According to a recent poll conducted by Ruffalo Noel Levitz, 58% of fundraising leaders said their team members leave because they are asked to take on too much. In addition to that, 34% percent of those same leaders said that they are not giving their team the tools that they need to succeed. With that in mind, consider that Forbes released a fundraising report in August of this year that stated total giving in the U.S. reached $52.9 billion in FY 2021; a 7% increase from the prior year (Council for Advancement and Support of Education).
With alumni and donors increasing their engagement with their educational institutions, a holistic engagement strategy that supports both donors and the education teams is more important than ever. This means having a single source of truth for fundraising teams, a robust solution for gift management as well as a digital engagement plan that drives interaction.
Below are 3 ways to support holistic fundraising strategy using Salesforce.
Understand the way donors are connected to the institution 
If you’re familiar with Salesforce then you know all about the 360 degree view. When it comes to fundraising and donors, this means understanding your multi-connected donor and their “why” behind interactions with your school. For example, donors could be alumni or know other alumni, be part of a corporate partnership, have family at the institution, attendend an event, etc. Having this level of detail makes targeted engagement and long term relationships possible.
Make it easy to engage with your institution
A key component of donor retention is the end user experience. While email and phone continue to be strong vehicles to promote giving, texting and mobile interaction provide another avenue for prompting donors. Rob Blatchley, the CRO at Mogli, said 98% of text messages are read and 45% are responded to.
Salesforce can be your solution for driving that Donor Engagement. We like to recommend Pardot or Marketing Cloud for setting donor communication journeys, which can work great in partnership with MogliSMS. These solutions provide multiple touchpoints, personalized communications, segmented donor information, and more.
Elevation Solutions Fundraising for Education Package
Elevation Solutions Fundraising for Education package allows you to see your student lifecycle in one Salesforce org by showcasing your data to reveal donor stories and trends. Our goal is to provide schools an easy to visualize, single source of truth depicting donor engagement from cradle to endowment, and beyond. Key components of our solutions included donor management, donation and recurring donation management, grant management, gift processing and analytics.
Benefits of Elevation Solutions Fundraising for Education package:
- Less integrations and a faster implementation means less investment and manual effort.
- Less technical debt.
- Quick set up for system Administrators with our packaged permissions, settings and profiles.
- Batch gift entry, allocation and payment tracking, and payment scheduling ready use for fundraising operations team.
- Personalized experience for end users includes gift, grant and sponsorship management, rollup summaries, giving history and more.
Sarah Ross, our CEO, recently did a walkthrough of fundraising in EDA. Check it out here (28:45).
We’re here to help if your team has questions or isn’t sure how Salesforce can support our fundraising and engagement efforts. Connect with us by using the form at the bottom of this page or, email us at booking@elevation.solutions.
