Little research has uncovered clear results on why post-secondary alumni give or which alumni might be more inclined to give.  The most significant predictor of future giving for alumni to their alma mater is past giving (Okunade and Justice, 1991).  This creates an unfortunate situation for today’s post-secondary leader, where they need to be more reliant on fundraising results to overcome budget shortfalls while knowing their fundraising staffs only have the ability to determine the likelihood of an alumni to give through meeting with them.  This problem is only more exacerbated for a public post-secondary leader, who has dealt with dwindling state support for years (Mitchell et al., 2018). The goal of this analysis was to see if we could identify alumni more likely to donate based on involvement in certain student activity types.  From there, those involved in fundraising and leading post-secondary institutions could then have segmented group of alumni more likely to donate that they can focus solicitations on.  In this analysis multiple logistic regressions are conducted to show the impact of participating in at least one of eight student activity types on making at least one gift six to nine years removed from graduation.  The findings show that involvement in any of the eight student activity types measured will increase the likelihood of alumni giving, with those participating in varsity sport, greek, or campus leadership being the activities where alumni are over 2 times more likely to give.  

A professional fundraiser with over 15 years of experience in various direct fundraising roles at four different post–secondary institutions, Michael was awarded his PhD in Strategic Leadership with a concentration in post–secondary education from James Madison University in May 2021. Michael’s research looks to better explain fundraising best practices relative to post–secondary industry so advancement leaders can better allocate resources and achieve fundraising goals. Currently, Michael serves as Director of Development with School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Virginia.

Being a data driven organization is now a strategic goal of many institutions. Organizations are well aware of benefits of intelligently empowering their employees, customers and partners with data insights.  Despite increasing effort and investment the results are mixed. 

In this paper we will talk about various analytics maturity in an enterprise and share architectural perspectives to enable decentralization of data with a goal of building a data foundation, which can be used by various personas of users based on their needs and obtaining value from historical facts and analytical data at scale.

Vijay Arora is a technology and business visionary leader with over 20 years of hands–on and executive experience in delivering innovative, complex enterprise solutions. Vijay has enabled multiple organizations to effectively integrate their data, decisions and operations using modern cloud–based technologies. Vijay enthusiastically serves as the co–founder of One Connect Solutions – empowering customers to better understand complex data and extract meaningful information to increase fundraising capabilities. He served as a valued member of senior executive teams at Microsoft Corporation and University of Washington, prior to co–founding One Connect Solutions and developing Michelangelo. Vijay holds an Executive MBA from the University of Washington.

In this paper, we will review the parallel development, current basic concepts, and near future of fundraising and sports analytics.  An assessment of the current state of fundraising analytics will be compared with the creation and progress of sports analytics in baseball, soccer, basketball, football, and cricket.  The study will review how innovation, inertia, and money affected the course of each sports data analysis journey, how fundraising analytics has sometimes followed the same paths yet at other times blazed its own trail, and what fundraisers can learn from professional sports’ paths through analytics. 

For over 20 years, Greg Duke has worked in fundraising organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom, working primarily in database management and prospect research. Duke helps Raiser’s Edge clients to optimize their database by implementing data clean–up techniques and creating reporting structures, including dashboards and SQL queries. He also facilitates data imports into Raiser’s Edge and database administration. Duke has worked at the University of Oxford, Niagara University, Florida International University, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has lectured at several APRA International and regional conferences, and previously taught a fundraising course at Niagara University. Duke earned a D.Phil in modern history from Jesus College, University of Oxford

We explore this single case study including the combination of optimized ask amount and probability to give to both predict and to set ask amounts and priority order for Ithaca College’s Giving Day in 2022. Discussion includes methods used, forecasted vs. actual results, issues and benefits from the project, and how staff used and reacted to the project.

Marianne Pelletier has over 30 years of experience in fundraising, with the majority in prospect research and prospecting. She is one of the first adopters of donor modeling and data mining techniques, and is now a world–renown leader on this segment of the research profession. Her prospect research positions include analyst and department head for Harvard University, Lesley University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Cornell University.

Pelletier’s career also includes running an annual giving program with average increased revenues of 27% per year and providing software consulting through the Datatel Corporation, teaching clients both how to use their new software and assisting them with better analysis and more efficient processing.

A recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the New England Development Research Association and a Woman of the Year designation by the National Association of Professional Women, Pelletier has served as a volunteer for both election campaigns and social service agencies. She currently serves as a trustee for Habitat for Humanity of Tompkins County and is president of the Finger Lakes chapter of AFP.

Pelletier is a graduate of Rockford University, and earned her MBA at Southern New Hampshire University. Her recent workbook, Building Your Analytics Shop: A Workbook for Nonprofits, is available both on Amazon.com and on this website.