So you want to be a data-driven advancement shop?

Abstract

The modern alumni and development organisation is awash with data. On a daily basis, our digital feeds are filled with content that inspires us with analytics and data visualisations for higher education advancement. Advancement executives are embracing their growing reliance on data, seeing it as a strategic tool and openly advocating the need for their organisations to be 'data driven' yet, sadly, the rhetoric does not always translate to the expected strategic value. Executives can be left feeling underwhelmed by their organisation's utilisation of data and advanced analytics. Perhaps, our ability to fully embrace sophisticated analytics is hampered by a sometimes overlooked, more fundamental advancement function' systems and data management. This paper has no 'wow factor'. No high-end analytics, no predictive models and no impressive data visualisations. Instead, it aims to help establish and/or improve the data and systems function within an advancement organisation. The paper presents some practical steps that are beginning to see a data culture seed and flourish in the Division of Alumni and Development at the University of Sydney. It shines a spotlight on some of the issues, processes, frameworks and management artefacts that may assist an organisation to incrementally build their data-driven culture.