Project Scope

"Having everyone working together to build relationships will help position us to achieve better success."

How big is this project?

Big. Implementing Advance will help to improve business operations in the division of Advancement and help to transform how the entire university moves together toward greater self-reliance through increased private support.

But the machines can’t do it alone. There is no button to press automatically engaging alumni. There is no lever to pull that mechanically raises private support. Rather, Advance will enable us all to discover new ways to work across divisions more effectively and efficiently.

Or, as Dale Hulvey was quoted as saying in a SunGard press release, “Having everyone working together to build relationships will help position us to achieve better success. To support this vision, we needed to create an environment where everyone within the university could be involved and extend the sphere of influence outside of the annual fund to help foster engagement and build stronger relationships with our donors.”

What are the key components?

Deciding on the correct scope of a project this big is a critical step to get right. So from the start, careful consideration was given to two main questions:

  • Of the current JMU alumni engagement and fundraising business process, which components could be improved by the implementation of a new data management system?
  • Where does the university want to take its entire alumni engagement and fundraising program in the foreseeable future?

This careful consideration concluded that the scope of this project include five key components:

  1. Reporting, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence
  2. Principal/Major Giving
  3. Data Integrity
  4. Engagement
  5. Intellectual Capital/Best Practices
  6. Project Management

The scope of this implementation will put in place a core advancement system. Future Advance implementation phases will add modules that will expand on these core capabilities.