University of Edinburgh

The alumni network

Thousands of Edinburgh's former students still have a strong bond with the University and the city, and still keep in touch with the Alumni team and acquaintances and friends from their student days. A world-wide community of over 130,000 individuals represents Edinburgh's tradition of excellence in many countries around the globe.

In January 2006 ESiT submitted a tender to replace the existing Visual Alms fundraising and alumni management software used by the University's Development and Alumni department. The contract was awarded in June of that year and the first phase of the project went live just three months later in September 2006. Further development has continued throughout 2007/08, including the addition of a Telethon module and configuration of advanced rules for processing 'gone aways' using the Bar Code module.

Phased implementation

The new system was installed in three phases.

The implementation of phase one began in July 2006 and saw the installation of the standard thankQ configuration with minor modifications to accommodate a few extra data fields and different terminology.

Much of the time in getting to this point was spent on developing the data transfer routines, taking the data from the old system and making sure that it had been interpreted correctly when viewed through thankQ. Getting thankQ in place for the autumn meant it could be used in time for the launch of the Universitys’s new £350 million fundraising campaign.

In November during the second phase of the project, further enhancements were made to thankQ to accommodate bar code processing for ‘gone-aways’, international addressing formats and the inclusion of the currency symbol in ‘thank you’ letters, which will put the final piece in place for full multi-currency donation processing.

In 2007 the last phase of the project saw the integration of thankQ with the MyEd web portal which allows students and alumni to access their personal details, donation history and mailing preferences. The integration with other existing elements of the web portal means that the existing EASE user authentication method needs to be used and built into the thankQ web modules.

“One of the main reasons for choosing thankQ was for its flexibility and being able to work with our Project team to develop new and existing modules to meet our requirements… these projects have all been managed, documented and communicated well …”

Jennifer Shaw - IT Projects Coordinator, The University of Edinburgh

Telethon module - easy third party integration

Twice yearly, Edinburgh University conducts a Telethon campaign with 15,000 alumni targeted. The 6-8 week campaign looks to maintain relationships, keep contact details up to date and encourage financial contributions. Calling is outsourced to telemarketing specialists Capital Communications. The ability to import and export data between thankQ and Capital’s call management software with speed and accuracy is paramount to the success of the campaign. thankQ ensures this with a specially written Telethon module.

The thankQ Telethon module simplifies the selection and segmentation of contacts for calling and provides a snapshot of affiliations, education histories and giving histories together with basic contact details. This is then exported for import into Capital's call management software, enabling the caller to conduct an informed conversation with each alumnus, thus increasing the probability of a successful outcome to the call.

As calling progresses, automatic updates are made to the thankQ data on a daily basis, including such vital information as changes to contact details and additions to communication histories. Gift Aid declarations given verbally can be created and updates made to account details against pledges.

On completion of the campaign, the Telethon module enables a valuable Post Calling Analysis report, presented in clear tabular format. This includes analysis of contacts (summaries of updates applied to records, penetration rate etc.), financial information (expected worth of pledges, value of one-off donations), analysis of reasons for not wanting to make a pledge and summaries of information requested and sent.

Since the initial implementation several enhancements have been made to the Telethon module, most notably the ability for an alumnus to be signed up to a new Direct Debit commitment during the calling process, with thankQ then generating the AUDDIS and BACS files to set up Direct Debit Instructions with the bank and make regular collections against these.

Moving forward

One of the earliest and most important parts of Edinburgh’s project was the integration of thankQ with the MyEd web portal which allows students and alumni to access their personal details, donation history and mailing preferences.

Within the next couple of months a major project is due to start to extend the alumni web portal functions (making use of ESiT’s webMiT technology). Four newly configured channels, My Directory Details, Keeping In Touch, Directory Search and My Messages will be made available to alumni whose details are held within MyEd, making use of EASE user authentication. Tighter automatic verification of changes coming over from the website will also be implemented at the same time.

Looking ahead

Over the coming months, it is also expected that thankQ’s prospect management functionality will be further extended for the university, together with the implementation of a managed solicitation and income projection process.

University of Edinburgh (PDF - 34KB)