Distinguished arts school hits
right fundraising notes in collaboration
with Blackbaud Customer Success

Based in the heart of London, Guildhall School of Music & Drama ranks as one
of the top 10 performing arts institutions in the world. The support of donors,
alumni and friends has helped Guildhall turn out graduates who have become
preeminent names in opera, jazz, music therapy, stage, screen, TV, radio,
production arts and arts research.

Recently, the new database manager for fundraising at Guildhall took her
team’s work to even greater heights by refining and reimagining the ways
they used Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, the leading solution for fundraising
and relationship management.

With her Blackbaud Customer Success manager providing her guidance and
resources to make effective changes, Lyubka Kabakova-Ryahova updated
the team’s Raiser’s Edge NXT database, records, and strategic processes so
fundraisers have impactful software capabilities at the ready for building
relationships with donors and alumni, including tools that help create donor
lists, meaningful reports, and forms for donations and events.

“It has been an incredible journey,” she said. “I learned a lot as we adjusted the
system to reflect our needs and priorities, and I am grateful that we worked
as a team. I could not have come close to these achievements without the
support of our extremely dedicated Blackbaud Customer Success manager.”

Realizing the Reporting Power of Raiser’s Edge NXT

Kabakova-Ryahova accepted a promotion to the role of database manager as
the development team was re-organised one and a half years ago. “When I
started this position,” she said, “I realised there was something missing
between the system and the team and that we needed to elevate how we use
Raiser’s Edge NXT to prepare for future campaigns.”

Reviewing business goals and system usage with her expert Blackbaud
Customer Success manager enabled her to better leverage the purpose-built
capabilities of Raiser’s Edge NXT and streamline the team’s workflows to
simplify and tailor reporting while rectifying processes that had become
redundant or unnecessarily complex.

One change alone—restructuring their gift codes—has probably been the
most significant improvement.

Guildhall had adopted Raiser’s Edge NXT 17 years earlier and over time
created over 300 gift codes for appeals due to a practice of creating a
separate code each year for each recurring annual appeal. The development
team found it difficult to decipher the codes without assistance from the
database manager and turning the numbers into narrative storytelling had
become a daunting task.

Now, the entry for an annual appeal represents the complete history for
that appeal, and the team uses filters built into the system to view records
in a variety of ways, including by year. “We have cut the gift codes for
appeals down from 327 to 12,” explained Kabakova-Ryahova. Similarly,
they reduced the number of gift codes for funds from 120 to 32, and for
campaigns from 34 to 5. “It became so much easier and quicker to pull and
analyze reports after we did these updates.”

With the improvements, members of the development team have the
freedom to access the critical insights they need for their stewardship and
fundraising plans. While fundraisers can utilize the system on their own, she
also provides regular and ad-hoc reports to support their analysis, helping
them track their performance and make informed decisions. The difference
in time savings is most noticeable with quarterly reports, which used to
take her two full workdays to generate and now take 50 to 75% less time,
she said.

Setting Fundraisers Up for Strategic Success

“My team members are impressed by the results, and I am more confident in
my ability to offer the team what they need and to help them achieve their
targets,” Kabakova-Ryahova reported. She has also heard “good feedback
from the head of development.”

In addition to the improvements with gift codes and reporting, Kabakova Ryahova and her Blackbaud Customer Success manager worked to make
Guildhall’s management of Gift Aid more robust, agile and compatible with
UK restrictions.

They also organised a solution overview with a Blackbaud functional
expert for the development team so they could see all the possibilities
available through Raiser’s Edge NXT and how they could further tap into
the database, reporting, and stewardship and fundraising automation
workflows themselves.

As Kabakova-Ryahova led these changes, she sought input from her team
about what they wanted in the system, not only for their daily work but
also future campaigns. When she brought this feedback to her Blackbaud
Customer Success manager, she found someone committed to adapting the
flexible capabilities of Raiser’s Edge NXT to meet her team’s expectations.
“I can see the impact of what we are doing with our Blackbaud Customer
Success manager,” she said, “and I can see the very positive outcomes.”