Support services can be judged only by how well they enable fundraising and engagement programs to achieve their objectives.
We understand the intricacies of effective gift administration, database management, stewardship, and prospect management—all of which are critical to both advancement success and institutional reputation. Our business processes have been implemented with every major database system at institutions large and small, public and private, across all client sectors GG+A serves.
Our consultants are able to provide creative, thoughtful solutions because we understand all aspects of advancement—not just advancement services.
Whatever your challenges, we take a straightforward approach. We evaluate your current practices, listen to what your frontline fundraisers and alumni relations professionals say they need, recommend improvements, and resolve any issues.
In every engagement, we provide information on industry best practices and demonstrate their effectiveness.
One of the most common problems our clients grapple with is poor alignment of their development and finance databases. As an industry leader in managing this often-troublesome interface, we can define procedures for automating reconciliation between your systems. We’re also adept at negotiating the tensions provoked by booking differences, partly by boosting board members’ comfort with the disparities.
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Our consultants understand fundraising, constituent engagement, and the operational systems and practices that enable clients to collect, manage, and use data most effectively. Focal areas include:
A strategic, holistic approach to annual giving packs a three-fold punch: boosting participation and yield, increasing constituent engagement, and driving growth in major and planned gifts. We will help your team achieve this by developing strategies to acquire new annual donors, steward and retain donors, and upgrade donors to higher levels of giving. Learn more.
Uses a business process review model to identify opportunities for operational improvements that meet your current and future needs. Also can guide selection, design, and implementation of integrated systems for fundraising, including the process of making the transition to a new technology platform and other data-management systems.
Provides best-practice counsel for biographic, demographic, and non-gift database management. Strategically compares policies and procedures to actual data and processes. Evaluates goals and actual statistics for the quality of data, such as currency, accuracy, and completeness. Results in recommendations for standards, volume, and source analysis for updates, maintenance methods, surveys and directories, and system interfaces.
Establishes sound policies, procedures, and systems to manage gift acceptance, handling, recording, receipting, and acknowledgment. Can include integration with frequent-screening, membership, and events management systems. Audits actual processes against documented policies and procedures to compare goals and actual performance to industry standards and best practice. Results in recommendations on transaction workflow, accounting practices, entry rules, pledge management, interfaces to finance, and receipting and acknowledgment processes.
Evaluates how information in fundraising and other systems is used to create actionable reports that meet institutional, leadership, and individual user needs for grateful patients systems. Reviews typically include analysis of systems for standard, ad hoc, and user- generated reports, and examine whether the available reports and tools are adequate to provide users with functional lists, extracts, and analytical reports.
A dashboard of metrics necessary to hire, train, coach, mentor, and manage staff. Evaluates behavioral dimensions, time allocation, and activities. Provides recommendations on strategies to build a more effective team, manage activities more efficiently, and allocate resources more productively.
Provides best-practice counsel for biographic, demographic, and non-gift database management. Strategically compares policies and procedures to actual data and processes. Evaluates goals and actual statistics for the quality of data, such as currency, accuracy, and completeness. Results in recommendations for standards, volume, and source analysis for updates, maintenance methods, surveys and directories, and system interfaces.
Deepens understanding of prospect potential by matching individual prospect data to a total of 25 of the most respected and highly accurate national public databases, providing actionable insights on wealth, affiliation, and political and charitable contribution data. Flexible interface allows both individual lookups and batch uploads. Optional fully automated frequent screening delivers results to development staff within hours, providing the greatest opportunities for cultivation and stewardship of new constituents.
Evaluates how information in fundraising and other systems is used to create actionable reports that meet institutional, leadership, and individual user needs. Reviews typically include analysis of systems for standard, ad hoc, and user-generated reports, and examine whether the available reports and tools are adequate to provide users with functional lists, extracts, and analytical reports. Provides analysis on how existing reports and systems meet the business needs of the organization, and recommendations about how existing or new tools.
Over the decades, GG+A has shared its advancement services know-how with hundreds of institutions across all client sectors: higher education, independent schools, healthcare and academic medicine, arts and culture, and civic organizations. Here is a sampling:
Expertise: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe
