Advancement Services

Make best practice assessment a best practice

maureen

By Maureen Procopio

I spend a lot of time gathering best practices from peers, sharing what I’ve learned with colleagues, and encouraging best practice implementation throughout my organization. Nonprofits and institutions wanting to elevate their performance can effectively achieve this through best practice research.

Connecting with peers and aspirational peers will show you new ways of doing things. Applying an enterprise approach to best practices will ensure that implementation is successful.

Selecting your peers

Many higher education institutions have their own standard peer sets based on various metrics and university system standards. This is a great starting point if you’re unsure of which schools to pick for your assessment. The UO has eight designated peers, but UO Advancement’s aspirations span beyond what those eight institutions could teach us. Over the last four years, I’ve conducted 25 advancement-related studies, engaging over 55 organizations almost 120 times. If I stuck to the eight identified peers, they’d be sick of us.

I had to redefine who a peer is. The first step involved having clarity about what I was researching. Depending on the question being researched, my options vastly expanded. Emerging trends occur at many types of institutions, regardless of whether they’re public or private; have a large endowment; are in a particular region; have a certain amount of students, or raise a boat-load of money. If you stick to just the “biggest” and “most,” you may overlook some opportunities.

Expand the standard peer group

If you decide to move beyond your standard peer group, these tactics will help you do that.

  • Ask your colleagues for their connections. They know who is doing good work. Prompt them for both higher education and non-profit recommendations.
  • Search archived and current conference offerings for speakers, vendors, consultants, and other experts. It is a treasure-trove of connections. For example, APRA and CASE, Meeting of the Minds,  Nonprofit Marketing Summit.
  • Search for relevant best practice articles and papers. These often reference institutions and organizations that are doing good work in the relevant practice. I’ve found many aspirational peers by looking up vendors’ highlighted client articles.
  • Ask for peer recommendations as you talk to institutions and organizations. A good rule of thumb for best practice outreach is talking to four or five organizations in total.

An enterprise approach to best practice research

You’re accumulating a lot of best practice insights, ideas, and recommendations that will impact several areas of your organization. Now what?

The act of benchmarking your institution against peers requires cataloging the various best practices and the outcomes that are being considered. My birds-eye view on UO Advancement put me in the unique position to connect leaders throughout our organization regarding two elements:

  1. Project impacts on the enterprise: Of the best practice assessments we’ve conducted what are the intended and actual impacts on the enterprise?
  2. Outcome overlaps throughout the enterprise: Where are the tactical and strategic overlaps occurring among the assessment outcomes?

Communicating about project impacts and outcome overlaps will help deepen your enterprise-level understanding of where you are and where you want to go.

These two steps below will help you effectively recognize best practices impacts and achieve successful implementation for your enterprise.

1: Project impacts on the enterprise

Illustrate enterprise-level project impacts by plotting best practice projects along your pipeline continuum. This shows enterprise aspirations for change and its impact on various constituents and internal teams. In the example below, there are best practice examples under the engagement, LAG, mid-level giving, major gifts, and principal gifts teams and constituents.

The yellow box lists technology and organization-level projects. By seeing impacts throughout the enterprise, leadership teams can better understand the current and future state of the organization and potential investments, which set the stage for implementation.

2: Outcome overlaps throughout the enterprise

Exploring enterprise-wide best practice outcomes sheds more light on implementation planning. It helps you recognize where there are potential overlaps and similarities of recommendations.

Identifying themes

Common themes will emerge as best practices accumulate. Thematic outcomes will naturally align with experts, and these may align with already established task forces within your organization, such as reporting or data governance. Be prepared for these common themes:

  • New or enhanced policy decisions;
  • New or enhanced communication practices;
  • Deeper examinations of DEI implications, observations, and insights;
  • Talent investments, professional development, coaching, and training; and
  • Digital investments: technology upgrades, and improved & enhanced data practices

Seek economies of scale when making resource and investment decisions. Where this could emerge:

  • Active involvement of a DEI committee can advise and guide when outcomes have unintended equity and inclusion impacts. Project leads will benefit from inviting this committee’s participation on an “early and often” basis.
  • If a best practice outcome involves similar vendor investments, combine forces when making those decisions.
  • Talent and organizational decisions may have impacts that overlap across advancement services. These decisions (either upsizing or downsizing) can find the best success with economies of scale.
  • Outcomes often affect policies. Consider setting up a standing policies task force.

Framework for success

Establish a framework for best practice implementation throughout the enterprise, making time and space for experimentation and innovation.

  • How will we follow up on the next steps?
  • Can we empower staff to experiment, innovate, and communicate about their needs and barriers?
  • What are the measures of success?
  • How do we empower success and outcomes?

An everyday best practice

Normalize best-practice exercises and conversations among teams. Create space for conversations in a meeting. Who’s done any best practice outreach? Have you connected with a new peer or institution? What have we learned? Are we implementing the best practices?

Add a section to your advancement’s intranet or team space. Implement a learning session for the impactful and interesting outcomes. Sharing in different ways will meet the diverse learning styles of colleagues.

 

By Maureen Procopio
Senior Director, Campaign Strategy and Institutional Benchmarking
University of Oregon Advancement
541-346-2061

Engagement Vendor Assessment

maureen

By Maureen Procopio

3 Steps to Success

Today’s most pressing advancement technology decisions are focused on successful alumni and donor engagement experiences. The vendor and software decisions to meet today’s needs cannot lock you out of a future of innovation. Advancement teams are facing decisions to invest in new or upgrade existing software right now. Top of mind for many advancement organizations is donor and alumni engagement solutions – it can be mind-boggling! Finding the right blend of services to meet your organization’s engagement needs can feel downright near impossible.

If your organization aspires to do more, faces the end of a contract, or recognizes gaps in meeting donors’ needs, it’s important to assess your options then make a confident selection for your alumni and advancement team. You must retain control of your future without taking away growth options.

Here are three steps to help you compile a peer-informed report with experience-based insights for your stakeholders to use in making vendor investment decisions. Bonus: Take a look at my software vendor comparisons and insights to further inform your recommendations.

1.      Know your organization’s “why”:

Knowing why you’re doing something is always practical, especially when it involves extensive budget, time, and staff resources. Assessing and recommending vendors is no exception. Here are some considerations:

  • Are you selecting a new vendor to replace an existing one? This could be the case when a contract is coming to its end. Investigate the current vendor and its offerings to know what options you should consider in a replacement.
  • Is your organization reaching new heights? Engagement and development teams are expanding their tactics and need new technology functionality and tools.
  • Will this new software be a part of a current suite that your organization has already acquired? Knowing how well the vendors’ software integrates with other technology is important.
  • Do you need to level-up your current alumni engagement experience? Your organization is ready for enhancements and innovations in engagement but has some gaps in the experience that need to be fixed.

2.      Focus on specific functional needs

Next, you need to know what you’re looking for. This will go hand-in-hand with your “why.” What functions are relevant for your organization? Will this align with or impact a CRM conversion?  Alumni and donor engagement vendors and products are plentiful, offering myriad functions and solutions. Go into your assessment knowing what your organization’s functional needs are so you stay focused on the right product options. For example, my examination of the vendor landscape focused on five key functions:

  1. Website content management
  2. Email (defined primarily as “outbound only” and not “intelligent”)
  3. Events management
  4. Online giving
  5. Marketing automation

3.      Connect with peers on their experience

Now that you know why you’re assessing vendors and what you’re looking for in a vendor, talk to institutions that are doing what you want to do. My internal stakeholders suggested a few peers to call, then I added to the list. Connect with consultants. I called my EAB rep who is up-to-date on emerging practices in engagement. When you do your outreach, focus on the functional areas important for your vendor assessment. Build questions to get information based on:

  1. Vendor selection: How did they select their vendors? What other vendors did they consider?
  2. Software/hardware integration: How well does the selected software integrate with the peer’s CRM and existing software? Does the peer find overall enhanced engagement as a result of investing in the vendor’s software?
  3. Vendor responsiveness: What have been the peer’s experiences with the vendor’s customer service and technology delivery and upgrades? Ask for positive and negative experiences.
  4. Future state: What is the peer’s aspirations when it comes to future technology enhancements and investments?
  5. Other peers: Who does the peer consider to be best-in-class for achieving engagement outcomes and approaches? Connect with those peers as well.

Compile these user experiences, collating the patterns and insights as relevant to your audience. Deliver these findings to your vendor selection team to better-position them in making a data-informed decision.

Vendor comparisons and insights (a layperson’s perspective)

As mentioned above, I focused on five key functions: website content management, email, events management, online giving, and marketing automation. I presented the following vendor and function comparisons based on my peer interviews and research observations.

Top Vendors by functionality

The top vendors listed below by functional area are based on the number of times vendors came up as being used at an organization, or those vendors who appeared to be “emerging leaders” (signified by asterisks *). Additionally:

  • Database of record was a by-product of my research in conjunction with the other information shared and was interesting context, therefore reflected below.
  • Single service ecosystems are those vendors who offer most or all of the features studied. It was important to note these separately.

Side-by-side Comparison of Ecosystems

There are a handful of single service ecosystems that provide the features of interest in this study. Some of these vendors have additional functionality including that of a primary database of record.

Integration

  • Salesforce is known for seamless integration of other applications using an API, while other vendors make it harder to work outside of the ecosystem. The Salesforce model allows customers to build an ala carte system, based on the needs of the organizations. Interviewees noted that Ellucian and Blackbaud made integrating other applications “challenging” if these applications were not a part of their native ecosystem.

Vendor support

  • Blackbaud was noted as approaching their business units as separate entities making it difficult for cohesive integration even among their applications. Anthology received a positive technology report card when working on specialized requests; and a subpar report card for module upgrades and communications about outages.

Future state

  • Hivebrite is the newest to emerge in the integrated ecosystem space with positive reviews on its growth and vision. Anthology has yet to expand into marketing automation which was observed as the next important investment for institutions aspiring to be in the next-generation engagement and fundraising space.

Ecosystems vs Decoupled Vendors

  • EAB’s 2020 “Navigating the Advancement Technology Vendor Landscape” report was an informative resource to further understand software features by function, industry definitions, and examples of institutional adoption of software.

Best practices

Database of record / CRM Upgrades

  • One institution that uses several decoupled service vendors was in the middle of upgrading its CRM of record in the next two years and decided to consider email and event vendors in tandem with the database decision. “It would be frowned upon to do two conversions that ultimately impact the workload of the conversion and implementation teams.”
  • A non-profit/non-higher ed organization’s decision to select Blackbaud as their CRM/vendor was to “capitalize on the marketing automation while maintaining traditional modes of engagement.”

Vendor couplings & observations

  • One higher-ed institution noted they “actively moved away from Anthology Encompass and adopted Hivebrite,” a newer vendor aspiring to compete with some of Anthology’s features.
  • Institutions that use Salesforce continue to use other events vendors. Cvent emerged as a leading event management tool for institutions that partnered outside of their primary (native) single-source ecosystem. Anthology users most often implement the native events module.
  • Email functionality seemed wishy-washy: a hodgepodge of decoupled vendor options emerged but no trends prevailed. This led to an expansion of the study to consider marketing automation and multi-channel communication vendors.

Marketing Automation: Achieving the donor journey

  • These tools aim to provide consistent, high-quality, and personalized digital experiences for constituents. Once institutions recognized the power of marketing automation and the ability to span multiple channels, they graduated from their email vendors.
  • Several institutions in this study actively engage in marketing automation using Salesforce (Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud).  These institutions are focused on donor journeys, customized multi-channel communications based on AI, and strategic resource planning.
  • One institution is actively working toward marketing automation using Salesforce Marketing Cloud to build personalized messaging to create donor and stewardship journeys. The process utilizes AI and multichannel marketing, in-house developers, and links up to their Salesforce CRM.

Conclusion

There are options: Your organization can choose several decoupled vendors; a single source ecosystem, or a hybrid of both. But remember, budget and time are important considerations. Teams must understand the technical skills required to support the backend and sustainability for each solution. Consider your organization’s strategic vision for digital transformation: What does current and future talent look like? What does your advancement organization want to become? Investing in technology to achieve who you are today must also have an eye on your aspirations for tomorrow.

 

 

By Maureen Procopio
Senior Director, Campaign Strategy and Institutional Benchmarking
University of Oregon Advancement
541-346-2061

7 Steps to campaign end reporting success

maureen

By Maureen Procopio

The University of Oregon just wrapped up a historic campaign. Telling the story of our $3.24 billion campaign through data has been a blast! Knowing how all the data puzzle pieces fit together was exhilarating. The building blocks for all of this were data, stories, and partnerships.

Here are 7 steps to have in place for nimble campaign end reporting. Depending on where your advancement team is on the digital transformation continuum, reporting, analytics, communication, and staffing are all relevant considerations as you think about all of these ideas. Then check out how we did with our honest assessment.

Step 1: Assemble a small campaign end reporting team

Campaign storytelling requires campaign data and donor information to come together to create compelling narratives. Campaign end reporting teams include: the campaign strategists and directors accessing data from analytics and reporting colleagues; they are the stewardship and principal gifts directors collating and collecting years of donor experiences and stories. Communications partners must weave this information together for compelling, inspiring campaign storytelling.

Campaign fundraising data and donor information are two buckets of information collection and analysis and must be effectively funneled to the communications partners. Consider this:

  • Assign a campaign fundraising data lead who knows the data inside and out.
  • Assign a donor story/information lead who knows the big gifts, impact stories, and narratives.
  • These leads must funnel the right information to the communications team to create the collateral for press releases, social media content, interview notes, and website updates.
  • These leads work to validate the data and information in draft documents.
  • Communications partners coordinate rollout plans and timelines with stakeholders.

Step 2: Establish the communications and rollout timeline

Set up a timeline with an “order of operations” that includes stakeholder groups and by-whens, such as:

  • what reports need to be run when;
  • who needs to know what by when;
  • what emails should be sent by what date.

Ideally, all of this would be in a workflow/project management software with assigned staff. Consider the timing of campaign press releases with units and DOs wanting to communicate with their donors and alumni. Where does your alumni association fit in? Partner along the way with this well-connected, dynamic team.

Step 3: Determine campaign data points for storytelling

Invite stakeholders into the discussion about what campaign data points will be important to convey to your audiences. Don’t make it too complicated and keep new analytics to a minimum. Start with the data sources that already exist.

Define with your stakeholders who your audiences are. The data will be different for boards, deans, staff, etc. The ideal scenario is to establish a common dataset that serves as many audiences as possible.

Pro Tip: Create a common dataset for all the data that you’ll need for campaign-end reporting.

  • Test it out for a few months before your campaign end date.
  • Stick to the data points that you have reported on for years. Everyone is used to these, they’re familiar.
  • Include new data points and analysis as questions arise and consult with others about how they’ll serve the campaign storytelling.
  • Keep new analytics to a minimum.
  • The common dataset should be accessible to your entire campaign reporting team.
  • Build charts and interpretations that are accessible and easy to roll out to colleagues.

Use the comprehensive campaign reporting framework to inform your unit campaign reporting framework. The big campaign picture should inform the unit pictures.

  • Similar data points for unit campaign reporting allow for cohesive storytelling.
  • Prepare data requests in tandem at the unit level.
  • The common dataset is a framework that’s updated at the unit level.

Step 4: Seek feedback to create the most effective information packets

Your goal is to create information packets that help them understand how their area performed in the campaign. So ask some colleagues, What do you want to know? What do you need to know? Invite colleagues to be sounding boards and testers for an effective rollout of campaign information. This feedback is especially useful when gaining insights into how the information will be used, which feeds into the most effective way to package data and information.

Partner with development assistants, stewardship (unit and central), prospect management, communications, and colleagues interacting with an advisory board. You might just learn information that causes you to head back to steps 1, 2 or 3.

If you create it in a silo, you may as well keep it in a silo.

Step 5: Streamline unit campaign information packets

Approach unit campaign reporting in a streamlined and unified process. Once you have your feedback from stakeholders and partners, be transparent about what units and stakeholders can expect: packets of data and reports prepared for them; a level of self-service options that they can conduct on their own; as well as ad hoc analysis as needed.

Pro Tip: For unit campaign reporting, we called this the “90-10” approach, where 90% of unit campaign reporting was delivered to the units as a streamlined and uniform approach. All units received the same reporting packet tailored with their data, reports, and slide deck, and we expected that it met 90% of their needs. There was an expectation that units would use self-serve reporting and analysis for additional data points beyond what was delivered. This approach helped units hit the ground running, and saved a lot of time for the campaign reporting team.

Some units may not meet their campaign dollar goal. As mentioned in the “how’d we do” section below, there’s an opportunity to help provide storytelling for both sets of units.

Step 6: Implement a thoughtful rollout plan

Implement a transparent communication process for your stakeholders and colleagues to keep informed. Communicate to colleagues regarding campaign end reporting telling them what they can expect, by when, how it will be shared, and what to do if they have questions. Do this a month ahead of the campaign end date, then a week ahead of the delivery date.

Pro Tip: Asking DOs for their donor and gift stories along the way may alleviate the mad dash for communications “call for stories” post-campaign.

Where will you store and share reporting?  Establish file sharing processes well ahead of time. Using OneDrive or shared file systems removes the confusion of multiple versions of documents. Don’t overlook file security and donor privacy.

Pro Tip:  Create a OneNote document guide that walks your users through packet contents, FAQs, expectations and next steps, self-serve reporting instructions, and who to contact for help.

Step 7: Activate your plan and expect the unexpected

It’s time to place your faith in your plan. Remind partners and stakeholders of the timelines, deliverables, and expectations. Activate the plan and expect unexpected and ad hoc requests. For us, we received several unexpected data requests. Fortunately, these were all easy to answer as a result of our common dataset.

Pro Tip: Alert colleagues that they must not share totals (grand total or unit totals) before the public release. You don’t want anyone to spill the beans before the big reveal, including the president.

We implemented a clear decision-making protocol to handle unexpected requests for campaign data before we were ready to go public. Because of our protocol, we weren’t confused or uncertain about what to do.

As we geared up for the public announcement, be ready for press organizations asking for fact-checking and backup data. Carve out time, be responsive, and be patient.

How did we do? An honest assessment

The bulk of the feedback from the reporting roll-out was supportive and constructive, with ideas for future and ongoing applications. Here are a few things that didn’t go perfectly:

  • The timing of our press release was delayed placing the public rollout on hold. We did not keep colleagues updated on the delay, causing some confusion about when they could update their stakeholders and share reports.
  • The campaign packets were geared more so for units who hit their dollar goals, therefore helping to convey those success stories. A few units did not meet their campaign dollar goals. Units not hitting their dollar goals have a different, yet equally compelling story to tell. The unit campaign reporting packets could have been proactive in helping both sets of units tell different stories.
  • We used OneDrive file sharing, but the accessibility glitched along the way for some colleagues.
  • A unit director decided to not use the campaign packets and so used their shadow dataset instead. (note: apparently shadow datasets continue to exist)

 

Preplanning means a stress-free campaign end

Campaign end reporting and storytelling is one of the best campaign phases. It’s a blip of time not recognized on that timeline the campaign consultant gives you when an organization starts a campaign. Implementing these steps will give you confidence in this reporting phase. Make this your favorite campaign phase, and one that is mostly stress-free with planning, preparation, and partnering. It will result in compelling storytelling and memorable narratives.

By Maureen Procopio
Senior Director, Campaign Strategy and Institutional Benchmarking
University of Oregon Advancement
541-346-2061

Advancement Services: My how we’ve changed

maureen

By Maureen Procopio

When I was your age, I had to walk uphill 20 miles to school…both ways! Said my grandpa anytime I complained. I’ve told my 9-year-old daughter, When I was your age, our phones were tethered to the wall with curly little wires. I’ve also been known to utter similar statements as an Advancement Services longtimer: When I started as a prospect researcher, I walked to the campus library and used microfilm. Ah – I loved the whirring sound just to look for the hard-to-find article or obituary.

With technology comes a change to philanthropy

When we reflect on the biggest changes in the Advancement Services field, consider the effects of the technological evolution on philanthropy. I arrived in Advancement Services in the late 1990s, right about when Google made its debut. Since then, the field of Advancement Services has expanded and transformed as a result of the tech evolution.

Tech evolution timeline

Some key moments over time.

  • 1989: WWW begins at CERN
  • The 1990s
    • Online payments framework was established
    • Amazon was founded
    • Google Search was launched
    • Blackbaud initiated online giving
  • The 2000s
    • The advent of email fundraising
    • LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter founded
    • 1st iPhone and Android were released
    • The average online gift amount was $145
  • The 2010s
    • Instagram was founded
    • Crowdfunding started
    • The first national day of giving was launched
  • 2020+
    • 21% increase to online giving in 2020, average online gift amount was $177
    • 28% of online transactions were made using a mobile device, compared to 9% in 2014

Enter “the contemporary Advancement Services organization”

Since the 2000s, the impact of tech on philanthropy has been apparent. So, Advancement Services had to change the way we worked and how we worked. As a result, its structure changed too.  Over time, Advancement Services embraced a technology and data mindset. Today this mindset revolves around four core philosophies:

  1. stable, reliable data managed by records management professionals;
  2. systems and technology resources to manage, report out on, and analyze the data;
  3. gift services professionals to record donations, and data integrity exerts to assure quality; and
  4. insightful business intelligence professionals to help end-users move to action with data and reports.

What it looks like

My 2020 study of Advancement Services organizations showed that the contemporary Advancement Services model not only aims to meet the core business needs of the advancement organization, but it also does this by focusing on removing silos and upgrading skills across areas. It builds cross-functional teams rather than singularly focused experts. The result is the contemporary Advancement Services organization structured like this:

  • technology services, business intelligence, digital reporting
  • data entry and data integrity
  • prospect research and prospect management
  • gift processing
  • analytics
  • talent management/HR, operations, finance, contracts

The continued evolution

I recently surveyed 12 institutions that indicated large-scale Advancement-wide technology projects are planned for the upcoming year. Several institutions shared that they are allowing a large percentage of their staff to remain remote. The Advancement Services organization needs to continue to work differently, consider new modes of work, and deliver at the highest standards of excellence.

Two big things are on the horizon for Advancement Services, and we’ll need investment in talent management programming along the way.

  • Team structure, workflow, and project management: Efficient and effective project management and effective communication channels are crucial for complex organizations. Seamless workflow and cohesive cross-functional, strong teams are a must.
  • Working remotely: What does this look like going forward for Advancement Services? Many organizations have decided to allow a large percentage of their teams to remain working remotely. Remote working must be an intentional decision, especially when success includes cross-functional teams and large-scale project implementation.

I’ve worked in Advancement Services for over 20 years, but those years would mean nothing if I didn’t change with the times. I can’t wait for what’s next.

By Maureen Procopio
Senior Director, Campaign Strategy and Institutional Benchmarking
University of Oregon Advancement
541-346-2061