Salesforce announced three new product innovations for Education Cloud for Advancement & Alumni Relations at the CASE Summit for Leaders in Advancement in New York City last week. Chris Clark, Director of Product Management, Advancement at Salesforce, outlined and gave a short demo of these new features, which will improve revenue outcomes and staff experiences and support data-driven decision-making for advancement and alumni relations teams. Leveraging industry standards set by CASE and the CASE Insights on Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey, these new product innovations show how Salesforce continues to empower customers to keep their focus on their outcomes.
Here are the coming new features and benefits:
Alumni Engagement Insights with Data + AI
(coming Winter ‘25)
Powered by Education Cloud, Data Cloud, and Generative AI, this new feature can improve engagement outcomes by helping alumni relationship officers better understand the true impact of alumni and supporters and their Experience, Communication, Volunteerism, and Philanthropic impact from systems across the institution in a single place. In addition, engagement officers can drive greater efficiency within alumni engagement efforts by using Generative AI—which, along with Data Cloud, is included in an Einstein for Education license or as a standalone)—to help them understand and act on their data.
Advancement Reporting Framework
(coming Spring ‘25)
With Advancement Reporting Framework, advancement teams can improve efficiency by using pre-built templates for CASE Alumni Engagement Metrics and Voluntary Support of Education by extracting data, answering questions, collaborating with internal stakeholders, and generating final versions for submissions all in one place, which eliminates document version problems and the need for multiple spreadsheets. This upcoming feature is powered by Education Cloud and Disclosure & Compliance Hub, which is included in Education Cloud’s base license.
Voluntary Support of Education Automation
(coming Spring ‘25)
Voluntary Support of Education Automation is an upcoming feature that leverages Education Cloud and industry standards to help advancement and alumni relations teams better understand how alumni and supporters contribute to Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) involvement metrics in a whole new way. It can also improve data efficiency through a new data model and automations to support Graduation Date, Graduation Status by Degree Type, Alumni Graduation Cohort, and Generational Cohort based on birth date, Giving Levels by Individual and Household, and Restricted vs. Unrestricted Giving, including Current Operations and Capital Purposes based on VSE framework.
Conclusion
Advancement and alumni relations teams, though often small, have a mighty impact on institutions. Salesforce’s ongoing investment in Education Cloud for Advancement & Alumni Relations will empower these small yet mighty teams to enhance efficiency, minimize manual processes, expand access to vital data, and innovate for the future. These innovations will result in happier staff, happier donors, and more positive advancement and alumni relations experiences.
