2024 Resolutions for Advancement Services Professionals

Fundraising teams are likely continuously reflecting on their successes and identifying opportunities for improvement. For advancement services professionals, this means diving deeper into your data systems and finding ways to improve efficiency for your team and advancement department as a whole. 

Below are five resolutions for advancement services professionals to consider tackling. If you’d like to explore these themes further and get solutions for achieving these resolutions, watch our GiveCampus webinar with Omatic: Achieving Gift Processing Excellence in the New Year and Beyond.

1. Improve Data Quality

This resolution probably comes as no surprise to any director of advancement services or team member who has had their hands in gift processing. Data quality is the backbone of successful fundraising efforts. Without accurate and reliable data, your fundraising team may find itself navigating through a sea of inconsistent campaign results and missed outreach opportunities. As you commit to enhancing data quality in 2024, remember that the benefits extend beyond the confines of your data systems. Accurate and reliable data serves as the cornerstone for personalized donor stewardship, efficient gift processing, and informed decision-making. 

2. Enhance Gift Processing Efficiency 

Improving the efficiency of gift processing systems can have a ripple effect across many if not all fundraising initiatives. At the core of efficiency is automation. Implementing a CRM integration like Omatic into your gift processing workflow can help remove the headache of manual gift entry. Additionally, streamlining gift processing within your institution helps free up time for staff to focus on other key initiatives like segmentation and stewardship strategies.

3. Create Timely and Personalized Donor Stewardship

Piggybacking off of enhanced efficiency is setting a goal to send out timely personalized stewardship. Personalization has proven to be a powerful stewardship strategy. But, in the aftermath of a Giving Day, it can sometimes take two or three weeks before donors receive any stewardship message beyond a generic email receipt. This often is the result of a delay in gift data being sent to your CRM. Fundraisers don’t know who made which gifts and to what campaign. This prevents them from developing personalized follow-up messaging promptly. Your institution’s stewardship shouldn’t feel like an afterthought. Set up systems in 2024 to ensure your team has the data it needs to send out personalized stewardship messages within the same week a donor’s gift is processed.

4. Encourage More Cross-Department Collaboration

Break down silos and encourage open communication channels between advancement services, marketing, annual giving, alumni relations, and other key departments. Collaborative efforts help ensure a unified and consistent donor experience. Transparently sharing insights and lessons learned across your organization helps to improve future fundraising efforts. For example, advancement services teams hold the keys to the data castle. Advancement services can provide crucial information about donor behavior, preferences, and giving history that the annual giving and marketing teams can leverage to craft targeted and personalized campaigns.

5. Elevate Database Proficiency 

Within the realm of advancement services, improving database proficiency is synonymous with a commitment to conscious learning. This continued education could be as simple as attending a webinar or as involved as obtaining a specific certification. Regardless of your time commitment, continuous learning empowers advancement services teams to unlock the full potential of their database systems and ensure they are well versed in the latest features, best practices, and security measures.

Unlocking Success in 2024: Watch our Webinar with Omatic

The resolutions above offer a roadmap for advancement services teams to elevate their efficiency and impact in 2024 and beyond. At the core of these resolutions is data quality and gift processing. Watch our on-demand webinar with Omatic which delves into the tools and strategies that can help you streamline your gift processing workflows and ultimately achieve your advancement objectives.