problem. Sharing incorrect data with our fundraisers has a huge impact, and can lead to confusion at best, and bad decisions at worst. If we look at a dashboard that is so behind about an event a day before the event, we might misjudge how much we've raised, and figures we share at the event, for example.

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  • Maya Rosman commented
    22 Oct 18:15

    Adding this on demand functionality would be immensely helpful. It would also fulfil user needs while not overwhelm processing. Users could get the on-demand updated data they need and RE could still prioritize refreshing dashboards that are highly accessed or specifically requested to cut down on processing capacity.

    This is an incredibly straightforward solution to a frustrating issue in webview Dashboards.

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  • Sunshine Reinken Watson ⭐Community All-Star commented
    22 Oct 17:34

    There are related ideas, some over five years old. I added this one to address the one-month access issue along with the issue of needing to wait hours for a refresh.

    Related ideas:
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-1206
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-484 (this has an admin note from 2017!)
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-1209
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-5614
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-6359
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-4235
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-1759
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-10112
    https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-2085

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