CofC maximizes gift officers’ potential
with software built for their needs

Founded in 1770 in South Carolina, the College of Charleston is a nationally
recognized, public liberal arts and sciences university. To maintain its vision
to be a transformative national university redefining liberal arts education
through innovation, the College relies on Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT to
maximize fundraising and build high-impact donor relationships.

The robust dashboards and reporting within Raiser’s Edge NXT help
organizations better execute fundraising strategies and improve
transparency across departments. At the College, the advancement services
team creates custom dashboards for gift officers, giving them the ability to
take more ownership of their portfolios.

Previously, gift officers would have to manually run queries or keep an
Excel spreadsheet of how they were progressing toward their goals. “Our
gift officers know exactly where they are to date with their goals and what
metrics are being used to measure their success,” said Jenny Alstad, director
of prospect management and research. “It empowers the gift officers to really
know their portfolios and make sure they’re focused on who they’re soliciting
and the pace they’re moving donors through the cultivation process.”

Having these insights and dashboards has been a huge time savings for both
gift officers and the advancement services team. Gift officers no longer need
to rely on advancement services to run a query or pull a list. The gift officers
can deep dive into the analytics themselves. “It gives them good autonomy
because it’s available on demand,” Alstad said. “Gift officers don’t have to
wait on us to produce these lists and reports. It’s as simple as hitting the
refresh button on what’s been built out for them.”

Software that Benefits Everyone

The advancement services team also creates custom dashboards for
deans and school division partners who are interested in seeing what gifts
are being dedicated to their school. Lindsey Copeland, senior director of
analytics and database management, used to pull lists constantly for as
many as 10 different divisions. “Raiser’s Edge NXT is a huge help and saves
me so much time,” she said.

Annual leadership gift officers utilize the workflow process in Raiser’s Edge
NXT to help create cadences for communication and solicitation, “which
helps them stay on track of their 30-, 60-, and 90-day communication
strategy,” said Laurie Soenen, executive director of advancement services.
“They also relied on these workflows to support their stewardship efforts.
If a gift had been made or a donor had a birthday, they were notified to
engage and connect with those donors.”

CofC also draws on Blackbaud’s ResearchPoint™, which combines the
industry’s best, most comprehensive individual wealth and philanthropic
insight to drive results. “We use ResearchPoint to lead our entire prospect
management strategy,” said Copeland. “It’s been essential for how we
prioritize our large database and portfolios.” Once a gift officer’s portfolio
has been populated, the team also uses the insights to help guide their ask
amounts and donor engagement strategies.

Raiser’s Edge NXT event management and follow-up tools—complete with
registration, payments, custom participant information, email and more—
make preparing for any event seamless. The team provides designated
individuals across campus access to the module so they can see who has
registered to attend their event. “We can also modify user access so some
people can add and manage the registration lists, which is a huge timesaver
for our team and especially our division for external events being held that
isn’t hosted our department,” Copeland said.

Setting the Foundation for Giving Day Success

The College’s fourth annual CofC Day had nearly 2,300 donors giving
$6.7 million. Leveraging Raiser’s Edge NXT, gift officers prepared and rallied
support from donors and tracked and monitored gifts leading up to the day.
The fundraising team created a custom insight tied to proposals and
opportunities to track gifts and used Raiser’s Edge NXT’s Insight Designer as
a reporting tool. Soenen explained that gift officers used the data to have
conversations with donors about how they wanted to support the day and
would enter proposals linked to the giving day. This gave everyone visibility
into the progress made ahead of the day. Once all the gifts were processed,
the team used Raiser’s Edge NXT to determine how much was raised.

“Developing an innovative process to track the gifts that can feed into a
report that then later helps me determine what was a true, natural organic
gift versus what our major gift officers brought in was life-changing,”
explained Copeland. “With Blackbaud software, I know we’ll continue to
grow our community of supporters and pursue our fundraising goals
with confidence.