Advancement Services Assessment by John Taylor, consultant

Transcription

1 March 29, 2012

2 Advancement Services Assessment by John Taylor, consultant Scope of Responsibility Gift Processing Database Management Reporting Prospect Research Desktop Support

3

4 Human resource assessment Business process assessment Data entry procedures (data in) Reporting capabilities (data out) Accounting controls Turn-around time Assess the quality of the constituent data

5 Determine Basic needs

6 Compare to peer institutions

7 Tie funding request to goals and deliverables

8

9 Results : We received the funds requested under Critical, and a small portion of functional.

10 You are the services you provide. Invest in good staff. 90% of our budget is Human Resources. Smart, young staff bring energy, creativity and affordability, but they might not stay long. Document everything, and have good succession planning.

11 Utilize technology to a maximum automate everything you can. Everyone has to get THEIR job done. If you build a system that helps people do their job quicker and more efficiently, you won t have to convince them to use it.

12 Emphasize good customer service. Be responsive to the unique needs of the customers you serve. Alumni Relations, Development, Annual Fund, Donor Relations, Planned Giving, and university leadership Be a team player. We will do anything but ask people for money!

13 Shifted gift processing to a batch method where deposit = gift batch total Addition of compliance / proofing staff, and procedures to meet audit requirements Provide a gift receipt that can be branded by school and foundation Created a centralized process for the matching gift program Took over responsibility for alumni membership processing Dedicated staff to biographical records management, and started offering data entry services to schools. We supported a Harris alumni directory that generated 100,000 new or updated data elements. Ran a Wealth screening to identify new prospects Began using the proposal screens to track planned asks Redesigned the contact report form to collect additional information Started a contact review process to improve the quality of the contact reports Created an Intranet reporting environment. Standard reports are refreshed overnight. Invested in programming team : built internal data management tools, increased usage of SQL to provide sophisticated reporting and data list selection, development of alumni web site, on-line giving forms, event registration Invested in network and systems staff that could support a robust technology environment. Implemented a help desk ticketing system to track issue resolution and customer service requests. that notifies development staff when gifts are received, contact reports are logged, proposals are added to the system, or when activity occurs on one of their managed prospects Developed automated methods to monitor data quality such as nightly data validity scripts Performance metrics for division.

14

15 We currently have 32 staff, and have submitted campaign request for funding of 15 new positions over the course of the next 3 years. These positions are primarily focused in prospect research, online services, and network/systems. Our database contains 336,000 records for alumni, donors and friends of the university, and we have recorded over 39,000 transactions so far this fiscal year. 40% percent of all transactions are now generated on-line, and 90% of all direct mail solicitations are returned directly to our office. We are gearing up to support a new centralized annual fund that will include a call center. We have a dashboard and data visualization product that will be ready for use in May. We are in early stages of database changes that should improve our ability to monitor return on investment and cost per dollar raised. We have outgrown our issue management system and have a replacement scheduled to be in production in April.

16 We have too much business : Without additional funding, we have reached the cross roads where we may have to throttle back on new initiatives and prioritize what services we can provide. Succession planning: We have a young team that is approaching an average 3 year tenure, in a state with no salary increases and limited promotion opportunity within our department. We love what we do.