Blackbaud's 2008 Higher Education Forum

I'm in Boston today for Blackbaud's 2008 Higher Education Forum. This is the first year for this new event and it brings together executives and directors from Higher Ed institutions across North America.

My table at breakfast was nearly all from Big Ten schools. There were people from the University of Iowa, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and I represented the Indiana University contingent. The people from the Rhode Island School of Design at our table must have thought we'd planned it in advance.

First thing this morning I'm co-presenting with Brian Dowling, Assistant Vice President of Development Services, University of Michigan. Our session is called "Web 2.0 Demystified: What it is and What it can Mean to Your Institution" and will focus on several trends we're seeing.

Now I'm listening to Lawrence Henze, J.D., Managing Director of Target Analytics and his session called "Setting the Stage for Proactive Research - A Strategic Approach to Prospecting." Lawrence and I always seem to be speaking at the same time so this is the first time I've been able to sit in on one of his sessions. He talked about how we got to a siloed landscape and what it really means to take an integrated approach to fundraising. Internal conflicts between current giving and future giving often causes organizations to get away from a donor-centric way of doing things. Most major gifts don't come out of thin air. They are more often the result of a progression of annual giving, membership or volunteer activity, and peer solicitation. But how does planned giving fit in? 90% of planned gifts come from low-end annual donors. Only 10% come from major donors.

Lawrence makes the point that everyone has an "ultimate gift" at some level, and doing proactive research allows you to move donors through a process to that destination. The two key tools for proactive research are data mining and predictive modeling. This gets even more important as experiences change during college and after for people. Some of this can be do-it-yourself and other aspects may require outside expertise. Start with one data point, like age, and ask a bunch of questions just based on that one data point. How about this one: When do people give? Look for the pattern and make adjustments that are more donor-centric.

Lawrence talks about how non-profit data modeling has been around for about 24 years now. And he makes the point that not all data is predictive, but instead may just be descriptive. For example, if a high percentage of your donors have an email address, then that doesn't necessarily mean that having an email address predicts giving. That's because that email address was more than likely acquired through the act of giving and not the main reason for giving. Having that email address may describe something about the donor, but it doesn't predict anything. (Correlation doesn't equal causation) If you have historical data, then you may be able to predict future activity.

The reason why a lot of data mining projects fail: The results tell you to do something different than what you are doing today. That doesn't always go over well in the "we do what we've always done" siloed world. And this must be led from the top-down in your organization. No fundraising system can overcome a lack of oversight or accountability. Lawrence wrapped up by talking about how to get started and taking some questions from the room full of attendees.

I also had a chance to sit in on Terry Handler's "Preparing Programs and Advancement Services for Expanding Technology" session before I had to grab a plane ride home. Terry talked about how the technology used by higher education institutions has changed over the years, and at the same time the complexity of needs by development departments has also matured. More mature programs require more complex engagement with constituents, and this eventually leads to the need to build an advancement technology team to support the organization. Terry then went through the various key steps that organizations need to take to build that team, and he discussed some great insights into how to do it successfully. Very good stuff!

Throughout the day I'll be attending some other sessions and I plan to blog and tweet about them during the day. The forum continues tomorrow as well, but I was only able to attend today's events.

 (Updating Regularly)