Slate for Advancement

Score8.3 out of 10

7 Reviews and Ratings

What is Slate for Advancement?

Slate for Advancement is a CRM built exclusively for higher ed advancement and alumni offices. A license to Slate for Advancement is unlimited -- no additional add-ons or costs. Slate enables users to create a personalized constituent experience at scale with custom giving forms, donor portals, video messages, phone calling, and directories. Users can automate processes at scale while having control and access at every level of the system. And the platform includes inbuilt reporting.

Categories & Use Cases

Lloyd Lentz View profile

Executive Director of Technology Experience at Macalester College Advancement (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Slate for Advancement is our primary CRM, it manages our Alumni and Donor constituent data. It is the primary Fundraising software, allowing for Major Giving fundraising cycle (portfolio management, moves management, proposal pipeline, etc.). It is our gift and payment processor. It also is the primary outreach tool, providing email, texting, and voice outreach for our alumni and donor base. Also, the event management tool that allows us to manage 100-200 high-touch events per year, with outreach, RSVPs, check-in and more.

Pros

Email & Outreach
Event Management
Portfolio Management
Donor Relations
SMS Texting

Cons

Refined Business Intelligence tools
Complex Donor Segmentation reporting & querying
Individualize customer support

Most Important Features

Data integration
Giving Platform
CRM
Customizable Portals

Return on Investment

Reduced peripheral systems
Reduced redundant data integration needs
Simplified Data Entry, transitioned 1FTE to other more valuable use of time.
Reduced annual software license cost by 5X

Alternatives Considered

Ellucian CRM Advance

Other Software Used

Microsoft SQL Server, Firebase

Ashlin Tabiadon

Lead Advancement Finance Specialist at Albion College (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my role, I use Slate for Advancement every day. As an organization this is the CRM that we use to store and manage all of our Alumni, donors, friends of the college, and more. We have everything from personal information, to giving history, we have reports and lists that we run daily. Slate for Advancement is very customizable, which is a problem we had with our last CRM. Every day we continue to learn new things that Slate can do, and Slate is constantly updating the software based on customer feedback.

Pros

Amazing community support
You don't have to be a huge tech person to use Slate for Advancement
Just about everything can be customized to meet your needs

Cons

When I started the training wasn't super detailed (2 yrs ago)
If you submit a service desk ticket sometimes the response time isn't great

Most Important Features

Events
Communications
Project management
Reports
Data collection
Forms

Return on Investment

We have saved so much money as an institution!
Our calling program for Giving Tuesday costs us less than $90 for over 3,000 calls (previously $10k+)
Cancelled our DocuSign contract
Cancelled our crowdfunding software contract

Alternatives Considered

Ellucian Banner and Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

Other Software Used

WealthEngine, Ellucian Banner, Salesforce.com, MoneyGuidePro

Gina Mandros

Vice President for Advancement at Illinois Wesleyan University (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Slate for Advancement is Illinois Wesleyan's Advancement CRM and system of record for all philanthropy and alumni records. It is the main tool used for all gift processing, event management, data analysis and reporting, information gathering and distribution, email and text communication and many other functions that support fundraising best practices.

Pros

Donor Relations and Gift Management
Events, Communication and other engagement practices
Customized user interfaces that best fit individual needs
User permissions and security
Basic to Advanced query capabilities

Cons

Dynamic reporting and data visualization

Most Important Features

Constituent / Record management
Gift processing, reporting and acknowledgement
Query capabilities

Return on Investment

Reducing the number of other systems needed, saving overhead and man-power to automate data integrations
Crowd fundraising capabilities that allow for real time reporting and decision making
Campus-wide partnerships

Alternatives Considered

Ellucian CRM Advance, Salesforce.com, RNL Scalefunder, Tableau Desktop and GiveCampus

Raymond Ruff

Director of Constituent Management Systems and Process Improvement at Wofford College (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Slate for Advancement is the one-stop-shop for our Philanthropy + Engagement team at Wofford. It is our constituent CRM, gift management system, event management system, communication system, and the list goes on. Slate allowed us to replace an outdated donor management system and many, many home-grown bolt-on systems that were needed for us to do business the way we needed in order to best serve our donors and alumni.

When speaking of Slate, I often frame my conversations in the context of… do you want your software to tell you how to do business, or do you want your software to empower you to do business in the way you believe it should be done – the legacy system model, versus the Slate model. You do have to build your processes out, they are not all delivered (but many are.) However, the build-out of your processes in Slate is often more simple than the configuration of the old-school legacy systems.

Slate was the right choice for Wofford! We have been live on Slate for Advancement for over five and a half years at this point, and I wouldn't change a thing!

Pros

Gift management
Communications (email, sms, print, voice)
CRM functions
Calling campaigns
Event management
Online giving
Portals

Cons

Extremely complicated events, events with lots of sub-events, fee structures, discounts, etc. can take creativity, but are doable.

Most Important Features

All of them! We utilize many of the features made available and are always excited to see what is coming next!

Return on Investment

Like mentioned in the summary, we replaced many systems with Slate!

Keith McCants

Slate Strategist in Corporate at Queens University of Charlotte (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, Slate for Advancement is used for gift processing, maintaining constituent and donor records, event registrations, electronic communications, territory management, and financial reporting on all of the above. It is our backbone of all things Advancement.

Pros

Online event registrations / online data collection
Email communications
Gift & Payment Processing
Very flexible configuration and customization
Quick queries (exportable to excel)
File or web service integrations

Cons

More robust reporting functionality or visualization plug-ins
More influence on when enhancements are moved into production and test environments

Most Important Features

Online Forms
Gift Processing
Donor Management
Email communications
Constituent Engagement Reporting

Return on Investment

No hard ROI numbers available, but the pricing comes with unlimited users, unlimited email volume, unlimited storage with a very rich feature set.
As the implementation matures, I expect additional productivity gains as Slate automates more manual manipulation of excel spreadsheets across campus.

Alternatives Considered

Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT

Other Software Used

GiveCampus, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), BEE Pro, Snagit, Microsoft 365, Jira Work Management, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft To Do, Zoom, Unify Office by RingCentral, from Atos