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Vendor Demonstrations

NOTE: Links to Zoom recordings of UC Innovation’s and Huron’s demonstrations are included at the bottom of this page.

In April 2021 we released the request for proposals (RFP) and invited vendors to reply by the end of business on Monday, May 3. Throughout April, we fielded more than 100 questions from interested parties, and eventually received proposals from seven companies (listed below). The RFP was structured to allow vendors to propose solutions for our next CRM and/or for implementation services. We invited all seven to participate in two rounds of virtual demonstrations, which were held throughout the spring and summer.

Use Cases

In order to truly test drive each of the four CRM solutions during the demonstrations, a 20-person CRM Evaluation Committee spent much of April meeting with ten working groups to develop dozens of real-world use cases, which we have shared with the vendors. Sample Use Case:

Briefing Documents. A frontline fundraiser is preparing for a prospect/donor meeting with a dean of a college or unit head. The gift officer is preparing a briefing document (standard template available that could be edited and information selected by campus, unit, program) to communicate pertinent prospect/donor information, goals of the visit, and talking points with the dean.
  • Show us what options the gift officer has available to them in selecting content from the CRM for the briefing document. Demonstrate how the gift officer could create, edit, and customize a briefing document with standard information such as biographic, giving, and relationship connections/affiliations.
  • The frontline fundraiser would need to script the Dean for the visit with the briefing document, which could include talking points, visit goals, basic information, and options for uploading images. What options would the frontline fundraiser have to pull a standard document and also customize that document (before and after the visit)?
  • The frontline fundraiser would like to receive notifications via Outlook for important events such as a donor’s birthday, retirement, new job, and about gifts that have been made. The gift officer would like to receive these notifications from the CRM when they occur via Outlook and record in an update section of the CRM. Demonstrate additional options for documenting these actions/contacts directly from the prompt/reminder within the CRM.

Demonstrations

NOTE: Now that we have selected our CRM vendor (UC Innovation’s Ascend on Salesforce) and our implementation partner (Huron), we have removed links to demos by the other vendors.