The Hamlin School
Raiser's Edge Streamlining
San Francisco’s The Hamlin School is dedicated to providing a comprehensive education to girls from kindergarten to eighth grade. It is the oldest non-sectarian school for girls in the western United States.
Challenge: An inefficient, finicky gift-entry process
The school’s tech leaders engaged Heller Consulting to extend its Raiser’s Edge CRM, streamlining its development operations so it could better serve its community. Its development software stack was complex and its gift entry process laborious, leading to inefficient processes and manual workarounds.
Solution: Workflows streamlined and documented
Heller led a comprehensive project to optimize the school’s core technology, which included a thorough evaluation of systems and processes, priority setting, CRM streamlining, and training.
We identified business process changes that improved data entry, and configured Raiser’s Edge to reduce manual intervention. To ease financial reporting and reconciliation between departments, we recommended best practices to more accurately reflect the organization’s fundraising, optimizing campaign and appeal codes, as well as fund coding.
Heller trained staff in new best-practice workflows and documented the gift entry process from start to finish.
Results: Core tech streamlined and equipped for the future
By reducing manual data entry and automating synchronization, staff were able to complete tasks faster and move on to more strategic work. It also increased the accuracy of their data and enabled more efficient financial processes.
Having a streamlined development workflow that is documented from start to finish paves the way for the school to innovate further, especially in automations like thank-you letters, which have been proven to increase donor retention.
