"Data drives fundraising. But extracting the data you need to be effective from the terabytes of noise that an organization collects is stressful and overwhelming.
The University of Cincinnati Foundation has become more dependent on data than ever before, but a plethora of reports with slightly differing details was fostering an environment of data distrust and technology apprehension. When the President of the organization found himself overwhelmed by data in a pipeline update meeting, he determined that there must be a simpler way to receive, understand, and act on the data in our systems.
This desire for simplicity led to a collaboration between the UC Foundation President, Development Officer Leadership, Prospect Management, Technology, Information & Philanthropic Strategies (TIPS) Leadership, and Reporting & Analytics (R&A) to create a tool that would provide a single-pane-of-glass view into fundraising performance. Working in a cross-functional partnership and with requests directly from President Landgren, a single dashboard was developed with clear indicators of goals, performance, and high-value gifts, broken down by VP area, gift band, and timeframe. To quote President Landgren, this single dashboard provides an “encyclopedia of information presented as a table of contents.”
Any member of the organization can utilize the report to understand our goals and current goal status and assess the health of our pipeline, both current and into the future. With this last piece in place, the report supports a culture shift within the organization to move from historic year-to-date comparisons to forward-leaning metrics to drive fundraising strategy."
From the Judges
The judges appreciated that this submission demonstrated a tangible problem and provided a solid solution. This project was impressively cross-collaborative with excellent visuals showing the before and after and how it has resulted in a culture shift in the organizational goals and the tracking of progress toward those goals.
