Morehead State University Saves 15 Hours Per Week on Gift Processing with Omatic Cloud
“Omatic Cloud lets me carry out constituent updates overnight, saving me time and allowing me to focus on other key areas of my work.” – Sherry Surmont, Director of Advancement Services

Organization Background
Morehead State is a public university in Morehead, Kentucky. Since 1887, the university has been providing high-quality educational experiences for more than 6,000 students with the help of alumni and community support. We spoke with Sherry Surmont, Director of Advancement Services, to hear about the university’s use of Omatic Cloud.
Challenge
As the leader of the advancement services team at a large public university, it’s important to Sherry Surmont to make every hour of the workday count. Throughout her career, she has made it a priority to take stock of time-consuming processes and find creative ways to complete tasks efficiently. Sherry implemented Omatic to resolve some of the following challenges:
- Complex Flat Files from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet: Morehead State partners with the State of Kentucky to sell official Morehead State license plates, a popular program for alumni to display school pride on the go. To record novelty plate purchases, Sherry had to import data from spreadsheets sent by the state. Each county in Kentucky manages license plates separately and has its own formatting customs for listing names and addresses. Formatting spreadsheets with several hundred rows—and no formatting consistency—was a time-consuming task. Sherry knew there had to be a better way to move school license plate data into Raiser’s Edge NXT.
“None of [the counties in Kentucky] enter license plate data the same way. Some do last name then first name, others enter first names before last names.” – Sherry Surmont
- Large Amounts of New Graduate Data to Process Each Year: Each spring, Sherry’s team in advancement services has several thousand new graduate records to add to Raiser’s Edge NXT. It was difficult to add the annual influx of data in a timely manner, but it was necessary for future engagement and fundraising opportunities. The team sought a solution to add this data more efficiently.
- Difficulty Moving Data Between Raiser’s Edge NXT and Encompass: The university had several systems for carrying out essential functions: Raiser’s Edge NXT for logging contacts, managing biographical information, and tracking fundraising, and Encompass for email marketing. The two systems did not connect to one another; sending valuable information like email opens and click-throughs from Encompass to Raiser’s Edge NXT was a manual process—and low on Sherry’s priority list.
“To make updates, I would have to do a manual export of all our information that had changed.”
- Data Integrity Issues Across Platforms: The manual process for refreshing data in Raiser’s Edge NXT or Encompass led to infrequent data updates in each system. Colleagues across the unit could not rely on the information in either system, which limited outreach and fundraising opportunities.
“There were always errors. I didn’t really trust the information.”
Solution
Morehead State sought a solution that could help them effectively connect Raiser’s Edge NXT and Encompass to get a more comprehensive view of their supporters, leading them to adopt Omatic Cloud:
- Automatic Integration Across Raiser’s Edge NXT and Encompass: After implementing Omatic Cloud, constituent data updates happen automatically. Instead of manually importing batches of updates and spending hours formatting spreadsheets, Sherry and her team move data between Raiser’s Edge NXT and Encompass seamlessly in the background while doing other work, including gift processing, reporting, and prospect research.
- Improved Data Accuracy and Fewer Duplicates: These automatic data updates have been a major boost for data integrity at the university. Colleagues can create email recipient lists for communications based on biographical, giving, volunteering, or other data with confidence that they will reach the right audience. .
“Now, my colleagues trust the data too because they know it’s happening automatically.”
- Processing Thousands of Records in Minutes: Adding hundreds—even thousands—of records to Raiser’s Edge NXT is no longer a headache for Sherry’s team. Online donations, license plate purchases, and new graduate information all flow into the CRM with minimal intervention. Omatic Cloud automatically applies the right pledge payments to the pledge record. Common formatting issues like inconsistencies in name spelling, street addresses, spreadsheet column order, or row names are automatically corrected thanks to custom rules within Omatic Cloud. In short, data is fresh, accurate, and properly formatted so it’s ready to use.
Results
After implementing Omatic Cloud, Morehead State had greater visibility into their supporter base leading to:
- Deeper Insights into Constituent Engagement: Since implementing Omatic Cloud, the team at Morehead State has more data in Raiser’s Edge NXT than ever before. Colleagues can see which communications a constituent has received, when they received them, and whether they have engaged with the outreach. Not only has this given the university better insight into which marketing campaigns are most effective, staff can also see how engaged their constituents are in detail. The team uses digital engagement data, like sharing university posts on social media, clicking emails, or donating online, to increase an individual’s engagement score. Having a better sense of how their constituents engage with the university has unlocked development opportunities.
“We have a much better sense of constituent engagement with the university and can use that information for scoring and reaching out to supporters.”
- 15 More Hours a Week for More Mission-Critical Projects: The automatic data imports for online gifts have freed up roughly three hours a day for members of Sherry’s team. Eliminating the tedious aspects of gift processing has created opportunities for staff to work on other mission-critical projects. Without the need for formatting spreadsheets and manual data imports, Sherry and her team can help colleagues prepare for donor visits by creating prospect research reports and providing other essential support.
“Without Omatic, we’d be spending so much time processing gifts manually. It works so well, I’m impressed.”