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DRIVE/ 2020 Program

Day 1: Thursday, May 28

Noon – 1:00 PM ET

Opening Key Session: Human Insights Missing from Big Data

With stories from Nokia to Netflix to the oracles of ancient Greece, Tricia Wang demystifies big data, identifies its pitfalls and provides insights into how to make the right business decisions and thrive in the unknown.

Tricia Wang, Co-Founder, Sudden Compass and Global Tech Ethnographer

1:15 – 2:00 PM 

Elective Sessions

Choose your Own Adventure: Developing, Using, and Promoting Data-Driven Tools to Inform Healthcare Policy

This session will discuss healthcare-focused data visualization and public reporting trends in the nonprofit sector. The session will draw largely on examples from the Commonwealth Fund’s State Health System Performance Scorecard, including demonstrations of several derivative interactive data visualization tools. We will discuss how data for these tools are collected, analyzed and curated for online public reporting, as well as provide examples of how the data and tools are used by the media and policymakers.

David Radley, Senior Scientist – Health System Tracking, The Commonwealth Fund, Senior Study Director, Westat

Getting from Here to There: the Development and Implementation of a Data-driven Strategy at the Harvard Graduate School of Design

Fulfilling and implementing a data analytics project with internal or external partners can be an uncomfortable, fraught and even Sisyphean experience. Often the data disappears and then the results are returned, sometimes without discussion of the process. This session explores the ways that ongoing, continual project planning and feedback improves the planning, execution, and implementation of an analytics project in exponential ways.

Ernesto Fernandez, Associate Director, Business Solutions Analyst, Harvard Business School; and Marianne Pelletier, Principal, Staupell Analytics Group

Driving Alumni and Donor Affinity Using Big Data

“Big data analytics” has become a prominent buzzword in the business world. The techniques deployed are being increasingly applied in the education sector, but primarily for understanding trends and relationships in the recruiting or retention space. These same techniques can also be leveraged to improve alumni relations and donations. This session is for leaders in education who need to understand what types of challenges big data analytics can address as well as data analytic experts who are tasked with how to approach those challenges. Arizona State University shares how their Knowledge and Insights team went about measuring alumni affinity and quantifying its relationship to alumni giving. They will reveal how big data can be leveraged to predict affinity levels of your entire alumni base and to diagnose what actions you can take to have the greatest impact on your success metrics.

Cindy Casper, Managing Director, Constituent Knowledge and Insights, Arizona State University; and Adam Pierno, Associate Vice President, Marketing Strategy Enterprise Marketing Hub, Arizona State University

2:00 – 2:30 

Exhibit Hall Break and Hive Presentations

2:30 – 3:15 

Elective Sessions

Beyond the Numbers: Text Mining Using Off-the-Shelf Software Solutions

Advancement organizations are overwhelmed with text data, including surveys, contact reports, and social media. Now, with off-the-shelf software solutions such as Microsoft Power BI and Azure, we no longer need programmers or data scientists to begin leveraging this information. By pairing textual analysis with our existing quantitative analytics, we can enhance our reporting, providing deeper insights into our constituents and their engagement with the institution. Review a case study that uses text mining to analyze reunion survey responses, and explore the techniques used and review samples of the reporting developed.

Patricia Bray, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, Dartmouth College

Excel-lent Analytics: Driving Insight with Excel

When budgets and expertise put tools like Python, R, and Tableau out of reach, integrating data analytics into our everyday work can seem like an impossible goal. Learn how to use Excel as an entry to analytics for your organization. Find out how to develop descriptive and even some predictive statistics in Excel, acknowledging its limits while exploring everything it can do to help drive valuable data insight.

Carolyn Rousch, Associate Director, Prospect Management, University of Arizona Foundation

Is your Data Telling you the Truth? Implementing a Data Integrity Strategy at your Institution

While it may be true that data doesn't lie, the quality and integrity of your data can seriously impact the effectiveness of the programs and the decisions made by your advancement team. Elevated data integrity is imperative for successful data-driven decision-making while maintaining accuracy. Miami University's Data integrity model ensures data quality and continuous improvements. In this session, we will examine their data integrity model, review how they score data points, and discuss the importance of data integrity along with the benefits they've discovered from this strategy along with areas of data they have improved.

Kelly Donathan, Data Integrity Specialist, Miami University; and Jennifer Ramey, Data Integrity Specialist, Miami University

3:15 – 3:45 

Exhibit Hall Break and Hive Presentations

3:45 – 4:30 

Elective Sessions

"What Does It All Mean?" - Using Natural Language Processing to Extract Meaning from Unstructured Text

Our constituents are telling us what they care about. They are doing so through their social media posts, their event attendance, their philanthropy, the emails they read, the links they click on, and many other activities. As Advancement professionals, we need to be better at capturing this deluge of information and extracting meaning from it.

In this talk, I'll provide a high-level overview of some very useful tools emerging from Data Science that allow us to leverage natural language processing to better understand what our constituents want, what our organizations have to offer, and how to connect them together. While this kind of data science is often portrayed as esoteric and difficult to master, I'll demystify how it works and provide a demonstration of some real-world use cases.

Justin Williams, Manager of Data Governance, University of Washington; and  Michael Visaya, AVP for Information Management, UW Advancement, University of Washington

Does Your Alumni Data Spark Joy? Case Studies in Measuring Engagement and Predicting Giving at Liberal Arts Institutions

Target and Amazon know alumni better than we do. Why? Because colleges and universities are notoriously awful at gathering and maintaining accurate data on who alumni are today - their interests, behaviors, and identities. Many schools face the dual challenge of outdated alumni information and declining alumni participation in giving, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Join this session for a hands-on experience working with real data from liberal arts institutions. Learn how new approaches to determining a graduate's level of connection can be used to measure engagement and predict giving. You'll leave with concrete strategies to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your data analytics, including: calculating alumni identity, tracking digital engagement, and forecasting donor behavior.

Jay Dillon, Executive Director, Alumni Relations, University of California, Berkeley

A Model for Data Management

With a legacy system at the core--and a conversion on the horizon--UF needed a systematic approach to providing reliable and consistent data in the current environment while also building a framework to drive the successful implementation of a new CRM. To this end, UF launched Data Management--a comprehensive approach to project management, documentation, and data quality. Comprised of six implementation teams and a steering committee, the Data Management infrastructure ensures that all projects have a defined scope, established roles & responsibilities and rules of engagement to drive outcomes. This structure also provides the framework for broader data governance across UF Advancement.

Kim Blackburn, Associate Director, Business Analysis and Process; Elizabeth Deely, Associate Director, Strategy and Project Management; Audrey Geoffrey, Senior Director, Data Services; and Heather Greig, Assistant Vice President, Strategy and Operations, University of Florida

4:30 – 5:00 

DRIVE/ Social: Virtual Icebreakers and Mingling (optional event)

 

Day 2: Friday, May 29

12:00 – 1:00 PM ET

Key Panel Discussion: A Conversation with Transformational Data and Digital Leaders

In this interactive panel discussion, hear from data, digital, and strategic leaders from prominent nonprofit organizations and technology companies as they discuss their greatest data successes, challenges and how their role has transformed from a governance emphasis to a strategic focus with revenue responsibilities. If you aspire to be a CDO or strategic leader, this is a must-attend general session.

David Mathison, Founder and CEO, CDO Club; Perry Hewitt, Digital and Marketing Strategist, Colechurch Consulting; Vignesh Clingam, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer, American Diabetes Association; Jawad Sartaj, CEO at inforMD (Former Chief Analytics Officer, SOMOS Community Care; and Stephanie Trunzo, Global Vice President, Transformation and Offerings, Oracle 

1:00 – 1:30

Exhibit Hall Break and Hive Presentations

1:30 – 2:15 

Elective Sessions

Demystifying Marketing Data Science

Data scientists can mine massive amounts of information to better understand human behavior. So how can marketing teams use the principles of "big data" to drive greater ROI? Children's National has created an analytics program to understand how marketing and fundraising touch points work together so that they are worth more in coordination then the sum of their parts. This modeling lead to a decrease from 83 cents to 7 cents of the cost per dollar raised in a single fiscal year by focusing in on moments and touch points that matter. This session will cover the theoretical concepts to the actual building of the product as well as the multi-year road map of where Children's National is taking this technology.

Jon Thompson, Executive Director of Philanthropic Technology & Analytics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

How an Office of Strategic Initiatives Can Embed Data and Analytics into an Advancement Shop's Culture

Today’s advancement operations are increasingly pressured to do more with less. To be effective, institutions need to benchmark with peers, prioritize strategic planning, implement best practices, and skillfully execute projects by leveraging data and analytics to make better decisions. Discuss the function of strategic initiatives along with the skills needed to be successful for an incumbent, and examine examples from a number of institutions. A growing number of advancement shops are achieving the benefits of having an office of strategic initiatives to address these issues and realizing that having a function dedicated to cross-team, innovation-oriented projects can promote the use of data to inform decisions. Learn how you might transform your advancement operation.

A.J. Nagaraj, Assistant Vice President, Advancement Strategy, Stony Brook University; and Mark Longo, Director of Strategic Initiatives, California Institute of Technology

Taming the Chaos: How to Unify Data, Business Intelligence Tools, Documents, and Systems into a Single, Intuitive User Experience

Have you heard these complaints from users? "Why do I have to keep track of so many links?  If I'm looking for a report, how do I know whether it was written in Cognos, Tableau, PowerBI, or SSRS?  Where is the policy or procedure I need?  Why can't I seem to find anything!?!"  In response to these pain points, Pomona College developed an innovative platform entitled "ConnectTo," which builds upon traditional intranet concepts by not only providing a one-stop shop for policies, procedures, training videos, and other materials needed by staff, but also by deploying reports using a variety of business intelligence tools - including Tableau, Cognos, SQL Reporting Services, and PowerBI - via a unified portal. No longer burdened by the dangers of adding one more tool to the mix, they are now free to create visualizations, management reports, executive dashboards, list reports, and other data-related deliverables using the most appropriate tool for the job (as opposed to the one tool users know how to access). Join this sesion if you are  battling reporting and dashboard chaos.

Nadine Francis, Senior Director of Advancement Services & Information Systems, Pomona College; and Tracey Siepser, Advancement Business Process and Reporting Specialist, Pomona College

Global Advancement Metrics: A Preview of CASE's New Standards, Guidelines, and Metrics

AMAtlas is CASE’s global resource for educational advancement-related metrics, benchmarks and analytics. In the year ahead we will be piloting new core fundraising metrics, launching a new campaign survey, and releasing new Global Reporting Standards and Management Guidelines which, for the first time, will enable benchmarking on fundraising, campaigns, and alumni engagement across CASE’s global membership. In addition to previewing the new metrics and standards, the session will provide an update on CASE’s Alumni Engagement Metrics and some insights from a just completed survey on innovations in alumni relations.

David Bass, Senior Director of Research, CASE; and Ann Kaplan, Senior Director, Voluntary Support of Education, CASE

2:15 – 2:45 

Exhibit Hall Break and Hive Presentations

2:45 – 3:30

Elective Sessions

Bias in, Bias out: Building Better Artificial Intelligence with Dataset ‘Nutrition Labels’

What does junk food have to do with ethical AI? In this session, the co-founders of The Data Nutrition Project (DNP), incubated at MIT and Harvard, will present their work around tools for building ‘healthier’ artificial intelligence. DNP produces the equivalent of food nutrition labels for datasets, to encourage more responsible use of data when training AI models. Their presentation will give a primer on AI, including what all the buzz (and concern) is about, discuss the primary issues of bias and injustice that DNP is addressing, and describe their working methodology, insights, and takeaways from their first two years of development. The presentation will also include an in-depth analysis of the current landscape of tools used to help improve AI, and a deep dive into their Nutrition Label for datasets. This lecture will be interactive, with several short activities and time for questions at the end. Come with your questions about data quality, and be prepared to participate!

Kasia Chmielinski, Project Lead, Data Nutrition Project; and Sarah Newman, Research Lead, Co-Founder, Data Nutrition Project

Feel the Churn! How to Implement Prospect Aging and Accelerate Pipeline Movement

In recognition of the need for more consistent driving of and reporting on prospect movement through the pipeline, our prospect development team at GW developed definitions of and guidelines around key proxy measures to form the concept of “prospect aging.” Together, the combination of these variables provides a holistic picture of the pipeline progress a gift officer's assigned prospects are making, as viewed through the parallel lenses of stage aging and portfolio saturation. This session will describe the process of developing this concept, dive into sample micro and macro-level reports, review outcomes to date, and provide attendees with a framework for establishing prospect aging at their own institutions.

Lindsey Nadeau, Senior Director, Prospect Development, UNICEF USA; and Catherine Flaatten, Director, Research and Relationship Management, The George Washington University

The Good, the Bad, and the Chatty:  Implementing a Chatbot for Donor Support

Meeting a donor’s expectation of immediacy, on-demand availability, and consistency can be the lynch pin in resolving an issue, providing needed info, or even finalizing a decision to make a gift. The University of Illinois Foundation chose to expand donor service by implementing a chatbot to complement existing, and more traditional, donor service avenues. We will take you through the idea, vendor selection, implementation and plans for the future. Hear about the challenges, opportunities, and benefits of offering a chatbot for donors. Learn how it works, and how the donor can ‘leave a message’ or request a time to be contacted back to further discuss their needs. We will share the metrics of use, donor feedback, and plans for expansion beyond the core websites to other areas of the university system.

Lea Ann Gross, Executive Director of Development Services, University of Illinois Foundation; and William Reynen, Director of Enterprise Applications and Architecture, University of Illinois Foundation

The U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey: Datasets, Resources, and Use Cases

Discover how free statistics and data tools from the U.S. Census Bureau are foundational for your institution’s next data-driven decision. This session provides an overview and demonstration of the American Community Survey (ACS), the nation’s most current, reliable, and accessible data source for local statistics. You can use the ACS to understand the demographics of the population or learn more about neighborhoods where alumni live. View a demonstration on tools that can be used to access ACS data and a current ACS data user discusses how ACS data helps them make data-driven decisions.

Rodger Devine, Associate Dean of External Affairs for Strategy and Innovation, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; Amanda Klimek, Survey Statistician, ACSO Outreach and Education Branch, U.S. Census Bureau; and Michael Pawlus, Data Scientist, University of Southern California

3:40 – 4:30 

Closing Key Session with Sheena Iyengar

The Five C’s of Choice - Choice Overload

Learn to recognize the symptoms of choice overload and hear about innovative solutions for treating the malady. Sheena’s goal is to help you separate the important choices from the trivial ones and to teach you how to create a better choosing experience.

Sheena Iyengar, S.T. Lee Professor of Business, Columbia Business School

4:30 – 5:00 

DRIVE/ Farewell: Virtual Icebreakers and Takeaways (optional event)