Flexible automation options empower university,
strengthen stewardship, and energize fundraising

Mount Saint Mary’s University is “the only women’s university in Los Angeles
and one of the most diverse in the nation.” The university is known nationally
for its research on gender equity, innovative health and science programs, and
commitment to community service. Eleven percent of the student population
is male due to its co-ed graduate and weekend and evening programs, as well
as its undergraduate nursing program that allows men.

The university relies on Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, the leading software
for fundraising and relationship management for stewarding their broad
constituencies. When the COVID-19 pandemic limited the advancement team’s
ability to have in-person meetings with donors, they knew they needed to
innovate fast. The sophistication and flexibility of Raiser’s Edge NXT allowed
them to adapt their workflows and transform their processes in time to meet
their specific campaign goals and needs.

The certified connector between Raiser’s Edge NXT and the Microsoft Power
Platform proved transformative for them. Director of Advancement Data
Systems and Services Ed Rivera said he was “blown away by the technology
and possibilities” as he explored the options this opened.

Rivera used these low-code capabilities to create automations to send
important reminders, donor and campaign information, and other data points
that university staff can receive wherever they are working. “We use the
Microsoft Power Platform connector so much now, it’s hard to remember
what we did before,” Rivera said. “It was a game changer for us.”

Personalization that Drives Engagement

Birthday and anniversary automations allow staff to create very personalized
outreach with very little incremental effort. Each week, the system
automatically generates draft emails for advancement staff to review,
customize, and send. Staff receive the pre-scripted birthday messages
together with additional donor information and a link to the donor’s profile in
Raiser’s Edge NXT. “This makes it very convenient for our staff if they wanted
to review the donor’s giving history or recent actions and personalize the
email more,” Rivera said.

A daily “anniversary” workflow identifies constituents who made a gift
on this day the previous year but not the current fiscal year. The system
automatically generates the appropriate donor stewardship emails for the
annual giving director to review, personalize, and send.

“By automating these communication workflows, we stay engaged with our
constituents more easily and more consistently,” Rivera said. “We’re always
looking at ways to leverage technology to better serve and engage our
supporter base, and that’s exactly what the connector between Raiser’s Edge
NXT and the Microsoft Power Platform enables us to do.”

The Mount has 898 fund IDs, and each one is coded with two-to-six different
12-digit GL Codes from its finance department. A “receipt of funding”
notification automatically alerts the advancement division and budget
managers who have funds that need to be used and where they should be
dispersed. This helps the university remain compliant in using the funds as
intended and saves a considerable amount of time by automating what was a
manual process.

“This workflow helps us remain compliant in using the funds as the donor
intended,” Rivera said. ”And we’ve greatly improved efficiencies. A financial
reconciliation process that previously took us a week now only takes two to
three hours.”

Fueling Giving with Extensible Technology

Automated messaging helped boost the subsequent “Mount Day of Giving”
campaign, which concluded with record-breaking success. The school
exceeded its goal of 225 donors by 30 percent, ultimately resulting in 293
donors giving over $70,000.

An automation queries Raiser’s Edge NXT and generates draft emails for
gift officers. The emails can be tailored as needed and include customized
links to giving forms. “Gift officers sent out those personalized messages
days leading up to and on the day of ‘Mount Day of Giving’ to help achieve
and pass our donor goal,” Rivera said. “It was extremely helpful having this
process automated and is why we are able to celebrate having achieved the
greatest number of donations ever made in a 24-hour period.”

“We created a dashboard for our current capital campaign that boosts
productivity and spurs excitement and motivation for gift officers,” Rivera
added. To support the Mount’s capital campaign to fund and build a new
Wellness Pavilion, the team uses an automation to pull data from Raiser’s
Edge NXT to web-based dashboard that shows how much has been raised,
pledged donations likely to be received, and recurring payments likely to
be received outside the current reporting period but well within the five year campaign limit. “This approach keeps the entire division across all
departments apprised as to where we are and what they can communicate. It
benefits everyone across campus.”

Rivera has also automated processes related to private gifts, major gifts, and
gift officer proposal tracking. “The connector between Raiser’s Edge NXT and
the Microsoft Power Platform is so robust and there’s so many valuable ways
we can leverage it,“ Rivera said. “The possibilities are truly endless, and I can’t
wait to see what we can achieve as we expand our use of it.”