From the Nominator

"The BAF Donor Behavior Dashboard is a data visualization tool that helps users identify donor trends related to the Brown Annual Fund (BAF) in order to make strategic decisions. It displays powerful visual elements, allowing staff members to discern giving patterns based on key dimensions such as constituency type, designation, source, timing, and program area, and has transformed strategic discussions related to annual giving. It allows for in-depth analysis of each specific BAF program area, including The Brown Fund, four caused-based Impact Funds, the Sports Foundation's Athletics Annual Fund, and three distinct professional schools (the Brown Medical Annual Fund, School of Engineering Annual Fund, and the School of Public Health Annual Fund), while providing a comprehensive overview of the entire BAF program. The dashboard offers powerful filtering capabilities based on division-wide priorities (e.g., DEI, Giving Days, etc.), enabling key stakeholders to make informed decisions on how to best utilize marketing, volunteer, and staff resources. The dashboard is structured in a way that highlights trends related to the preeminent annual giving metrics: donor retention, reactivation, and acquisition.    

The concept for creating this particular dashboard arose out of a desire to have a tool that provides real-time donor retention, reactivation, and acquisition data to assess the current health of the annual giving program. Traditionally, these sorts of analyses are limited to previous fiscal year retrospectives and are often only explored during benchmarking conferences. Since implementing the dashboard, we are ahead in donors (both overall and undergraduate alumni), reversing a multi-year downward trend."

From the Judges

This submission was well-written and organized. The project has involved a sizable quantity of research. The strategy and implementation section is fantastic for determining donor trends and the state of the donor giving program. Impressive in its removal of manual manipulations and aggregation of many reports. We appreciate the training provided to guarantee good data literacy and the seamless interaction with CRM. The collaboration between Advancement Services and other divisions of the company was excellent, and the tool's usage is perfect.