On the road again, it's good to be back on the road ....

services@supportingadvancement.com — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Ever travel, get to your hotel ready to do some work and spend the next 15 minutes trying to find a plug to charge up and work with all of your electronic devices?

In some cases, every available plug is taken up, and is located behind the bed, television, or some other immovable object that you can barely reach behind. Maybe these organizations are trying to save money on power consumption and making it up by charging for Internet access.

So here's a solutution in one hotel that seemed a bit novel. This is the power bar that rises out of the desk to form the power column that is convenient and is still able to prevent the theft of it from the hotel. What a great idea!

Now, this was a little more of an "upscale" property, a little newer than most, but was still a bargain through one of the online hotel booking web sites. The guest has instant piece of mind by knowing that computer, cell phone, iPod, GPS, portable recorder, digital camera can all be charged upon arrival back into the room.

I've noticed that plugs seem to be disappearing in some airports. Maybe it's just a perception from needing them more and more all the time, but someone from this hotel chain may want to talk to some airport managers about a solution like this. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step ...

Turn, turn, turn

services@supportingadvancement.com — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Turn, turn, turn

The world is in a constant state of change. The ocean never looks the same as it rises and falls, and as waves are churned by the currents that run beneath the surface. We are always changing and we know that the person we were yesterday is slightly different from the person we are today. The shy girl I was in eighth grade has been gone for quite awhile. Some of us face that year, that day, that moment when we are forced to step up in our canoe and send the rest of the people around us lurching for the sides to steady themselves. But we no longer have to grip the sides. No, we’ve changed.

The thought of it is exciting and also, sad. There is no other way to say it. The old is replaced by the new and then reduced to but a memory, like a flutter of butterfly wings among the windflowers that grow at the side of the road while you drive past, speeding by. Humans want to be immovable like a stone carving. We want to be solid and steady, but that is not the reality. We are made of muscle and bone and tissues. We must remain flexible. Change is inevitable, so what do you do when things change? Resistance is futile. You have to accept it. You have to move on.

And as we’re changing, we face past regrets. If only I had done this differently… I wish I had been a part of that… it would have been nice if I was more…

We have this drive for self-improvement. For the most part we want to do better, to be better. A key ingredient to our betterment is change. Change challenges us. If we don’t challenge ourselves, we never give ourselves the opportunity to grow. We become stagnant and apathetic. We get in a rut and the difference between a rut and a grave is only a few feet.

Brenda Salter McNeil said to 22,000 students at the 2006 Urbana convention: “I just want to stop by and remind you to be careful where you settle, because where you settle is where you’ll die. Your dreams will die, your aspirations will die, your vision will die. Your relationships, opportunities will die.”

What do we settle for?

Have you ever started going, started to strive for a difference, for a change and just gotten tired, stopped, and settled for whatever came along? You shouldn’t have settled. You should never settle. The moment we settle, we start to dig a rut for ourselves, and we continue to dig and dig and dig until we’re surrounded by mire.

In his novel, Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller writes: “We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it? It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be.”

When have you stayed when you should have left? What have you allowed to hold you back from seeking more education, from improving your business strategy, from growing closer with your family? Look for change, hunt it down. And when you find it, embrace it. Change is not easy and it’s not comfortable but it is necessary. And like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly, the end result is beautiful.

What We Don't Measure

services@supportingadvancement.com — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

One of the tenets of great programs is that we measure everything we do and use these analytics and related tools to make improvements.

We all have campaign to date totals, year to date, this year vs. last year, fundraising by donor interest and designation and more.

Activity based metrics such as how many records have we updates, what is our average receipting times and similar are less common. It’s ironic that activity leads to investment, but we don’t have nearly the same amounts of focus that we do on bottom line numbers even though activity based metrics are just as important to “sell” our ideas. For example, a slipping addressable rate may be used to sell a board or governance body on the idea of using data tracing services to improve data quality.

There is a third group of performance elements we don’ t often measure which are probably just as important. These are seldom addressed in a systematic or organized format. There is typically little evidence of any kind of trend analysis over time. And yet, this third group can be very useful.

This third group is a combination of external environmental elements and outcome measurement that can be related to philanthropy.

One example would be using the correlation of the capital markets to fundraising. For those of you that haven’t done this exercise, you’ll often find this relationship is often very dependent. If the current drop in the capital markets continues, we should all be using this information to do some advance planning. Do we need to adjust goals? Do we need to have a communication with our donors? Do we need to have language already drafted on a strategy to communicate what our standard financial or market position currently is for our organization’s invested capital?

Another example is related to outcome measurements. How many of our constituents have we helped and how is this changing over time? Donors are expecting much more comprehensive on the value that we add to the social context and good stewardship means that we need to report these measures just like any of our financial totals. We need to have integrated systems in place that reduce the amount of manual effort and labor involved in compiling this information so it becomes an automatic part of our monthly financial reporting. We need to have systems in place that can deploy this type of information automatically on our web site without the need to manually format and recompile.

The foundation of all this type of reporting can be based on a data warehouse, where information from a wide and disparate number of sources can be combined effectively “outside” our fundraising systems in a way that leverages and creates a comprehensive picture of our organization.

If you’re not moving in this direction, it’s time …

Cautionary Notes on PCI Compliance Options

services@supportingadvancement.com — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

I would add a cautionary note for consideration by any institution exploring options for capturing credit card details.

You might already be aware that in June of 2005 the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards were made effective and they have an impact on any organization that accepts credit card payments. The penalties for being out of compliance with these standards can be severe and I would recommend to everyone that they become well versed in these standards which directly impact all of our credit card transactions and those include gifts, event payments and purchases in our book stores and gift shops, etc.

If discussions about PCI-DSS compliance have not yet taken place at your respective organization, I would highly recommend that such discourse be initiated as quickly as possible so that steps can be taken to assure compliance and avoid the penalties from our credit card vendors.

A colleague in one of our Finance offices tracked down this news report that aired on 60 minutes late last year. It is about enough to scare anybody from using their credit cards ever again – particularly with the potential for illicit capturing of information through wireless systems:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3538299n

Here are some links that are useful in becoming more aware of the PCI-DSS compliance parameters:

https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/

http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/

There are also many resource links on www.educause.edu:

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/TwoApproachestoPCIDSSComp/43708

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/LessonsLearnedontheRoadto/45080

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/TacklingCampusWideECommer/45379; http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/powerpoint/EDU07218.pps

Good Luck and Be Careful Out There! :-)

Amy Phillips

A Few Thoughts on Email Marketing

services@supportingadvancement.com — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

If you do a Google search on alumni e-newsletters or alumni enewsletters you can find a lot of examples quickly.

A couple of good sites on email marketing:

TargetX focuses on the recruiting side of Higher Ed, but the tips, tricks and techniques are both interesting and have a lot of relevance for advancement and development.

http://www.targetx.com/knowledge/index.html

thindata is a company specializing in email management, their newsletter is a good subscribe and offers a lot of practical tips, tricks and marketing ideas.

http://www.thindata.com/

Pursuant group provides services for “interactive” newsletters that are a combination of e-solicitations and e-newsletters.

http://www.pursuantgroup.com/

Mainspring Media Communications is another vendor providing these services.

http://www.mainspringmc.com/

As far as tracking click-throughs, most mass emailing programs or services have this capability built into the programs with into them.

You can get a trial subscription to many of the providers such as Constant Contact http://www.constantcontact.com/ and actually test some of this by setting up a list and emailing to a select group.

These providers also have a lot of tips, tricks and suggestions on email marketing.

The value added is to integrate your own institutional demographic, financial and other information into your analysis so you can refine targeting in the future, i.e. who has clicked through, what signature generated a higher response rate, what is your best timing, etc.

There are some examples of email related reports on the following page under the e-analysis heading:

http://www.supportingadvancement.com/reporting/favorites/favorite_reports.htm

There are some samples of related materials such as e-newsletter policies here:

http://www.supportingadvancement.com/web_sightings/web_sightings.htm

I think that you’ll find that in most organizations, the communications staff are typically responsible for the content, but very often, because of the technical requirements, may partner with technical staff to help with the distribution of the emails or some of the more complex html coding that may be required.

Like all touch points, email touch points should ideally be managed at a central area so your constituents are not hit too often. We haven’t done the best job of this in Higher Education because of the often decentralized nature of our organizations where every department on campus may be sending emails on a regular or haphazard basis.

As with anything else, a schedule of who’s going to be hit and when is a useful exercise to collect the information and then re-distribute. The number of touches, approval processes, should be policy driven rather than ad-hoc.

Brian Dowling

The Great Flood: Part 2 (Group Dynamics & Leadership)

services@supportingadvancement.com — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The Great Flood: Part 2 (Group Dynamics & Leadership)

While it was still raining, we pitched up our tents inside of the barn on the second floor loft (accessed by an old, sketchy ladder) so they could dry and hung up our drowned sleeping bags wherever there was room. A band of guys set out to find the canoes and rescue them from the river. I remember hearing that they took turns diving below the water to cut the ropes that the canoes were secured to, so they could be set free and brought up the gravel road to the barn. One of my friends came back with his teeth chattering, lips blue, shaking from head to toe. We recognized the signs of hypothermia and the guys who had remained at the barn helped him out of his wet clothes while the rest of us dug through our bags to find dry clothes and warm fleece jackets that would fit him. It was interesting to see how the experience of the flood wasn’t driving us apart but pulling us together.

The barn was fairly small with old musty hay scattered over the mud floors of long-vacant animal stalls and across the creaky floorboards of the barn loft. There were picture windows created by broken beams and missing boards that let in the afternoon sunlight that washed the previously grey and dreary surroundings with yellow and orange hues. When they midday sun banished the rain, we came alive.

Blue skies and puffy white clouds with a slightly warm breeze made for an idyllic day as clotheslines and hammocks were strung up from tree to tree. Everyone’s gear was drying, the lunchtime spread was being put out, we had fresh water from Jack who lived up the road, and the canoes had been saved from the flooded river one by one. We set out our camping chairs in the midday sun to dry and sat in circles, reading, journaling, and napping. People ventured beyond the barn and the little area that surrounded it, past the “No Parking” sign that stood between us and the gravel road we had walked up on earlier that morning, carrying our heavy packs and gear into what looked like hopelessness under a tin roof. I had been wrong about the barn.

We banded together, groups of people taking on cooking responsibilities, others visiting our new neighbour up the road to make the necessary phone calls to our leaders, exploration parties seeking to review the state of our underwater campground, and others who reviewed our situation and began to step up into roles of leadership and make choices.

The day passed quickly and we gathered together in the evening. This was a crucial moment for our group. Would the leadership that had formed be accepted and respected? I sat slightly nervously on the edge of my camping chair, wondering if the people around me would agree with the decisions that had been made or if our Swiss Family Robinson life would take an irreversible twist into a Lord of the Flies world of doom. I saw that my worry was wasted as people nodded along with the purposed plan in the near dark. Our group had avoided the possibility of major dissention and was getting along well.

By each person in the group working to our individual strengths and knowing what we were capable of (I wouldn’t have been able to drive into the river to free the canoes), we were able to settle ourselves into the barn and enjoy the nice weather that was to follow after the flood. The days we spent at the barn was a time that drew us close together as a group, allowed us to relax and enjoy each other’s company without having to wake up early and canoe every morning, and gave ample opportunity for reading and journaling, and enjoying the scenery around us. It was great to be able to enjoy the best part of our camping trip in harmony; as a group undivided and working together towards a common goal.

The Great Flood: Part 1 (Teamwork)

services@supportingadvancement.com — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The Great Flood: Part 1 (Teamwork)

It was a grey, but warm day as 32 college-aged students set out on the Buffalo National River in Arkansas. They had loaded their canoes earlier that morning with camping kitchens, food barrels, tent packs, and their own personal gear. The Destination: Mt. Hersey. Everyone called it “Mt. Hershey” instead, and they dreamed of a campsite with shady trees and grassy slopes.

The camp site was not what they had imagined in the slightest. It was a lumpy field with random patches of long-ish grass and bald spots that cracked and oozed with mud. After dinner was cooked and served, they had a community meeting where they decided to paddle hard the next day, some 30 miles, down to Tyler Bend (a luxury campsite compared to the field of mud they were currently occupying). Besides having nicer accommodation, they would be able to beat the forecasted rainstorm that was supposed to hit the Buffalo sometime in the afternoon the next day.

As the night wore on and dusk sunk into dark, there were no stars to be found in the sky. Clouds hovered above as the air warmed and the students shed their jackets and long layers of clothing. The last of the burning embers in the fire went out and the last of the students crept into their tents (which has been strategically positioned on patches of grass) to get some much needed sleep for the long paddle tomorrow.

After the last tent zipped up, the sky opened and rain began to drizzle down. All night, it rained down on the students encamped at Mt Hersey. The storm would rise and fall with shattering thunder and flashes of lightening that lit up the rising river and it was around four in the morning when someone thought to check the canoes. Shouts rang across the field and woke up other students, “We need rope! Who has rope?” All fourteen of their canoes (while tied to each other) had been picked up by the flooding river and were washed down about 50 feet, holding their position wrapped around a tree.

A few avid kayakers jumped into their river boats and paddled towards the canoes in the dark storm. They managed to secure them to the trees they were wrapped on so that if the river rose or fell, the canoes wouldn’t move any further.

Once the canoes were taken care of, the students began to wake up and mobilize. The river was still rising and the camp needed to be moved. The once grassy patches of grass where the tents had been placed were now under six inches of water and inside the humble abodes, sleeping pads and books began to float.

I stepped out of my tent and realized that there would be no dry feet on this day. As I began to see the situation around me I was amazed at how everyone had instantly pulled together. Everyone was out there in the torrential rain, taking down tents, grabbing their gear, hauling heavy food barrels, and making their way towards the base of a hill. When I got there a few guys had already begun to cut vines of thorns back from a winding path they had made up the hill. The camping gear for 32 students was moved from the flooding field, up the hill, and to a gravel road where we were able to rest before heading back down to do it all over again. Nobody stopped and sat down, we just kept on going.

By using each of our abilities in full force, we had managed to move camp before we found ourselves under water, and we had done it together. Once we had all of our equipment with us (no barrels full of cheese floating down the river) we began to look for a place to shelter. Somebody had found an abandoned barn just a ways up the gravel road on which we were currently gathered. We made our way there. It wasn’t much, but there was a tin roof, and the barn was dry inside we stepped out of the pouring rain and into what would become our home for the next two days. I looked around and wondered what he had gotten ourselves into. I looked for rats and mice in the corners and hoped that there wasn’t anything inside the barn that was crawling and alive, save a few bugs and spiders.

A Few Considerations on the Kintera Acquisition by Blackbaud

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

A few other considerations on the Kintera Acquisition by Blackbaud:

1. Reflects the "commoditization" of prospect screening. Most of the data sources these services use are similar. The value added will continue to be in the analytics to do database segmentation, and with some of the vendors, the ability to do direct appends of wealth/asset information directly to your database. We'll probably see more screening consulting services offered as value added by other vendors.

2. Consolidation in the industry, economies of scale and scope in the online services area. It's a good competitive strategy

re: GetActive-Convio and other vendors in the space.

3. Allows Blackbaud make additional inroads into providing software as a service, as they did a number of months ago with the e-tapestry acquisition. Many organizations are choosing hosted services which require less internal resources and expertise to manage.

4. Adds more robust email delivery capability to Blackbaud's portfolio of product offerings.

As with any acquisition, it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next year or two. Blackbaud and Kintera are built on very similar technology, eTapestry is not. Kintera has FundWare and Blackbaud has Financial Edge.

The overall customer base, management of it and product consolidation looks very complicated. It will probably take a while to see major changes.

In the competitive arena, it will be interesting to see how other vendors choose to compete and differentiate their products. Who will be the next candidate for acquisition?

Many of our traditional back end database vendors have not made great strides in their strategies for online engagement.

Data integration to our back end databases can be very challenging with our online community vendors.

Most of us don't have all the resources we need to support multiple systems.

Whoever solves all of this first and sells it to us at a competitive price ....

What have we all assumed?

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:00:00 GMT

We sometimes forget to reflect on how much our environment has changed in the last 5-10 years:

Much more scrutiny from external organizations such as Revenue Agencies. We have to be more accurate and adhere to more rules and regulations. The rules and regulations are increasingly complex to learn and to administer.
Donors have taken much more direct control of their philanthropy. We need to be much more careful in how we record gifts and then how we manage them once they have been received.
More complicated giving vehicles and more complex recognition and maintenance activities such as family foundations are becoming commonplace. This makes data entry, crediting and reporting more difficult.
We are all collecting and maintaining many more data elements. Just consider the management of email addresses alone. We’re also collecting cell phones, more information on interests, public information such as securities and have implemented new communication techniques such as email marketing.
We have all added new web enabled systems such as online communities, online giving, online event registration and others while still needing to maintain our back end database. Many of these projects have created incremental workloads without the addition of staff to manage the technology.
As we have all moved into larger and continuous campaigns, our data entry and maintenance volumes have increased. Incentive vehicles such as challenge gifts are harder to record and manage especially as these transactions flow through to the general ledger.
Privacy laws and individuals’ awareness of privacy and data exposure has made conventional tracing and finding of lost constituents more difficult. Once lost, they are harder to find. These laws have also added complications to our opt-in and opt-out management.
We are competing more directly with other non-profits who sometimes have more resources than we do and whose fundraising models can be simpler. Consider online giving where we often have many designations as opposed to a few or even just one on a political site’s profit’s online giving page.
Fundraising is a core business. We need to operate at the highest level of efficiency in the use of every resource we have.

Staffing is always the most difficult budget resource to acquire. Reorganization and streamlining of work and improvements in technology is also critical.

How much more can we assume? Only time will tell.

Finding Out About BI in Higher Education

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:00:00 GMT

One of the first steps is to do a Google search which will bring up most of the vendors:

higher education business intelligence

business intelligence

etc.

Considerations for most products should include:

1. Are the presentation layers for both the development environment and end user access 100% web based?

2. Can users self subscribe to a variety of outputs, that allow them to receive information when they want in the format they want?

3. Integration of the BI tool with the ETL tool is critical.

4. Dashboarding and critical performance indicators capabilities.

The selection of these for a campus wide solution is something that typically takes a few months, as these are usually large scale projects.

Most of the major database and software vendors have these tools or are acquiring companies that have developed the tools.

Most are similar in terms of their capabilities.

Cognos

Business Objects

Microsoft

Oracle

etc.

Some initial steps you need to think about in Advancement before even looking at a tool are:

1. What are the key performance metrics you want to develop and measure?

2. Who will these be delivered to?

3. Have a very good understanding of data cubes/pivot tables and drill down within these.

4. How a reporting and data deployment environment built on these technologies will be significantly different than your current reporting environment and how to leverage these new technologies.

5. How you will integrate data enhancements such as screening data, Prizm clusters etc. into your BI environment.

6. Integration of data mining and statistics into your BI environment.

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