Higher Education

Higher Education is key to the development and transmission of knowledge and plays a crucial role in broadening and deepening human understanding. It is our pleasure to support this noble cause through our work with college and university fundraisers. We also recognize that these organizations face particular challenges and circumstances in their fundraising efforts. Some of the particular needs we keep in mind when working with higher education clients include:

  • Alumni based annual fundraising can require sophisticated segmentation for targeted appeals based on areas of study or interest and to support reunion promotions.
  • Advancement often makes use of “lost alumni” recovery services and that data needs to smoothly integrate into your donor database.
  • Major gifts, planned gifts and cultivation events of all sizes play a key role in your fundraising.
  • Web-based alumni systems are now an integral part of ongoing cultivation efforts, and online activities need to be coordinated with your offline databases and processes.
  • Your donor database must often pass data back and forth with the college or university's central campus systems.
  • Colleges and/or departments often want regular updates about the progress of fundraising for their areas.

We needed expert guidance on using our Raiser's Edge® better and we got it from the Heller team. They know how technology works for healthcare fundraising – capital campaigns, major gifts, annual fund, and events. With their help we’ve been able to clean up our data, use less paper, and work smarter.

Julie N. Campbell
Director of Individual Giving

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NTC 2012
04/03/2012 - 04/05/2012

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Case Studies

California Lutheran University

CLU recently completed a very successful capital campaign but recognized that they had not taken full advantage of their Raiser's Edge system to support their fundraising efforts. We conducted a full assessment of their database, including their primary codes and fields, their data entry procedures and the outputs (query and reporting) provided by their Database Group. We also interviewed each of the departments within Advancement (Alumni Relations, Annual Fund, Planned Giving, Foundation and Scholarship, and their public radio station, KCLU) to determine their current use of Raiser's Edge and what features each department could implement to better support their work. We then engaged in a project to clean up their codes, streamline the core business processes, implement better (and more “self-service”) reporting, and start using RE® for major donor contact management. We also served as their interim database administrator as they went through staffing transitions.

Loma Linda University and Medical Center

As part of a strategic realignment, LLU decided to merge their University Advancement and Medical Center Foundation fundraising teams. This effort required combining their development operations and donor databases. In an ambitious and successful project, we worked with the LLU staff to convert the Advancement database (Banner) into the Medical Center 's existing Raiser's Edge system. Beyond simply moving data (no small task in itself) we also clarified and documented business processes, combining the best practices from the two existing departments with our own experience. We then implemented major donor management features and built management reports that would allow clear evaluation of the efforts of the newly combined department.

Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

PLTS is an excellent example of how we like to support our clients – with targeted projects over a series of years. At each junction our projects have provided PLTS with the expertise they needed to take their use of RE to the next level. Many years ago we initially helped them transition from the DOS version of Raiser's Edge to RE6. A few years later we upgraded them from RE6 to RE7. Most recently, they entered the school year dreading pulling their lists for the Fall Appeal. In had become confusing to write the queries and there was a chance that a donor would be in multiple queries. Staff spent hours manually scanning a spreadsheet to remove duplicates. We helped PLTS set up segment queries that made sense and could be used again in the future. We set up a Quick Letters function to handle the suppressions and de-duping of the list and automatically assign constituents to the correct segment. PLTS was thrilled to be done creating the mailing list in one morning instead of struggling through a multi-day ordeal.

UC Berkeley College of Engineering

COE needed interim DBA support for their advanced use of Raiser's Edge. We quickly got up to speed on complex gift entry, acknowledgment, mailing and reporting processes that included multiple Crystal reports and Access databases and integration with the University's central database. We then shepherded the system until a new staff member joined their team. With our support their fundraising operations were able to continue with no loss in performance or quality.