Empowering Education Orgs to Shape the Future with Tech
As a leader of an education advancement team, your mission is to inspire the next generation of scholars and leaders while meeting financial goals that ensure your institution’s longevity. To achieve this, you need effective technology solutions that enhance student engagement, strengthen alumni relations, and streamline operations.
Our team at Heller Consulting understands the unique challenges you face, and we’re here to help you navigate them with tailored strategies that prioritize your goals. For decades, we’ve partnered with advancement teams at independent schools, colleges, and universities to implement new systems, advancement packages, and tech strategies that build legacies.
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Your vision, our support
Every education org has its own set of priorities. We take the time to understand what drives you and the specific challenges your institution is facing.
We help you implement powerful fundraising tools to engage donors effectively, track giving trends, and maximize contributions. Whether you’re interacting with major donors, alumni, grateful patients, and corporate partners, your new tech systems can help you steward important relationships and achieve impact.
Want to enhance the student experience? How about building stronger connections with your alumni? We help you implement tools and strategies that foster meaningful interactions and help your institution reach its revenue goals.
Smoother processes mean better, faster results. We offer strategies that optimize your operations, making it easier for your institution to manage daily operations. Our goal is to reduce administrative overhead so you can reinvest your valuable resources into your core mission and programs.
Our services for educational institutions
Technology roadmap
To align your institution’s CRM strategy with your mission and goals, Team Heller creates a comprehensive Technology Roadmap. Our experts take a broad view of your technology ecosystem and determine what can stay, what can go, and what needs to be enhanced to boost efficiency and optimize your return on investment. The final product is a blueprint that addresses your immediate needs while preparing you for future growth and innovation.
CRM strategy, implementation, and management
Unify your entire constituent journey—from prospective student to engaged alumnus and lifelong donor—with the ideal CRM. We partner with you to select, implement, and manage the right solution to make that vision a reality. We have extensive experience implementing CRMs including Salesforce and leading advancement managed packages (Kindsight Ascend, AdvancementRM).
Campus-wide change leadership
Through strategic leadership, project management, and best-practice change management workflows, Heller can support your team throughout your major technology project. Our approach begins by understanding your institution’s unique dynamics—how your team operates, communicates, and adapts to change. Then, we run implementation readiness and user adoption planning, launch strategy, stabilization, enablement, and post-launch support to guarantee widespread satisfaction.
Fractional Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Get the high-level, strategic oversight you need to navigate the complex educational technology ecosystem. As an embedded CIO, Team Heller helps you integrate critical systems like your Student Information System (SIS) and CRM and ensure your technology is secure, scalable, and aligned with your institution's long-term mission.
AI strategy and support
We review your institution’s readiness to implement AI-powered tech, identifying gaps and areas for improvement in your infrastructure. Via our AI readiness assessment, we identify opportunities where AI can address specific needs, improve efficiency, optimize processes, enhance decision-making, or better serve your mission. You will get an AI Strategy Roadmap that highlights defined goals, challenges, and opportunities so you can implement with confidence.
Real results for institutions like yours
Loyola University Chicago needed to replace its aging Ellucian Advance CRM with a modern solution that could support complex advancement operations and ambitious fundraising goals. Heller implemented and customized Salesforce and Kindsight Ascend, creating a robust, integrated platform tailored to Loyola’s needs. The new system streamlines gift processing, enables advanced donor research and reporting, and supports householding and affiliation tracking—all while integrating with external systems. With this best-in-class CRM, Loyola can engage donors more effectively, eliminate manual workarounds, and unlock new capabilities for long-term fundraising success.
Gordon College faced a critical challenge: its fundraising CRM was disconnected from its SIS, making it difficult to foster and maintain lifelong relationships with students after they graduated. Heller implemented a customized Salesforce advancement package, creating a modern, unified platform that provides deep insights on supporters and eliminates hours of manual data entry, empowering the college to build effective, long-term engagement with its graduates.
The Hamlin School’s development team was burdened by a complex, inefficient, and time-consuming gift-entry process in Raiser’s Edge. Heller optimized their system by re-configuring the platform and documenting a new, streamlined workflow from start to finish. As a result, the school eliminated tech debt, manual workarounds, and inaccurate data, while freeing up its staff to focus on more strategic initiatives.
What sets Heller Consulting apart
Educational experience
Since 1996, we’ve helped universities, colleges, and independent schools implement and customize their CRMs to work for them. From integrating fundraising systems and streamlining program delivery to making data work harder, we have done it all before and can provide your team with the skills and experience you need to power your mission.
Platform-agnostic services
Our recommendations reflect every institution’s unique needs and vision. Whether it’s Salesforce, Microsoft, Blackbaud, or a system we help you discover, we focus on aligning the right technology to your organization’s unique needs. Our goal isn’t to push a specific platform but to help you find the best fit through thoughtful, strategy-driven support.
Tried-and-true guiding principles
We don’t rely on guesswork—we follow proven frameworks. Our Technology Guiding Principles provide a structured path for selecting and implementing software customized to your nonprofit’s values, growth stage, and risk tolerance. And we’ll be there every step of the way, providing expert guidance.
Advancement insights for education
Let’s Achieve More Together
Fuel your future with the best nonprofit technology strategy. Tell our experts more about your project.