DASHBOARDS AND PREDICTIVE MODELING LEAD TO RECORD FUNDRAISING

SETON HILL UNIVERSITY

DATA AND REPORTING CHALLENGES

Seton Hill University began planning its most recent fundraising effort needing a larger pool of prospects and better reports for measuring their success. Its first challenge, identifying prospects, required the ability to accurately predict who among Seton Hill’s base of alumni and friends might be the most likely and capable of making major gifts in the future. Once such prospects were identified, however, the University would need far better reporting tools or it would struggle to act upon that information.

Historically, Seton Hill’s fundraising reports involved a manual process that was time-consuming and opaque. Fundraising leaders could not directly access the information they needed, requiring them to funnel even simple requests through their technical staff. Moreover, the University had yet to develop transparent and universally agreed-upon reporting standards for Institutional Advancement, resulting in a general concern that fundraising reports may not accurately reflect the great work being done by the team.

Molly Robb Shimko, Vice President

Institutional Advancement

Seton Hill University

Solas is a true partner and they are collaborative in their approach. Through our work with them, we are confident in the integrity of our reporting and in the validity of our fundraising strategy. They empowered our major gift officers and helped us develop a holistic approach to fundraising through the use of effective tools and metrics

SOLUTION: CUSTOM PREDICTIVE MODELING AND DASHBOARDS

Seton Hill began its engagement with Solas by requesting an advancement services assessment and a custom predictive model to help them increase the fundraising pipeline. Through the assessment, Seton Hill and Solas partnered on developing new portfolio management practices that would promote increased accountability and transparency. After shaping a process that worked for them, Seton Hill was better able to identify which standard reports it would need and what those reports should reflect.

Solas also developed a custom model for Seton Hill, making it possible for them to focus their small fundraising team on the most promising prospects. Because Solas delivers its models through Tableau, Seton Hill was able to quickly see who among the best prospects were currently being engaged, and which prospects they should qualify next.

Finally, Solas worked with Seton Hill to imagine a suite of custom dashboards that they could rely on for their fundraising needs. Together they articulated clear reporting standards guided by best practices and made it possible for everyone on the team to have access to dashboards on demand.

RESULT: A SUCCESSFUL AND EMPOWERED DEVELOPMENT TEAM

In the years since their predictive modeling study was conducted, Seton Hill has been exceeding its fundraising goals and expanding its capacity for fundraising in the long term. The University has since collaborated with Solas on additional dashboards, creating a more comprehensive suite of reporting to support the entire team.

Using both the modeling data and dashboard suite, Seton Hill has confidence that portfolios are optimized and are being managed effectively, the annual fund is being tracked consistently, and that opportunities to solicit major gifts are being acted upon. Solas continues to actively partner with Seton Hill to take the stress out of fundraising reporting and help the team devote more time to working with their best prospects.

Interested in learning how Solas can increase your fundraising success? Contact us today for a free consultation.