This presentation will describe the combined efforts of the Prospect Development and the Advancement Systems teams at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota to adopt a more data-driven and automated approach to prospect pipeline development for major gifts fundraising. It will describe our previous approach to pipeline development work, our motivation for a more efficient and transparent approach, and lessons learned in the process of implementing these new processes and systems. Topics covered include the methods used to systematize prospect pipeline elements such as prospect capacity, quality, and interest areas; dashboards created to visualize, filter, and display the pipeline and constituency; ways that these new systems are being used to prepare and deliver new prospects; and dashboards employed to track pipeline movement.

Wealth capacity is an essential financial indicator that many gift officers use to assess a potential donor's ability to contribute. However, like many aspects of fundraising today, it's essential to find the right balance between "art and science" to engage potential donors in a way that encourages generosity while respecting their capacity to give.

Join this session for an interactive discussion and presentation on the different data-driven approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of gift officers' asks in relation to a prospect's capacity.

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.

Leveraging Power BI for Dynamic Fundraising Dashboards: Enhancing Portfolio Management with Data-Driven Insights"

Overview:
In the competitive field of fundraising, maximizing donor engagement and optimizing portfolio management are key to success. Power BI, a leading business intelligence tool, enables development professionals to transform raw fundraising data into dynamic dashboards that provide real-time insights into donor behavior, pipeline health, and key performance indicators (KPIs). This presentation will focus on how to use Power BI to build effective dashboards that track essential fundraising metrics, helping fundraisers and development officers make data-driven decisions to enhance portfolio management.

The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate how Power BI can be utilized to create and customize dashboards specifically designed for fundraising and portfolio management. Attendees will learn how to track donor movement, visualize portfolio performance, and monitor key metrics such as gift officer activity, prospect pipeline, and donor retention. This session will highlight best practices in dashboard design to support strategic fundraising decisions.

Technical Requirements:
Power BI Desktop (installed on the presenter's computer)
Projector or large display for live demonstration
Internet connection (if showcasing live data)
Sample fundraising data for demonstration purposes

Everyone wants to make “data informed decisions” especially during periods of strategic planning and solicitation plan development. Yet, we often underutilize vital data-informed positions such as Prospect Development, which traditionally is viewed as a resource primarily for leadership and major giving. But what would it look like if we took prospect development and applied advancement data analytics to serve as a resource for all University Advancement? Come learn from Texas State University how their restructuring took prospect development, data analytics, and business processes and turned it into a strategic arm serving the entire advancement organization. Learn about holistic pipeline development when leveraging both prospect development and analytics together to advise and inform strategy development for alumni relations, annual giving, AND major giving.

This session will examine the processes, policies, and opportunities for building and maintaining alumni employment dashboards in your advancement shop. The speakers will use examples from projects at multiple institutions to discuss ways to scale the project, define your data goals, prioritize output based on institutional priorities, and build sustainable workflows for advancement data teams of various sizes and technical expertise.

In fundraising, it is often difficult to calculate the probability that a given prospect will make a gift, or the likelihood that our organization will reach a specific fundraising dollar goal. The usual measures used in identifying probability don’t always work when it comes to human activity, and donative behavior is no different.
During this presentation, Dr. Gregory Duke will review several methods of identification of probability and identify which of these methods can give you a better understanding of your prospects’ likelihood to give. Dr. Duke will also use other measures of probability used in games, sports, medicine, and nature to illustrate the depth and breadth of donor possibilities. Lastly, Dr. Duke will demonstrate a technique to put all these together to create a predictive model of donor behavior over time.

Do you know if your donor pipeline is healthy?
Are you seeing diminishing numbers of alumni donors but aren't sure why?
In this session, we will review the outcomes of the 2025 RNL National Alumni Survey with alumni survey responses from more than 20 institutions. These insights will help you go beyond the numbers to understand the perspective of more than 20,000 alumni and what's important to them in their philanthropic expression. This type of data is critical in contextualizing what we are seeing in the diminishing donor counts many institutions are facing.