Migrating from iModules? A Practical Checklist for Advancement Teams

A step-by-step walkthrough of what migrating from iModules might look like for your team, in case you're evaluating alternatives.

Anwesha Kiran

Updated: 

August 26, 2026

iModules, now known as Anthology Encompass, was built during a simpler era of advancement events. For a straightforward RSVP to payment experience, it still holds up pretty well.

But this is only a small subset of events we’re talking about, and major advancement events have grown to take on much more now. For instance, Homecoming weekends span multiple days and reunions come with class-specific gatherings, receptions, tours, and donor events. Giving is increasingly being built into the event experience itself.

As events have become more layered, some institutions might find that iModules' underlying model hasn't quite evolved at the same pace.

In this article, we’ll be walking you through the process of what migrating from iModules to a new platform might look like for you, with some key considerations to keep in mind.

Top 5 iModules Alternatives

If your team is evaluating alternatives for iModules, here’s a quick comparison of the top 5 alternatives:

Platform Best For Key Features
Almabase Advancement teams running events year-round Registration, ticketing, communications, and CRM sync (TrueSync) in one platform, built for multi-day events like Homecoming and reunion weekends
Cvent Institutions running admissions fairs, conferences, and campus-wide programs Enterprise-grade and general-purpose, but not advancement-specific, no alumni directories or donor workflows
Eventbrite Simple standalone events where fast setup matters most Free for free events and easy to launch, but no CRM sync and no fundraising workflows
Gravyty Teams prioritizing AI-assisted major gift work over event management Strong on donor stewardship and giving day pages, but event tools live only in Graduway and are lightweight
Givebutter Departments or smaller shops running peer-to-peer campaigns on a budget Free core platform funded by donor tips, but not built for higher ed and lacks native CRM integration


For a more in-depth look, read the full blog here.

iModules migration checklist

Once you've settled on a shortlist, the next step is building your own migration plan. Breaking it into three phases: before, during, and after the switch, keeps the process manageable and gives you a clear way to measure how well the move worked and what can be done better.

Before Migration

1. Think about the sub-events you're running

Before you migrate, take stock of the events your team is managing. Some of the biggest ones on your calendar may look like a single event on paper, but involve several separate experiences underneath.

Take your last Homecoming weekend, for example, with a tailgate, class dinner, and an alumni reception. On the team’s end, its registrations, capacities, guest lists, logistics: several moving parts that all need to work together.

Therefore, before you start talking to vendors, map out your exact requirements:

  • Separate events or pages: How many registrations make up one larger event?
  • Capacities: Are limits managed separately for different gatherings?
  • Tickets: Do different activities have their own tickets and pricing?

This gives you a much clearer picture of what your current event setup involves, and what you'll need to account for during migration. It also helps vendors understand your requirements more exactly.

Checklist item: Map the sub-events behind your biggest recurring events before you start planning the migration.

2. Map Out Your Event-Day Check-In Process Today

Your attendees register weeks or months earlier, but check-in is where your new system gets put to the test in real time, as they arrive at the venue. Event check-in might not seem like an important enough item to go over during a migration, but as your first touchpoint with attendees on event day, it requires attention.

Consider every aspect of the check-in process, and how your team handles these:

  • How attendees are identified: Name search, printed lists, QR codes, ID numbers, or something else?
  • Who is checking people in: Advancement staff, volunteers, event staff, or a mix?
  • How guests are handled: Can staff quickly find an attendee's guests and mark them as arrived?
  • How attendance is recorded: Where does the check-in data go, and how does it make its way back into your broader event or reporting?
  • What happens at the busy periods: How does the process hold up when a large group arrives at once?

This gives you a practical checklist for evaluating the replacement platform. Do keep an eye out for any manual processes above that can be automated with the new platform.

Checklist item: Document your current check-in workflow and use it as a test script for the new platform.

3. Check How Registration Extras Are Handled

List every side form, spreadsheet, or manual workaround your team uses alongside an iModules registration. Since iModules doesn’t natively handle add-on preferences, it might be necessary for you to document how your team handles those extras, like:

  • Meal choices and dietary requirements
  • T-shirt or other merchandise sizes
  • Guest information
  • Additional activities or add-ons
  • Special requests or accessibility needs
  • Any information collected through a separate form after registration

For each one, note where the information goes, who manages it and how, and what happens to it after the event. This is the kind of upgrade that you can bring to your team’s experience with a new platform, so it would be worth asking how the new platform handles these add-on preferences and experiences. You could be saving hours of time for your team.

Once you’ve documented these, involve your team to decide which of these workflows you want to bring into the new registration experience and which ones you can retire altogether. Make sure these workflows are baked into the migration requirements you share with the vendors you’re considering.

Checklist item: Create an inventory of every form, spreadsheet, and workaround connected to your event registrations, and mark which ones need to be rebuilt.

4. Pull Your Last Year of Event Reports Before You Migrate

Before you migrate, look at the reports your team relies on to make important decisions and inform strategy. Pick a few questions you regularly need to answer about your events and trace them back to the data behind them.

Document the most critical questions answered by this data:

  1. How many alumni attended our events over the past year?
  2. Which events are attracting the most engagement?
  3. Which alumni segments are participating?
  4. Who has attended multiple events or programmes?
  5. How does event participation connect with other forms of engagement?

For each one, document where the data comes from and what it takes to get to the answer. If the process involves exporting several reports, combining spreadsheets, cleaning up data, or pulling information from another system, capture those steps too.

This documentation becomes useful for test cases when you're evaluating a new platform. But perhaps more importantly, it highlights points that could be automated using the new platform.

Checklist item: Save a few of your most-used event reports and the steps behind them. Use these as test-cases to test out your new platform.

5. Document Your Current CRM Sync Process, Step by Step

Your event platform and CRM are likely doing a lot of work together, so map out how that relationship works today before you start planning the migration. This’ll help you find places where that relationship could work even better.

Think back to the last three to five events and note:

  • What data moves into your CRM automatically vs what has to be imported manually?
  • Which fields need to be checked or cleaned up and how duplicates are handled?
  • How long does reconciliation take after the event?

This gives you a baseline for the new integration and helps your implementation team understand which workflows need to carry over and which can be changed or retired.

A very important consideration at this point is how the new platform will handle these workflows. For example, Almabase's TrueSync integration with Raiser's Edge NXT lets teams set field-level sync rules, choose which updates are pushed automatically, and review potential conflicts before they make their way into the CRM.

Checklist item: Document your current CRM sync and reconciliation process to identify carry overs, changes and retiring processes.

During Migration

Now that the pre-migration steps are covered, let’s move on to things you can look out for during the migration process.

1. Pick Your Cutover Date Around Your Calendar

Your chosen platform will be able to give you an implementation timeline for when the new platform is ready. But it should be your event calendar that tells you when you’re ready for the switch.

A period of lull between two major events or between the registration for an event and the event itself are windows where your team will have the bandwidth to account for the many steps involved in the migration and oversee them adequately. This way, they have enough time to get used to the new platform by the time event day rolls in.

Checklist item: Choose a cutover date that falls well clear of your busiest event and registration periods.

2. Set a Freeze Date on the Outgoing Platform

Once the final exports are ready, you can decide with your team when operations on the outgoing platform need to stop. These operations include new registrations, edits to existing records, and any other updates that should be found on the new platform.

Give everyone who uses the older platform a clear freeze date and clearly lay down what it means for their day-to-day work. If changes are made after the final export, they could result in mismatched records.

Checklist item: Set a clear freeze date and make sure everyone working with the outgoing platform knows what needs to change.

3. Keep One Shared Issue Log With Your Vendor

There will be open questions, decisions, data issues, and small things that need fixing throughout the migration. Keeping those across email threads makes it harder for everyone to be on the same page.

A shared issue log gives your team and your implementation partner one place to track:

  • What's open
  • Who owns it
  • Current status
  • Whether it's blocking the next step

It also functions as a reference document as questions get answered and processes on the new platform start emerging.

Checklist item: Keep one shared issue log with your implementation team and use it to track every open item.

4. Account for Delays

Some hiccups along the way are to be expected in the migration process. While most of these issues could be solved in a timely manner, some issues might need to be addressed more thoroughly, such as:

  • A major data mismatch that hasn't been fully reconciled
  • A critical workflow that hasn't translated cleanly to the new platform
  • Anything that would create unnecessary complications if pushed forward as-is

Sit down with your team and think of scenarios that would warrant a delay in the go-live date if it means handling these issues before they snowball into much bigger ones. It is also best to communicate this with your vendor.

Checklist item: Agree on what would delay go-live.

5. Keep Read-Only Access to the Old Platform After Cutover

Your first few weeks on the new platform will very likely come with a few questions that require looking back at the old system.

Make arrangements for read-only access for a couple of months as something of a fallback. You may not need it every day, but having the old system available gives your team a useful point of reference while they settle in with the new platform.

Checklist item: Arrange for read-only access to iModules for at least 30 days after cutover.

Post-migration

This phase is for your team to settle in and flag any workflows or functionalities that aren’t working as anticipated. It’s also a good time to identify training gaps.

1. Track What Has Changed

Once the new platform is live, give your team some time to see which changes are sticking. Some improvements will be obvious quickly, while others will only show up after a few events and reporting cycles.

Look at the workarounds you identified during the planning stage. Try and identify:

  • Which ones have disappeared?
  • Which ones are still being used?
  • What has improved and how many hours are saved?

Checklist item: Track which manual workarounds have disappeared, which remain, and why.

2. Re-run Your Key Reports

Revisit the reports and questions you documented before migration. Run them again in the new platform and compare the results with your old baseline.

Pay attention to both the answer and the effort involved. The data should be complete and accurate, and your team should need to spend less time pulling it together.

Checklist item: Re-run your key reports and compare the results and effort with your pre-migration baseline.

3. Check In With Your Team

As they get familiar with the new platform, your team will notice things that don't show up in the plan. Talk to them about what's working, what's slowing them down, and where they're still falling back on old processes.

A quick check-in at 30 and 60 days gives you two useful points to catch these issues while the experience is still fresh. It also reveals areas where training might be required to better utilize the new platform’s capabilities.

Checklist item: Schedule 30- and 60-day team check-ins to refine workflows and identify training opportunities.

Here’s your migration checklist at a glance:

iModules Migration Checklist
Before Migration
☑ Map your biggest events and their sub-events
☑ Document your current check-in workflow
☑ Inventory your registration extras and workarounds
☑ Save your key event reports and reporting processes
☑ Document your CRM sync and reconciliation process
☑ Define what to carry over, improve, and retire
During Migration
☑ Choose your cutover date around your event calendar
☑ Set a freeze date on the outgoing platform
☑ Keep one shared issue log with your implementation team
☑ Agree on what would delay go-live
☑ Arrange read-only access to iModules after cutover
After Migration
☑Track what has changed
☑Re-run your key reports against your baseline
☑Check in with your team at 30 and 60 days

Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Migrating to a New Platform

The technical side of an iModules migration is only one part of the move. The other arguably equally important part is making sure your team doesn't carry old processes and assumptions into the new system. A few things are especially easy to overlook.

1. Assuming every workaround needs to come with you

The side forms, manual exports and paper check-in processes your team’s perfected to a ‘T’ exist because of familiarity with the older platform. This could look like:

  • Rebuilding a side form that could now live within event registration
  • Keeping manual spreadsheets for information the new platform can capture directly
  • Recreating manual reporting processes that the new platform can handle natively

To avoid this, take the workaround inventory you created during migration planning and review each item against the capabilities of the new platform. Mark each one as migrate, redesign, or retire. Build and test only the workflows that still have a place in your new setup. A migration is a good opportunity to retire tedious processes that have become part of the routine simply because they were necessary before.

2. Assuming data migration is a one-time export

Before importing anything into the new platform, make sure you've agreed on what needs to move, what can be cleaned up, and what should be left behind. This is one of many steps you’ll have to take to maintain data hygiene across the two platforms.
Data migration issues could show up in various ways:

  • Missing contact information caused by incorrect field mapping
  • Duplicate constituent records that weren't matched correctly
  • Incomplete event participation or registration history

To avoid this, build validation into the migration itself. Pull a representative sample of records and check them end to end, then reconcile your export and import counts, before the go-live date. Pay particular attention to constituent matching, duplicate records, historical event participation, registration details, and any fields that are handled differently across systems.

3. Skipping the parallel run

A new workflow can look perfectly straightforward in a demo and still behave differently when a few hundred real attendees are registering or checking in. Where possible, run a live event through both systems before you fully switch over. It gives your team a chance to catch gaps while the old process is still available as a fallback.

4. Underestimating training requirements

A new platform changes how your team works in big ways and small, especially when it introduces workflows that didn't exist in iModules. Training that only covers where to find familiar features can leave teams unprepared for the day-to-day work that follows.

To avoid this, build training around real workflows. Have the people who will actually manage events, check-ins, reporting, and CRM data work through representative scenarios themselves. Record those workflows as internal guides so new or occasional users have something to refer back to.

What the First Few Weeks Usually Look Like

The first few weeks after a migration usually involve a mix of small adjustments and quick wins. An immediate change teams notice is having to spend less time on manual workarounds once new workflows settle in.

The bigger changes, like reporting or event-day processes, take a little longer to become apparent.

Giving your team room to ask questions, refine workflows, and build familiarity early on will make the transition considerably smoother.

If You're Considering Almabase Specifically

The checklist above is useful whichever platform you choose. If Almabase is on your shortlist, you can take those same migration questions and use them to see how the workflows would translate.

  • Multi-part events: Map your current event structure to Almabase's sub-events, with individual activities organised under a single event and registration flow.
  • Event-day check-in: Test your current check-in process against Almabase's QR-code scanning and self-check-in kiosks.
  • Registration preferences: See how meal preferences, dietary requirements, merchandise, and other details could be handled through multiple ticketing options.
  • Event reporting: Recreate some of your existing reports and streamline others in Engagement Studio and see how cross-event engagement, including outside activities with tracked programmes come together.
  • CRM sync: If you're using Raiser's Edge NXT, you can test the migration against TrueSync's configurable field-level sync rules and its native RE NXT integration.
  • Between-event engagement: If you're looking to expand beyond event-based engagement, check if Almabase’s searchable alumni directory, mentor matching, and affinity groups could fit into the new experience you want to provide your community.

The advantage of doing this exercise before you choose a platform is that you'll already have a set of workflows to test. If you choose Almabase, these areas give you a starting point for your parallel run. If you choose another platform, you can take the same checklist into those conversations and ask the same questions.

Request a personalized demo with Almabase

Closing Thoughts

As you compare different platforms, take the time to understand which parts of your current setup work well, which ones create unnecessary work, and which workarounds your team is ready to leave behind. This exercise here helps with just that.

With this migration plan, your team should be able to tell you what they need from the new platform, and also make it very clear what they don't want to carry forward. Those are just as important to define as the features you're looking for. It will also help your implementation team and your vendor’s team be on the same page throughout the process.

Go into vendor conversations with both lists in hand: what you want to build, and what you want to stop doing. That's what gives you a much clearer benchmark for deciding whether a new platform will improve the way your team works and whether any additional spend was worth the time saved.

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Anwesha Kiran

Anwesha is an educator and pedagogy enthusiast, passionate about the transformative impact of education, kindness, and creativity on individuals and communities.

As an artist, she brings a unique perspective to her work and is committed to inspiring growth, empathy, and understanding

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