Welcome, everyone. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education is pleased to present this online webinar creating a comprehensive digital strategy that is relationship focused. My name is Anne Weller and it's my pleasure to introduce our speaker today. Rob Grabowski is the University at Buffalo Vice President for University Advancement and has been serving in his role since 2017. He's a skilled executive offering more than 30 years of fundraising, leadership and management experience. Since joining IBI, he's responsible for assessing, organizing and energizing the internal and external constituencies. With the launch of the $1 billion Holy Buffalo campaign in April of 2018. Prior to UAB, Rod was the president of the University of Cincinnati Foundation and was responsible for concluding the Proudly Cincinnati campaign, surpassing its goal and reaching 1.9 billion before U.S.. Rod was at the University of South Florida, where he served as senior associate vice president for university advancement and campaign director. Among his accomplishments, Rod was responsible for the branding and successful completion of the USF unstoppable campaign, the largest fundraising and outreach effort in the university's history. Welcome, Rob Thank you so much. It's my pleasure to be with all of you today and to talk about creating a comprehensive digital strategy that is relationship focused. And as I take you through this presentation, I wanted just to share with you that I'm looking at this in a couple of ways. And prior to the pandemic, my focus was absolutely on this comprehensive campaign. Are both the Buffalo campaign that was launched, like we said, in April of 2018. But I was also focused on transforming our advancement organization to really be best in class, understanding how other organizations do things and relating them back to the University of Buffalo's culture and organizational structure and figure out what we can best adopt. Additionally, focusing on return on investment, understanding that every single position, whether it's a fundraiser or not, is providing value to the organization. And what is that value that it is providing and understanding it before we continue to add staff or add programs, Because sometimes you actually have to streamline in some areas and also looking at artificial intelligence and integrating it with advancement. What does this really mean for the future of our organization? And this is where I would like to start, because I've talked with many of you about artificial intelligence and how we integrate an advancement prior to the pandemic. And I wanted to give a brief overview of that topic. Artificial intelligence is something that we hear, and it feels like it is, and we hear it constantly in the media. We hear it in our variety of business magazines that we speak about, but really understanding what it is is a bit more complex. So when we really think of where we were ten years ago, this vision of a bygone era is that the 20th century, ten years ago kept hanging on and that landline phones were 80% of us had them as well as print newspapers. 96% of the people read them. And then new technology began to emerge iPhones. Think about this There are only about two years old when we had about 20 million users. Now, many of us could be on an iPhone 12 or, you know, what's the next version, iPhone 13 for all we know. And then Amazon Prime had about 2 million customers. And then a key innovations that had yet to launch. For instance, Uber was one year away from debuting as well as Instagram was one year away from being a reality. So you could say in this ten plus years, a lot has changed in our world that we consider digital. Now. Recently, the Education Advisory Board commissioned a study that defined the five defining challenges of the Next decade. First, they really stated in this report that we needed as an advancement organizations to maximize fundraiser efficiency. Second, right size investments in digital transformation. What does that mean? What does that look like? Third, navigating the participation pipeline trade off. We understand that participation is important. We know that engagement is important. But what's the balance that we need to find in our organizations as we struggle to also deliver on the fundraising aspects and the major gifts that really showcase the value in a very direct way to the university and the community versus participation. Sometimes it's not always understood and the value that it brings. Number four, scaling and sustaining principal gift success. What does that look like and how do we invest in these programs? And five, realigning core mission and revenue growth. These five, EAB stated, were the defining challenges of the next decade. Keeping in mind that we've had various industrial revolutions over the course of our history. We had the agricultural revolution that was when the farmer, the cotton gin was invented and it made it. Picking cotton was no longer requiring human labor, but the cotton gin was actually picking and or processing the cotton. Then we had the industry mechanization, the steam power, the moving, the weaving loom excuse me, The industrial 2.0 was when electricity, mass production, assembly lines 3.0 was the digital transformation automation, computer electronics. And this was best showcased in a movie recently called Hidden Figures. It was a group of mathematicians that were in a room doing hand calculations and how to get us to the moon in the 1960s, at the beginning of the movie. They were all doing the hand calculations on chalkboards and the like, and by the end of the movie they had installed an IBM supercomputer to do those calculations and forth. Now we're at the Industry 4.0, which is the artificial intelligence revolution, and it really is driven by the Internet and the establishment of neural networks and processing. There are all of these industrial revolutions. We have found displaced workers in the farmer in the field got displaced because they weren't needed as much. And then in the industry, when the steam power and the weaving loom came about, you know, less manual labor. And so each one of these times, the economy has had to correct itself. The workforce has to correct itself. And that no matter how hard you may want to stop these revolutions from happening, they're going to happen. They're going to take over our society. Stacy Palmer, the editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, wrote in the in The Chronicle that the story about early adopters of artificial intelligence and the potential that technology for is an important read for everyone who cares about making fundraising more efficient and who wants a basic primer on what's possible. And so when I started digging deeper into this, not long after reading that article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, I came across the article in the Buffalo Business First, which is our business newspaper in Buffalo, and that it showcased this study where the Rockefeller Institute calculations, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the predicted decrease in occupations in a 20 year period because of artificial intelligence. And so you can see that there is going to be a transformation in our workforce because of AI now entering the marketplace. And so just some selected predicted decreases. Food service prep down 87% in regards to the number of people that are going to be needed in that workforce. Sales down 73%. Financial services down about 45% and legal services down about 30%. And you ask, well, how can that be? And I started digging deeper into the food service prep side of it, and I discovered that there's even fast food restaurants out in California that have already deployed robots to cook the burgers and assemble the burgers at a fast food chain because they were having, first of all, problem finding fry cooks that were reliable and and these robots actually not only can cook the burgers, but clean the grill. So they're doing the things that many of us may not want to do. And the financial services side, we can say that artificial intelligence is actually now picking the stocks that we may want to consider investing in and in taking all of those variables that would determine a buy or sell into account more quickly. And so the junior financial analysts may no longer be as critical to the success of your portfolio. However, I would say that in this article we even indicated that senior financial analysts need to interpret the data that is giving them. So I think that there always needs to be that human element in it. So when we think about artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence and advancement, they're really the rudimental reforms of artificial intelligence have been in advancement for over 30 years. We really called it in their early days, electronics readings. Then we determined then called it as it got a little bit more advanced data analytics and then machine learning. So I really was stalled for several decades because in the beginning the machine learning was very rules based approach. If X then Y. But now, with the speed of our computers and the Internet, the ability for artificial intelligence to really advance, and that's that neural network approach is where you're taking all these variables into consideration and you're actually making predictions. And that's what the artificial intelligence does, is is it makes predictions on what might be the next person to do this or the next habit that we think that will be showcased. So the name changes as the sophistication evolves. And, you know, I would like to say as a vice president, with flat budgets and increasing demand for philanthropy in the shortage of quality advancement officers and the growing alumni populations and expectations of donors, the need to work smarter is truly catching up with our ability to also work harder. And I think AI is is here and we just have to accept and figure out ways to adopt it into our our workplan. So that was pre-pandemic. Now we go into the pandemic or what I consider also the perfect storm in regards to, okay, how is our workforce changing? And this pandemic really has showcased our workforce and how we do our work is changing. It didn't for us here at the University of Buffalo. March 13th of 2020 was that magic day where we learned that, okay, the offices were closing and everyone was starting remote work. So welcome to the Zoom and virtual meetings and virtual engagement. And I remember thinking back then that, okay, we'll probably be doing this for 30 days. So no, no sense getting too comfortable. Well, who would have thought that a year has gone by and we're finally starting to reopen back as a society? But then in the course of this pandemic, also thinking about how will we sustain our engagement in fundraising efforts because so much of the work that we do in advancement, whether it's alumni engagement or development, is in-person. And so trying to figure out ways that we're using technology more effectively to to connect our constituency has been an ever increasing challenge for us. So in that, you know, prior to the pandemic, digital was new novel tech. I had WebEx installed on my computer, but really, really never really used it. But now it's a must have. And how we use that technology, I think, is forever going to change the landscape of how we do our work. Fellow colleague Sumit, you need you wanted the CEO of Russell Levitt. Share this with me about a year ago and he said technology and its adoption have changed at a rapid pace in the past six months with the global pandemic effectively advancing five years in the past six months. And when I followed up with Zoom at later on this comment, he actually said, Rod, I think we probably could say that we've advanced ten years in the past six months. So there is so much truth to this. And so early on into the pandemic, I started talking some to some members of my leadership team, and I really wanted us to start focusing on a digital first strategy or a comprehensive digital strategy. And the topic was of interest. But if we started having these conversations prior to the beginning of the pandemic, then the pandemic happened and it then became a reality. We really need to be thinking about this and working through a strategy of what our future looks like because it was so new and really wanting to understand the depth and breadth of of what I was talking about in regards to what digital first strategy. We started out with a reading assignment and we read together. Sunil got this book Driving Digital Strategy A Guide to Reimagining Your Business. And this quote on the screen really captures so much of the essence of this book. As he stated, Merely dabbling in digital or launching a small independent unit will not bring success. Instead, you need to fundamentally change the core of your business and ensure that your digital strategy touches all aspects of your organization. That's a profound statement. What does that really mean? And through the rest of this presentation, I'm going to share with you our yearlong journey at the University of Buffalo to discover what this means. And I will tell you that we are continuing to evolve and our understanding of this, it is not a project where you put a list together to do list check done and it's complete. It really is changing how we even think about our work. And so please use that as a frame of reference as you look at the rest of this, some key. Gupta Learnings. You said leaders who achieved transformation go all in on digital. So that really means if you're going to do it, you got to do it and commit to it, but don't do it halfway. Also, they don't treat digital strategy as separate from their overall strategy. It needs to be integrated. They lead with a digital first mentality and make sure their digital strategy touches all aspects of their organization. All aspects and digital transformation requires a strengthening the core and building the future at the same time. That's something that we're working on at UB and there's a lot of work to do. Here's an example of what I really mean about a digital transformation that has been successful. John Deere Incorporated and many of us know. How did John Deere transform itself from a farm implementation manufacturers, large retailer, we think a John Deere, we think of a tractor, we think of the plow. It can't get any more basic than that tractor and a plow. It goes it could you know, pick a century and there have been tractor or some type of plow, and there has either been a tractor pulling it or a horse or an ox. But it's pretty basic. How did a company like John Deere transform to a digital company that specializes in precision ag technology? And in reading Gupta's book, it was all about data and technology, the CEO said he understood the business model and that they were only selling so many tractors, only selling so many plows a year. How many tractors and plows did a farmer need? So instead, he turned the company from just selling manufactured goods to actually a subscription based company that sold weather data. So we gathered all the weather data that he could seed data. What seed grows best in certain types of climates or types of soils. He actually purchased soil data. What are the types of soils and the water that is best for those soils with those seeds? He also invested in GPS technology and sensor technology so that he put sensors on the plows that actually measure the alkalinity of the soil and the moisture content. And then you take that and you merge that with the predicted weather forecast patterns for the next 30 to 60 days. That was the farmer then what the plant, what seed to plant and then automated those tractors so that it was actually left personnel in the field actually driving the tractors. They actually from an office are controlling the tractors by remote. So this is how John Deere now has become relevant to farmers beyond just buying their, you know, the tractor, the plow and the replacement parts. But to the real data and and in being valued every single day in a subscription based economy. And so our real challenge is as advancement professionals is how do we embed this digital strategy and do all aspects of our business. What does it mean if a farmer can do this? I have to believe in higher education advancement. Leaders should also be able to do this, but also do this with their relationship focus because we want to. The more alums we have, the more donors we have. We have to continually focus on being a personal experience instead of it feeling like mass transactions. There's a real balance. And so also one of our key learnings is that digital is a software, it is a mindset, and I'll take you through that mindset. So in developing the University of Buffalo's Digital First strategic plan, I wanted to say your our purpose. You be like most universities continue to operate digitally without intention. New efforts implemented the beginning of Q3 of 2020 will provide a methodology and process for that digital ecosphere. We are in the middle of that now that this digital strategy, as we committed to embedded in all aspects of our business and the vision is to transform university advancement into a digital first focus. And over the past year, I will tell you, as we have implemented so much in this pandemic, this has been in our forefront of thought. Our time, our observations at the time that we first started this project was we had no owners of our software programs are no champions. Think about that. We had software that we didn't completely know how to use. Yes, we had the I.T technology team that installed it and made sure it's running. They're not the owners, they're the technical side to make it work. But the owners really need to make the program influence your operational success. And we also determined that our effective use of data was limited throughout our programs. We had all this data, but we weren't necessarily using it the way that it should or could have been designed, and we didn't really understand our constituents and their interest and habits. While we had a little bit of understanding, it wasn't to the depth and breadth that we felt we should have. And we also didn't focus on hiring robot proof individuals. And that term robot growth is something that I'll refer to a little bit later. But it really is a focus on individuals that understand the use of technology and how to they how it can influence your business processes. Once again, Educational Advisory Board did another study about laying the foundation for digital transformation, and they stated visionary leaders aim at engagement, decision making and processes. And as you see here, strategic imperatives. They talk about migrating the constituent experience onto digital platforms with the intended outcome of better interactions. We know that during this pandemic we've done that. I have done so many virtual wine tastings with small groups that have connected people coast to coast that probably would never have been together in a room ever, because we tended to do everything place based. So I think that we've discovered a unique opportunity that we're going to continue even when we are regularly meeting in person. Also, you leverage big data to drive enterprise wide decision making. Well, once again, we've had all this data. We didn't necessarily know what to do with it. And so our goal here is to make better decisions in regards to the use of this data and also about automating workflows and processes across departments. And that's something that we're really exploring an enterprise wide data management concept that you be and it really is about better operations and forming higher, more efficient teams. So as we finished reading the Book of Driving Digital Strategy, we decided to break out into groups and to really do some deeper dive into the topics. And we chose four groups to break out into the first group in regards to driving. Our digital strategy was understanding our constituent journey. How do they engage with us? Second was product and technology analysis. Third was our workforce development and fourth was our governance. So I'm going to take you through each one of these a little bit to really give you the depth and breadth of what we're talking about our constituent journey. This is where we wanted to look at how our constituents engage with us via alumni engagement and or development and what we have determined is that there are personas that you can actually identify and how people engage with the university. And you can see them here on the left hand side. Additionally, the University of Buffalo is one of the early adopters of the CAA metrics in regards to engagement scoring, and we decided that we needed to do a revamp of that engagement scorecard and then delved into the world of engagement, data mapping and understanding where our most engaged alumni are and in understanding and then determining the habits that have allowed them to be that engaged. We also wanted to do some persona mapping and persona communications flow because each one of these personas need to be communicated in a different way. And we also wanted to analyze our social media and how we're utilizing social media to reach out to our constituents. We then took a look at our product and technology analysis, and this was very eye opening. What we learned. First and foremost, we had 58 products or software products that we are using in university advancement. 41 of those were internal. 13 of those were external, and then three of them were in the process of being discontinued. And you'll ask, well, okay, what did that really look like? Well, we'll we looked at criteria for measurement on the focus. We have 53 for business use and 14 of those were constituent use, meaning 14 out of our 58 software platforms were externally focused. And then we wanted to see if they align with our business drivers and then evaluated whether or not they supported our digital journey and all of this product and technology. Consider ation really was an important discussion point for us as we continue to evolve our organization and our structures because we know that we're going to be going into a new CRM system, determine which one. Yeah, but a CRM is only a core piece of the operation, but it's not the only piece of the solution. Additionally, we wanted to make sure that we paid attention to artificial intelligence. We know this is making advances into the advancement world. Now's the time to start developing a process and workflows that we may have to be manually implemented. But eventually I could do it for us. And ultimately the technology tools. What's the best way to engage, activate and solicit donors? When is the right time? What is the right method? Who are most likely to whatever? And we know that A.I. is going to help us be able to determine some of that. But our data structure needs need to be understood in before we start purchasing systems and integrating technology. So some items to consider for product considerations, subscription classes. This is an example. We had a master's. There are we've heard about master's classes and Peloton. Examples of DBAs were signing up to get a membership, but we actually transform that into an online alumni academy for the past year where we had people actually paying and getting custom presentations that were of interest to them. And what's the ability to do that even more going into the future? We're looking at seasonal regional programs and 360 video alumni tours and social first contact where our users want to be the makers. So these are the things that we're looking in, considering how we can implement here at the University of Buffalo. The third area that we wanted to focus on was our workforce development, because it really is our people that are the drivers of everything that we do. And I firmly believe as a vice president, it's my job, my responsibility to make sure people are inspired, motivated, challenged and they feel invested in. And so that's why workforce development needs to be at the forefront of any digital strategy. And so with workforce development, we defined some key takeaways. For instance, we felt like we needed to develop a talent management portal, and while we're a midsize organization, we have over 100 on staff. We don't have a talent manager, executive in h.R. Yet, but we do believe that we need that position as well as having this talent management portal that would allow us to capture all of these different activities. We also want know that we need to enhance our onboard training program and that that would include some virtual learnings. Yes, we have a rigorous onboarding process, but we also know that there are certain areas that we need to continue to shore up. We need to define and create digital positions for the future, because digital is different than, for instance, you need a different type of writing style for a digital writers versus print writers. And that we're taking the bold step of here at states and Director of Strategic Initiatives, and that is someone to really guide this digital first strategy into all aspects of the organization and that we look to be hiring for that position very shortly and also promote this digital first culture where every new initiative and new hire, we must ask, has a digital strategy or focus been considered? Because sometimes we need to do all digital. Sometimes it can be a hybrid, sometimes it may be in-person. But we need to make sure that what's the best way to capture the most in engagement? And then as I'm going to talk about, there's robot proof. Josephine, who is the president of Northeastern University, writes about it is the literacy and cognitive capacities that we should consider in hiring. And so as a group, he firmly believes that the literacies we need to be robust proof or to position ourselves so that we don't lose employment due to implementation because it's happening anyway and believes that the literacies we should have a technological literacy while knowledge of math and coding and basic engineering principles. You don't need to be an expert, but you should have basic knowledge of what that stuff does and a data literacy by understanding both the interpretation and context of data and a human literacy. What matters is other people. Human literacy equips us for the social, neither giving us the power to communicate, engage and tap into our human capacity for beauty. Incredible words by air. And I think that as we focus on these literacies, it really helps us refocus on our hiring practices and what we're looking for. And then he also goes so far as to say, of cognitive capacities that are needed to be robot proof, critical thinking, analyzing ideas skillfully, and then applying them fruitfully, system thinking, entrepreneurship, cultural agility, all these types of things are critical literacies and cognitive capacities. And considering what the next hire should be for your organization. Probably the last area that we've spent a lot of time on is governance, digital governance. And we determined that we needed to establish a different digital governance committee to really align our core business objectives with our product and program development and to evaluate new opportunities, both programs and projects, and prioritize opportunities and continue to evaluate the implementation and audit existing programs. And so the Digital Governance Committee listed these four main responsibilities program and Technology Performance, growth and implementation. And I think that this structure that we have put together with this digital governance committee continues to evolve. And we're making so much more well-informed decisions in regards to our software purchases, the capacity of the software and what we're doing with it within our programs than ever before. And this whole champion concept of a software platform is new to us. You know, we have communication platforms like every institution does. We didn't know its full capacity of what it could do, and there was really no owner of it and champion of it that understood all its capacities before. We're thinking about buying a new one. Well, that's problematic. And so we have really educated ourselves and it's helped us make better decisions for the future. And here's an example of a digital framework tool that the BGC, I like to call it, the Digital Governance Committee, has worked on it. First and foremost is we're thinking about digital. We should first be thinking about the organization and answer that question Why are we doing this? What's it for? And then why? What? What are the measurements and how? So you see the why addresses the purpose, the what? The business drivers, the measurement, the criterion management and how products and services. So really starting in the inside and moving outward. And so here's another example of a framework tool that aligns with this. And this is you start at the Y and we recommend answering yes to two out of the three in order to continue. Then you go to the way once again, answer two out of the four in to continue as long as you said yes to two out of the four and then the measurement, we recommend answering yes to all four and in order to continue and then in the how, once again, we recommend answering yes to all these. And so we're asking people to think about this if they've come up with, hey, I like to buy this piece of software or I really want to institute this new program that's going to change how we do business, really answering these questions. First and foremost, so they can really think about the depth, breadth, the magnitude of the recommendation they're putting forward. And so you ask, how does this all become relationship focus? And in the end, our goal here is our alumni populations keep getting bigger and bigger, but how do we make sure that it becomes more personal in our interactions and engagement? And so as you see with our or this is some examples of some next steps we do, we're in the process of revising our communications personas, the flow and the mapping, so that we talk to people more personally in regards to where they're at. If we have people that have never really engaged with us as an alumna, we shouldn't be talking to them like they just gave a gift or they were just on campus last week. We should be meeting them where they're at and their journey and their engagement with us. And so you could see a variety of things here that we've had to do. And I think that in the third come to the right are pilot projects is something that's been very important to me because I think that as a digital governance strategy takes place, we really need to be willing to take risks, try some things, see if they work, learn from things that you know, that we've piloted and there's going to be successes and failures. So and I'm going to take you through one of those in a few moments as we've I've talked about the persona development. And I will also share with you our strategy, the impact, the relationship focus is in our prospect management. We do believe that we're getting better data that's better informing our decisions and how we deploy our regional programs in and our discovery core work and the like. And that, you know, this is about becoming how do you make that 280,000 or 300,000 individuals? How do we narrow that funnel? Because there's only so many advancement officers that can engage and that we want to make sure that people feel valued. But on the right hand side, you're going to see enterprise data management. How you may ask yourself the question, well, how does this possibly relate to relationship focus? And through all of this, we realized that there is somewhat so many data points across the university that are not integrated. Our CRM platform that we have begun conversations with the university to figure out how we can get some of those better data points back into our systems and how these systems can be communicating back and forth. Because you be. It's like many organizations, we are siloed and while we yes, we get the graduates when they go and we get the student information when they graduate or when if they were a student and they've made a gift. But what about all that information about where they went to high school? What clubs were they involved with at the university? What activities did they engage with? And some of that information we get. But I guarantee you we don't get what high school they attended and and that type of information to even know where they've come from. We only get kind of the information from where they've been at during their time at UAB. And then that is even in a limited form. And so we're working through those things to create a better culture of data sharing so that we can make better decisions with our use of AI. But how we engage with people. Here's an example of how during the pandemic, this virtual digital first focus, we established a Royal Blue book club. Royal Blues is the name of our loyalty society for our donors. And we just on a whim decided, Let's try this book club concept. We weren't sure how many people want to engage with us and doing a reading of a book. And not only was that first one so successful, we've now done multiple book club experiences since then, and book club participants are involved in selecting the next books. They review the book. We brought in guest speakers on topics highlighting things that may have happened in the book. And so we really are listening to our constituents and giving them a more meaningful, wholesome, engaging experience that something that they're enjoying. So we know we're going to continue this going on into the future. It's something easy for us to do. I would like to transition to a pilot project that we were working on, and that is about Dynamic communications. The concept here is the more we know about an individual's interests, the more likely they are to feel engaged. And yeah, and so what we wanted to test was first we developed a test group, we then broke that test group out into a group that would get just our standard communication versus dynamic communications. And you may ask what's a dynamic communicate? Well, a dynamic communication is that we understand, for instance, we have different data points in our system. If their school of management graduate, well, they may like to get a story about the school of management or if they're a donor to our arts programs, they may want to get the arts story and they may not want to get the management story. And so use utilizing these different factors. We created a dynamic platform where some stories are static, like the main cover story may be the same for everyone, but then we would deliver dynamic content based on people's interest. And so we're sending one email to 6000 people, not 6000 custom emails with 6000 templates, if that makes sense. So it's one email that is customized for everyone. And so in the goal here is also to collect and store the interest. So if you're reading the story on the School of Management and next thing you know, you're on the UVA website and you discover that there is a story about sustainability, well, that that tag is to feed back to us so that we know next time around you like sustainability. And then based upon all these data tags coming back in, is to learn about you, what you're interested in. And that I based learning of interest, would determine what was the next newsletter that you would get from us. And so this six month project would then culminate in custom web based, giving opportunities based upon your areas of interest that we learned from your tax. And in the anticipated pilot would talk about increased giving. So our goals were to collect and store the information about user preferences, gather a set of unique content services, show growth in our KPIs around engagement and giving, and compare email performance between the customer group and the standard group. And I will say to you that in the conclusion of this project, we really did, the tools allow us to ask better questions What content are we delivered to our alumni and what is the context for doing so? So we spent a lot of time reorg analyzing our content, and we know that the ad driven platform will allow us to personalize more regular. One of the key takeaways that we've also learned is the warming period for getting artificial intelligence to begin identifying trends took much longer than expected. So we need to figure out ways to shorten that gap internally. We need to do a better job about tagging our stories and not able to let A.I. do all the work. Um, we found that in our test we were too much of a need for highly structured data, and I was not able to generate the tags that we were looking for. So these are gaps that we've learned through this process, through this pilot project. We've learned the areas that we need to shore up. And so we also learned that our communications tools, the systems were not designed easily to pull tags for the ad a process. And part of that is how are we even storing data in our CRM? How is the communication platform using it? And so these are gaps that we now need to figure out how to narrow those gaps, and we need to also figure out ways to tag our donors with those interests and things that we already know about them so that it can help. The AI would learn faster in that warming period be shorter. We also learn that we may not have had the correct samples for the test and that all of these learnings I think are important for us because we know A.I. is going to continue and technology is going to continue to evolve and we feel better informed about the decisions that we need to be asking ourselves upfront as we do something than we did before. One of the things that's so important for us is the third bullet from the bottom about our stories that were already being done by our communications teams across the university that are all RSS feeds. We're not being tagged properly and we have to have some consistency in regards to the tags that we're using because otherwise it's it becomes random in regards to how A.I. is being used. So all of these learnings there, I've challenged my team to go back and say, okay, how do we narrow the gaps on all of these areas so that we can continue to evolve and be a best in class advancement organization? So to recap, I know I've shared a lot, but this digital strategy is something that we feel is directly connected to the future of where advancement organizations are going. And, you know, we have to be constantly probing, testing, trying, failing, achieving in order for us to grow as an organization. And the type of people that we need to be hiring is really changing. As the landscape in the technology is changing and the expectations are changing. So keep Josephine's literacies and cognitive capacities in mind as you're thinking about your next hires for your advancement organization. With that, I wanted to say thank you once again. Rod Grabowski and the Vice president for university advancement at the University of Buffalo. And my contact information is here. If you would like to learn more about how we've implemented these strategies and continue to evolve these strategies into our strategic plan. Thank you so much for being with me. Thank you so much, Rod. This concludes the webinar. Today's program is Copyright 2021 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. With all rights reserved for additional case on demand webinars, please visit. W w. W dot case dot org Slash on demand.

digital strategy

relationship-focused

integrating digital strategies

digital-first mentality

successful digital transformations

artificial intelligence in advancement

workforce development

personalization and relationship-building