EverTrue, a leading provider of software and insights for higher ed advancement, today announces the launch of comprehensive upgrades to its Relationship Management platform that will help development officers work faster to qualify prospects, book meetings, execute trips, and close major gift proposals.
In an environment where inflation-adjusted individual giving declined by 3.4% in 2018 (Source: GivingUSA), it’s more critical than ever for advancement teams to build stronger relationships with the prospects with major gift capacity. And yet one out of every three gift officers spends less than 60% of their time on fundraising activities and two-thirds of prospects in gift officer portfolios haven’t received a visit in the last year (Source: EAB).
Traditional databases and CRM systems haven’t helped maximize fundraiser efficiency. Though they excel at storing large amounts of data, they’ve struggled to give frontline fundraisers mobile access to donor information and user-friendly tools to simplify portfolio management. Relationship Management by EverTrue, first introduced in 2016, solved that by delivering everywhere access to critical information, portfolio management, and trip-planning and execution tools, enabling development officers to work quickly and efficiently both in the office or on the road. The average gift officer saves two weeks of time each year (80 work hours) by using EverTrue to plan fundraising visits. With the comprehensive upgrades announced today, EverTrue can help gift officers spend even more of their time qualifying prospects and engaging every person in their portfolios.
Upgrades and Enhancements EverTrue Announces Today:
The University of Virginia’s institutional advancement office, which is an EverTrue enterprise partner, was instrumental in the development of the new features. UVA’s more than 200 frontline gift officers use EverTrue for prospect, portfolio, and proposal management on the road and in the office.
“EverTrue lets gift officers think on the fly using a robust set of mobile-friendly filters to search for prospects across our alumni database. The portfolio tools help them gain an overarching view of their daily work and make actionable tasks easier to achieve when managing moves in larger portfolios,” Deke Shrum, Senior Director of Digital Innovation at the University of Virginia, said. “The software and insights EverTrue provides help our gift officers build stronger relationships, simplify recurring tasks, and connect with new prospects with potential for philanthropic support.”
At Emory University, the Office of Advancement & Alumni Engagement has equipped its entire team with the EverTrue platform to enhance staff efficiency in the office and on the road.
“When I think of EverTrue, the first thing I think of is ease of use. It’s easy on the back-end developer side and it’s easy for the fundraisers,” Josh Greenbaum, Executive Director of Advancement Information Services at Emory University, said. “Data is critical for any business, but it’s also important for us to take that data and give it to our fundraisers so that it’s actionable. EverTrue has been transformational for us as the mobile solution for our development officers so that they can simply focus on fundraising and make most of their time. EverTrue frees them up to be much more efficient.”
“EverTrue’s mission is to build relationships in pursuit of a better world. When major gift officers can truly focus on fundraising and leave manual, time-consuming tasks behind, they can be more effective in their work and create stronger relationships between generous alumni and their alma maters,” Brent Grinna, Founder and CEO of EverTrue, said. “With these upgrades to our Relationship Management platform, we are propelling fundraisers in the right direction, making it easy for them to manage portfolios and strengthen relationships to secure transformational gifts that provide scholarships and fund programs for the next generation of students.”
Relationship Management by EverTrue: Upgrades At A Glance
EverTrue’s December 2019 upgrades to its Relationship Management platform helps development teams work more efficiently and effectively with the introduction of four new sets of standard features, all of which are available on both desktop and iOS devices. They are:
Team-Based Fundraising
Managers can organize fundraisers into teams to coordinate efforts and track progress as gift officers work together on a campaign, project or region. Within each grouping, managers can customize prospect stages to fit the team’s needs, whether it’s to manage qualification for a pool of new prospects, secure support for a short-term fundraising priority, or specialized portfolio management for digital, leadership, regional, major gift, and principal gift fundraisers.
With just a couple of clicks, prospect development staff can assign people to fundraiser portfolios or choose to let gift officers create assignments on their own, speeding discovery of new, qualified potential donors.
Revamped Portfolios
EverTrue has reduced the manual work of portfolio management by 50% with these upgrades. By introducing drag-and-drop stage management, gift officers can easily propel prospects through every stage of the relationship, from research and qualification through fully funded gift proposals and stewardship. With each stage move, EverTrue automatically reminds gift officers to enter an interaction or contact report, helping them complete tasks quickly and move on to their next prospect.
EverTrue also tracks the amount of time each prospect stays in a stage and will soon notify gift officers when a potential donor has lingered too long and needs attention, helping teams prioritize outreach and easily increase meaningful activity among constituents in portfolios.
Among other upgrades, EverTrue lets gift officers flag key relationships to keep their most important prospects top of mind. It also improved collaboration by giving fundraisers the ability to manage and track joint assignments. New assignment titles let teams organize and filter prospects based on gift strategy and approach. And gift officers can take portfolio management to the next level by adding or dropping prospects and organizing their assignments by geographic region to simplify outreach, trip-planning, and qualification.
Automatic, Intelligent Guidance for Fundraisers
Two-thirds of all prospects haven’t been visited in the last year (Source: EAB) and prospects can linger for months in portfolios without contact of any kind.
To combat these trends, EverTrue has introduced Launchpad to its Relationship Management platform. Launchpad is a custom homepage that delivers intelligent alerts to proactively guide meaningful actions by gift officers.
Via Launchpad, fundraisers will know exactly where they stand relative to their overall goals including visits, unique prospects met, interactions, proposals submitted, and successfully closed gifts. This information lets development officers see where they need to direct their efforts to achieve goals and gives managers granular insight into fundraiser performance. Gift officers also receive notifications when one of their assigned prospects makes a gift, helping speed the stewardship process and increase donor retention.
EverTrue will rapidly add new features and insights to Launchpad soon, including proactive notifications when a prospect hasn’t had a recent interaction or visit. Fundraisers can also receive alerts when an assigned prospect is actively engaging with the organization by registering for events or interacting with its Facebook posts. And they’ll know when prospects have been automatically qualified by EverTrue after reaching key levels of giving, engagement, or experiencing wealth events.
Launchpad will help gift officers with trip planning, manage open proposals, follow-up on past interactions, and track reminders and to-dos.
EverTrue’s new and upcoming features empower gift officers to focus exclusively on acquiring and following up on prospect meetings and closing gift proposals by cutting down on manual tasks and streamlining portfolio management and trip planning with automated alerts and suggestions.
Proposal Management
As part of these upgrades, EverTrue now gives frontline fundraisers the ability to create, edit, and manage gift proposals from anywhere on their desktop or iOS devices.
This means gift officers don’t have to wait to return to their office and waste time walking through complex CRM screens to enter a gift proposal. Rather, organizations can customize proposal entry for their fundraisers, who can then submit all required information from anywhere, while also editing outstanding proposals on the fly from a mobile device.
Launchpad will keep fundraisers on top of their open and closed proposals for the fiscal year, while also tracking key performance metrics such as the difference between the original ask amounts and gifts received.
In addition to these technology enhancements, EverTrue continues to give all its partners exclusive access to TrueView profiles — the advancement industry’s first continually updated constituent record. Fundraisers and alumni relations staff can use EverTrue’s integrations with constantly refreshed sources of engagement insights and enriched data, including interactions with Facebook posts, precise net worth calculations and wealth indicators from Windfall, Eventbrite event attendance, social media profiles and influencer indicators, personal interests, up-to-date career information, and more.
About EverTrue
EverTrue’s software, powered by exclusive TrueView insights, gives fundraising teams a comprehensive view of every donor by connecting their data to a hub of social and demographic information sources. Today, more than half of the top 100 colleges use EverTrue’s modern, mobile-first platform to engage alumni, fundraise, discover prospects, manage gift officer portfolios, and coordinate volunteer programs. EverTrue is headquartered in Boston and is backed by University Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures. Visit EverTrue at www.evertrue.com.
