Avon Old Farms School Fast-tracks Prospect Research and Donor Outreach Using Omatic Cloud

Organization Background

Avon Old Farms School is a boarding and day school for boys in Avon, Connecticut. As it approaches its Centennial in 2027, Avon’s continued excellence is a direct result of the support it receives from alumni, parents, grandparents, and friends. We spoke with Kyle Abraham, Advancement Database Manager, to hear about the school’s use of Omatic Cloud.

Challenge

Approximately 150 students enroll at Avon Old Farms School each fall from around the world. Before implementing Omatic Cloud, transferring new student information into Raiser’s Edge NXT was time-consuming, yet it was necessary for creating the year’s development strategy. The alumni and development (A&D) office was looking for a more efficient way to resolve:

• Separate Systems
  A&D had to manually edit and import spreadsheets with new student data from Veracross into Raiser’s Edge NXT. In addition, there was no efficient way to link student and parent records, connect a new parent with their spouse’s record, or attach workplace information to new parent records.
• Time-Consuming Data Cleanup
  Each summer, A&D staff would spend weeks cleaning up new student records in Raiser’s Edge NXT so the team’s prospect researcher would have enough information to begin working on the newest constituents. This, in turn, impacted strategic travel planning timelines for frontline fundraisers.

Solution

Avon Old Farms School sought a solution that could help them get a more comprehensive view of students, parents, and alumni, leading them to adopt Omatic Cloud:

• Complete, Automatic Data Imports from Veracross
  Avon Old Farms School replaced the time-consuming process of importing spreadsheets with an automatic solution: Omatic Cloud. Data from the Veracross automatically imports into Raiser’s Edge NXT, with customizable tools for mapping information into proper fields, formatting responses for consistency, and sending more data into the database than was possible in the past. What used to take half a workday, now takes minutes with Omatic Cloud.
• Properly Linking Constituent Records in Raiser’s Edge NXT
  The A&D office is importing more information than it had in the past and retrieving data in a structured, efficient way. Records link to one another at the importing stage, so it’s easy to learn about a new student, see their parents, where they work, and their connection to the school—automatically.
• Formatting International Data
  15–20% of the students at Avon Old Farms School are international students. International students’ addresses and phone numbers often differ from U.S. conventions. In the past, international student data would cause errors in Raiser’s Edge NXT during imports. By using Omatic Cloud, the team can identify international data points and properly format them in the system, without delaying the import.

Results

After implementing Omatic Cloud, Avon Old Farms School had greater visibility into their supporter base leading to:

• Improved Data Integrity for Cost-Effective Outreach
  Since implementing Omatic, data integrity has improved dramatically. Formatting inconsistencies between Veracross and Raiser’s Edge NXT correct automatically. This is significant: properly formatted addresses prevent return postage charges during direct mail fundraising appeals. Having linked family records prevents duplicating outreach to members of the same household, another form of cost savings.

“The data itself is so much cleaner. The school application data isn’t always clean; misspellings, all caps email addresses, and other issues are common. The Omatic transformations made it easy to make corrections.” — Kyle Abraham

• More Time to Develop a Donor Engagement Strategy
  Linked records make complete student household records a starting point—rather than a goal—for the prospect research. Staff spend less time confirming information available in enrollment applications and more time researching donor prospects to inform the office’s fundraising strategy.

“We’ve saved massive amounts of time with Omatic. Tasks like linking parent and student records used to require three staff members. What used to take half a working day now takes about 10 minutes of review.”

• Accelerated Donor Outreach
  The improved information has been beneficial for major gift officers. The decreased wait time for completing household research means development officers can plan their outreach visits earlier in the year. Scheduling donor meetings and planning engagement events is happening earlier as well. Staff now know more about where their donor prospects are—and have information about how to reach them in record time.

“We are much farther along in the research process than we have ever been. Team members are completing projects in mid-July that usually needed to wait until August to begin.”

The A&D team is very happy with the results they have seen with Omatic to date and is excited to continue building a more connected ecosystem with Omatic Cloud.

“We’re looking at other ways to use Omatic, like importing the sports students play from Veracross, which will help with alumni engagement in the future.”