Boston University trusts Blackbaud CRM to power
its first comprehensive fundraising campaign.

Founded in 1839, Boston University is a leading, international private research institution with over 35,000 students from more than 130 countries, over 10,000 faculty and staff, 17 schools and colleges, and more than 300 programs of study. Its three campuses comprise a notable range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs built on a strong foundation of the liberal arts and sciences.

In 2012, Boston University (BU) launched its fundraising campaign, The Campaign for Boston University, with a $1 billion goal for financial aid, faculty support, expanded research, and facility improvements. The final tally, announced at the campaign’s end on September 21, 2019, was $1.85 billion.

Understanding the importance of having modern technology to support this
major initiative, BU knew the legacy infrastructure powering its development
efforts needed a major upgrade. The team chose Blackbaud CRM, and within
months of being live, it was clear they had made the right investment. The
solution delivered a consistent, reliable foundation for their data needs and
provided the flexibility to support their growing advancement initiatives.
“The Campaign for Boston University was the primary driver for selecting
Blackbaud CRM,” Witkowski said. “By having an accurate view of constituents’
records, our fundraisers were able to make data-driven segmentation
decisions and confidently solicit support from donors most likely to give.”

Supporting Fundraising Effectiveness for Greater Results

With Blackbaud CRM serving as the strategic data platform, gift officers were
able to achieve a more holistic view of constituents to increase fundraising
effectiveness. The comprehensive constituent view provides gift officers with
customized capacity ratings, interaction tracking, engagement insight, and
other key data points to help power their success. Tracking historical plans
and opportunities offered critical insight into past solicitation strategies that
helped gift officers when onboarding inherited prospects and making future
strategies more informed and effective.

“The solution’s flexibility to manage multi-unit asks and complex donor
agreements has proven to be an emerging requirement in today’s world of
high major donor expectations. Campaigns have become highly collaborative
partnerships among internal stakeholders and Blackbaud CRM’s ability to
handle and report on those complexities became a critical success factor,”
Witkowski said.

Delivering Campaign Tracking and Insight

To support the ongoing campaign strategy, the BU team leveraged
Blackbaud CRM’s tracking capabilities to provide stakeholders visibility into
fundraiser performance and campaign metrics:

• Fundraiser effectiveness dashboards provided insight into fundraiser
activities and surfaced constituent analytics based on event attendance,
relationship to the institution, and other key data points.
• Campaign progress reporting allowed the team to deliver accurate and
timely information to stakeholders, which built trust and confidence in the
data across campus.
• Complex revenue management capabilities supported sophisticated gift
processing and revenue tracking needs

Extending the Solution

The BU application development team leveraged the extensibility of
Blackbaud CRM by using the software developer kit (SDK) to customize
features to improve the user experience and support the unique business
requirements of the institution.

The student outreach tracker customization helped support the unique
stewardship program needs of their comprehensive campaign and was
recognized by CASE with a 2019 Circle of Excellence award. Building on past projects between BU’s stewardship and donor relations team (SDR) and development and alumni relations applications team, this custom-built tool automated the process of requesting and tracking submissions of thank-you letters from students receiving donor-funded scholarships. It also allowed the SDR team to prioritize outreach by donor rating, track student submissions, and identify funds that have not yet been awarded.

Strategies for Future Success

To keep this positive momentum going, the BU team is already thinking about how they can build on their campaign success and better support future fundraising initiatives. A few areas under consideration include:

• Grow understanding of alumni interests and engagement, including
identifying and tracking the true interests of their alumni and their donors-what they’re interested in funding that’s not necessarily inherent in the data that they have today.
• Explore how big data and data science can support future strategic initiatives.
• Continue to consolidate different groups and data sets across campus to
track the complete life cycle of interactions.