Keele University

Keele University

The role of the Alumni Office has changed dramatically over the last few years; its function is no longer simply the recording of the progress of graduates, and the sending of occasional newsletters. There is an increased need to boost revenue in higher education through effective fundraising and this requires positive targeted relationships with our former students through special events and a range of targeted communications. We are focusing on communication and events with a view, in time, to launching an effective fundraising strategy to generate donations and legacy income.

With this in mind we clearly identified our requirements and researched possible providers for a new solution. The existing system was approximately 15 years old and we were finding it increasingly difficult to record data and search on or report valuable, relevant information. Ten companies made it to the shortlist, six presented to us and finally a decision was reached between one of two main contenders.

the new system

We selected ESiT’s thankQ because the team took real care and effort over their tender submission, thinking through what we wanted and looking at the best way of delivering it. They have continued in this vein, working with us, listening and understanding our needs and meeting our functionality criteria with the thankQ database.

Despite historically using Oracle, the cost of an SQL Server solution was certainly not prohibitive and delivers more choice of systems. ESiT had the capacity to adapt thankQ to work with Oracle, but it made more sense (in terms of support and upgrades) to keep our system consistent with their other customers.

We felt very strongly that ESiT were genuinely flexible and the software was versatile, adapting to meet our specific needs; this was the deciding factor for us. They were also able to deliver exactly what we wanted within our tight timescales.

the modules

The modules we selected will assist us in all areas of our work; the Finance module will be used for donation processing and claiming gift aid and the Event module will be used to plan and administer reunion events.

The Alumni module integrates with the SITS student database enabling the smooth transfer of data relating to admissions, student records, exams and career progression between both systems. thankQ also integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office software.

The Trust module will be used to deal with frequent applications for external funding, for example from the HEFCE.

Keele has one of the largest green campuses in the UK, and the Fundraising Officer has customised the Project Management module to manage a campaign generating income through conservation and heritage projects. thankQ will also be used to track the volunteers involved in these projects.

the benefits

The result of our investment in this software is already delivering greater efficiency in our standard processes, such as updating records, improved accuracy in mailings and we expect this to extend to increased fundraising revenue from carefully targeted, effective communications.

It is essential for any establishment such as ours to engage alumni for the duration of their lives and build them, where possible, into a community with a common interest in the development of the University and other students.

Using thankQ we are building and maintaining an active and effective alumni community. We will be able to process donations quickly and efficiently, manage fundraising campaigns and events in a positive and cost effective manner. By careful targeting of individuals who are most likely to give to a specific campaign we can avoid overtaxing our pool of potential donors.

The ability to access accurate information at the touch of a button, run reports in a matter of minutes and reduce processing time will deliver a quicker return on our investment through saved resources and increased levels of donations.

the future

It is important that the role of the software continues to develop to ensure the work we have done to get to this stage is not lost and it remains important and relevant to the University in the future.

The next phases of the project will see further integration with Symmetry, our finance system, in order to transfer donation summaries to our accounts without rekeying any information, and with Kinetics, the Event Management software used by the campus conference management company.

Keele University (PDF - 103KB)