Timothy Murray is thinking about alumni. Pretty much all the time. As the Associate Director of Leadership Giving at the Yale School of Management, alumni are his specialty. Finding new prospects, connecting with them and inspiring passion for their alma mater is all part of his day to day.
There are a lot of tools in his bag, but he counts EverTrue as one of his most used. With his focus being on alums and donors for the School of Management specifically, we wanted to hear more about his experience with EverTrue and how it helps him spark new connections and conversations.
How long have you been using EverTrue at Yale?
I’ve been using it for the three years I’ve been here, every day.
Every day?
Literally I come in, turn my computer on, open my email, our CRM and EverTrue.
Sounds like it’s basically your homepage at this point.
Pretty much, yeah.
Has EverTrue made a significant impact on how you go about your day to day?
From an efficiency and effectiveness perspective, as well as ease of use and speed of getting information that’s most pertinent to me and my day-to-day, absolutely yes.
Are there any features you specifically lean on for heavy lifting?
In the individual profile, for starters, just to be able to pull a picture of what somebody looks like. When you’re going into a first meeting, I can’t overstate how helpful that is. And then in the constituent info, just having, in one spot, info on where they live, what they do. I really like the Zillow incorporation because it’s nice to get an accurate look at the neighborhood they’re in which may lead to some indicators that other assessments might not. That’s great. And I love the trip planning feature.
Because, as a gift officer, you spend a significant amount of time on the road. How does EverTrue help when you’re away from the office?
For me, it’s helpful if I’m heading somewhere I’ve never been before. The integration with Google Maps gives me real-world travel time frames, which is huge. Because if I have an hour of downtime between meetings but I’m in Houston, well, I’ve never been to Houston before and it’s the fourth biggest city in America. So, I don’t know if I can get from one end of the city to the other in a reasonable time frame when I’m planning out my day. That’s really helpful.
And then when I’m out of the office, being able to share with my manager and our team, just with a quick export, exactly who I’m seeing. Then they can go in see all the info without having to manually look it up. With all the time I spend away from the office, it’s great to have a packaged document I can send around about who I’m seeing and why I’m seeing them. It saves me and my team a ton of time.
And in this business, you’re totally reliant on, for meetings someone else’s time. While my trip and my time is solely focused on meetings with alumni, for them it’s about finding time in their day to meet with me. Which may change at the last minute. With EverTrue I can update my schedule in one place instead of all over, and it updates for other folks in real time so they can track me down.
Earlier you mentioned gaining insight into people’s lives through their EverTrue profile page. What effect has that page had on your ability to kick start conversations with potential donors?
You can only get so much insight into somebody based on where they work, where they live and what we already know about them. Some of the most valuable insight, especially going into a first meeting or a qualification, are indicators that are self-identified. So, pulling information from LinkedIn, seeing companies that they follow. Looking at their engagement with our social media platforms. Things that they may have expressed interest in that can immediately drive the conversation.
I can remember an instance, being on the train down to New York City, and reviewing someone who had recently liked a post about the Yale Basketball team. I knew that would be a great ice breaker for that conversation. And it ended up yielding pretty nice results. It’s a conversation starter and insight that I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
That information was crucial to getting the conversation going?
It was. Of course, you have to tactfully work it in. We were chatting about something and I casually mentioned that Yale was having a great season. That opened the door for this person to talk about something that we immediately had in common. So yeah, these little nuggets here and there are really super helpful in driving conversation, building relationships and rapport, that ultimately yield dollars. Which is the business we’re in.