Say hello to our little friends! Like Tony Montana, we experienced a rapid rise and fall of our dreams (in our case, dashboard development). Unlike Tony, we lived to tell the tale of how we used that experience to move on to an even better environment. We'll focus on our initial use of Google Looker Studio, which is hardly the BI Tool of your dreams, but the price is right (FREE!) and it's proven to be surprisingly versatile for a variety of dashboard needs. In the aftermath of us taking our Looker Studio dashboards behind the barn, we've penned this final love letter to a frustrating yet functional (and FREE!) product in the hopes that a less financially fortunate organization can benefit from our experience. We will give a glimpse of the dashboards we've created for proposal pipelines, portfolio reviews, initiative reports, principal giving profiles, fundraising progress, career center data, integration with Slate CRM, etc. in the hopes that those of you with no shortage of sweat equity can push Looker Studio to the limit. We will also give a glimpse into how the lessons learned from our experience made it easy for us to adapt to Power BI.

A recounting of Welcomed Triumphs and Unexpected Follies on the journey to deepen our understanding of the nature of our Fundraiser Portfolios and our Visibility into the Future.

Data is an institution’s most valuable asset, but only if it’s accessible and actionable. In this session, we’ll explore how to implement data hygiene best practices during a CRM transition, ensuring that only relevant, usable information makes the cut. Learn how to leave behind data that no longer serves your institution, transform valuable data to fit the future-state data model, and maintain long-term data integrity to support smart, data-driven decisions.