Ascend

Video: UC Innovation’s Intro Demo from May 17, 2021. The demo begins around 26:30.

Turning Salesforce into an Advancement CRM

Out of the box, Salesforce is a bare-bones Customer Relationship Management tool. But the secret to its success, the reason it’s become the leader in the market, is that its data architecture allows for almost limitless customization. Want to add a new table to your database? An admin with the right security privilege can simply go to the Objects setup (tables are called Objects in Salesforce), click “New,” and begin building custom fields and custom relationships between fields.

It’s really that straight-forward.

Salesforce works kind of like the app store on your phone. There’s an entire world of approved developers who build Salesforce-native applications to address particular business needs. In the same way you download one app to check in for a flight and another app to watch viral videos, we will purchase Salesforce apps to solve particular problems, and they all connect directly with the core database.

UC Innovation

After a months-long evaluation, UTFI selected UC Innovation’s Ascend application as our solution for turning Salesforce into ACE. Ascend is essentially a collection of Salesforce Objects that have been designed to address the core needs of university advancement, including:

  • Bio demo
  • Appeal codes and communication campaigns
  • Prospect management
  • Gift processing
  • Constituent engagement

The implementation of Ascend is being led by Advancement Services. If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].

Project Status

55% complete. Anticipated completion: February 2024.

Project Update

Training

A majority of UTFI staff participated in the recent Training and Readiness Survey.

See the Results