CRM enDEAvors:
A New Era in Constituent Management

Project Timeline

In May 2024, a CRM Selection Committee was formed with a goal to research and recommend a new CRM solution to the Senior Vice President for DEA. Since then, the Committee met to gather, define, and review requirements, define use cases, review integration needs, and collectively support this change.

Why a New CRM Solution and Why Now

Our current CRM “BBEC” has served us well, but as our fundraising and engagement efforts continue to grow and evolve, we recognize the need for a more robust, automated, and integrated solution. We also face a significant, 40% price increase with Blackbaud in the coming years. The new CRM will allow us to:

  • Improve mobile functionality
  • Increase staff autonomy
  • Reduce redundant processes
  • Enhance data visualization
  • Simplify our tech stack
  • This will enable us to serve our staff and constituents more effectively and efficiently.

The Selection Process

We received proposals from Ellucian, Kindsight, Affinaquest, and Salesforce. After reviewing the proposals, we conducted on-site demos with Kindsight and Affinaquest to assess each solution’s fit with our needs. Ultimately, we recommended Kindsight’s due to its:

  • Constituent portal (event management, documentation management, alumni engagement, online giving)
  • AI functionality
  • Staging table for records and gift data
  • Security features
  • Mobile application
  • Native integrations with event management, online giving forms, and reporting solutions
  • We are excited about the future and the opportunities this new CRM will bring to our organization.

CRM enDEAvors FAQ

Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform that helps businesses manage their interactions with customers, prospects, and partners. It brings together tools for sales, marketing, customer service, commerce, and IT鈥攁ll in one integrated system.

Kindsight is a fundraising technology company that builds CRM solutions tailored for nonprofits, higher education, and healthcare organizations. Its flagship product, ascend, is a Salesforce-native platform that helps teams manage donor relationships, streamline operations, and raise more funds with less manual effort.

ascend is Kindsight鈥檚 powerful fundraising CRM platform designed specifically for nonprofits, educational institutions, and healthcare organizations. Built natively on Salesforce, it offers a centralized hub for managing donor data, streamlining operations, and enhancing engagement strategies.

Kindsight鈥檚 ascend CRM is built natively on the Salesforce platform. That means it leverages all the core capabilities of Salesforce鈥攍ike data centralization, automation, and scalability鈥攚hile layering on specialized tools for fundraising, donor engagement, and advancement tailored t

In our search for the ideal CRM solution, we prioritized a platform that not only streamlined operations but also empowered our team to build stronger relationships with our donors. Kindsight Ascend stood out due to its intuitive user experience, robust analytics capabilities, and its ability to integrate with our existing systems. Our confidence in the selection was solidified by the adoption of Ascend CRM by our peer and aspirant institutions, plus enhanced features like its constituent portal, AI functionality, online giving forms and reporting solutions.

With Kindsight Ascend, we are poised to bolster collaboration, optimize campaign strategies, and ultimately drive greater impact in our fundraising initiatives.

Attain Partners is a management and technology consulting firm that works with organizations across education, nonprofits, healthcare, and government sectors. They specialize in helping clients modernize operations and implement strategic solutions for ascend users.

We selected Attain Partners because of their proven expertise and deep commitment to delivering exceptional results. As the only Kindsight partner to achieve Premier-level status, they have demonstrated a track record of success in serving Higher Education clients, uniquely positioning them to maximize the potential of this partnership. Their values-driven approach in Digital Transformation, Change Management, Technical Delivery, and Data Strategy ensures a seamless collaboration with the DEA team. Additionally, their industry-leading Advancement expertise minimizes organizational risk and prepares our team for success with the new Salesforce-based Advancement system. With a shared commitment to innovation and excellence, Attain Partners is the ideal partner for this impactful project.

Visual graphic of CRM analogy.

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