Slate for Advancement

I think you get hug bang for the buck with Slate for Advancement, From the internal user perspective, you don't need extensive or even moderate understanding of sql, html, css or javascript to create rich and engaging interactions with the general public. Of course those skills wouldn't hurt if you have them! In other words, you don't need a team of programmers to maintain your event pages or forms or customizations in general; it's typical that the IT department needn't be involved in the day to day support of the application. I'll state the obvious in that it's extremely advantageous to pair Slate for Advancement with Slate for Admissions. It's helpful to have bench strength on the platform even if the users have drastically different workflows. The only scenario I can imagine where Slate for Advancement would not be a good fit is where the culture of the institution has issue with the entire Software As A Service model. If your institution needs absolute control over all aspects of your implementation, or is reluctant to use cloud-based applications, Slate might not be for you.

Slate's business model does not assign a person to service your instance of the application. To receive effective support, you MUST engage in the online forums involving the greater Slate community. Once you embrace that model, the support team meets or exceeds any service standards I've experienced over the last 20 years.

Slate has allowed information sharing and data integration, reducing our CRM needs from over 6 different systems into one. For example, the student call center is not managed solely out of Slate and all data is captured, collected, and then reported out of the system so that students can receive call lists, review the records they're calling, perform the call out of the system, collect gifts or other information through a form submission, communicate follow up with donors through email, text or video. All of this is done out of Slate allowing for all users to see interactions of donors / records, and easy triggers for follow up to be automated and occur.

Absolutely we would recommend Slate for Advancement to other institutions. The functionality, flexibility, and possibilities are unmatched.

What features/functionality pushed your team to select Slate for Advancement?
The main winning aspect from our perspective was that all touch points of the donors record would be managed, maintained, updated in one location. We would not be reliant on a third-party vendor for main aspect like e-mail or texting or calling or payment processing. Slate for Advancement has an approach to technology that is embracing of our modern world of technology that I have not seen in other vendors.

What lessons learned can you share?
Any migration for your CRM is a huge change management project. If you don't have a strong project manager onsite then consider bringing one in as a consultant.

If you could make the decision again, would it be the same one?
Absolutely

What peripherals were you able to replace with the Slate solution (giving portal, events mgmt, etc)?
Our institution was a little bit different where we had already built out custom solutions for our alumni portal our event management and our honor roll of giving. Being able to replace those with a platform that's supported by a vendor and has a large community of knowledge base that can be leaned on was huge and another main consideration in moving to slate.

For us one of the main selling factors was the depth and willingness of the community to support the rest of us in the effort of making slate for advancement successful in our institutions. And this continues to be the case to this day.

Perfect tool for our institution and it only keeps getting better.

The community of users within Slate for Advancement is the main selling point. If you are new to a CRM where you have full control of every aspect of its setup and implementation, you are advised to find a reliable Preferred Partner that can help you navigate the infinite number of choices for implementation.

I am a huge supporter of Slate for Advancement. A lot of the time, if people reach out to me to ask about Slate for Advancement, I will hop into a test record and show them all of the things that Slate for Advancement can do and track. Talking about Slate for Advancement is my favorite pastime. If you're looking for a CRM that will store and manage people, companies, schools, giving data, and scholarships, these are just a small hand full of things that we use Slate for Advancement for. We have projects and workflows, updates, automations, reports, lists, mass communications, events, phone calling, web pages (portals), these are all tools that we have used to enhance our relationships with our constituents. There is also a test environment that you can build new tools in and you don't have to worry about breaking anything. They have a clean slate environment that you can pull examples from. The possibilities with Slate for Advancement are endless. When it comes to Slate for Advancement - I'm a kid and every day I work in Slate for Advancement is like Christmas morning!

The community support that Slate for Advancement offers is a huge reason, but also the number of things that we never dreamed of doing that we can now with Slate for Advancement. They also are constantly improving and bringing new tools and ideas to the table for their customers to use.