Education Advancement Technology Consulting Services
Team Heller understands the unique challenges that an education advancement team like yours faces. For decades, we’ve partnered with advancement teams at independent schools, colleges, and universities so you can focus on your goal: fundraising to help your educational organization meet its financial goals and secure its longevity.
TRUSTED BY ADVANCEMENT TEAMS AT
Your vision, our support
Every educational institution has its own set of priorities. We take the time to understand your vision and the specific advancement challenges your institution is facing.
Fundraising
We help you implement powerful fundraising tools to engage donors effectively, track giving trends, and maximize contributions. Your new tech systems can also improve your stewardship strategies, whether you’re engaging with major donors, alumni, grateful patients, and corporate partners.
Student & Alumni Engagement
Want to build stronger connections with your students and alumni? We provide tools and strategies that enhance the student experience and foster meaningful interactions with your alumni to help your institution reach its revenue goals.
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.
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 for you. We’ll take a broad view of your technology ecosystem to determine what can stay, what can go, and what needs improvement to boost efficiency and optimize your ROI.
CRM implementation
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, Blackbaud, and Microsoft, along with leading advancement managed packages that can handle services like ticketing and peer-to-peer fundraising (e.g., Kindsight Ascend, AdvancementRM).
Change leadership
Heller can support your team during transitional periods. We start by understanding your institution’s unique dynamics—how your team operates, communicates, and adapts to change—before developing an implementation readiness and user adoption strategy. We also provide support post-launch to guarantee widespread satisfaction.
Fractional CIO
Get the high-level, strategic oversight you need to navigate the complex education advancement technology ecosystem. As an embedded CIO, Team Heller helps you integrate critical systems like your Student Information System (SIS) and CRM to ensure your technology is secure, scalable, and aligned with your institution’s long-term mission.
AI strategy and support
Team Heller reviews your institution’s readiness to implement AI-powered technology and provides an AI Strategy Roadmap. This resource highlights defined goals, challenges, and opportunities so you can implement new tech with confidence.
What sets Heller Consulting apart
Educational experience
Since 1996, Heller has 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
Heller is a platform-agnostic firm, meaning we aren’t obligated to push a specific platform on you. Instead, 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.
FAQs on education advancement technology consulting services
What are the benefits of working with an education advancement tech consultant like Heller?
Regardless of your institution’s strategic priorities or needs, working with a consultant can provide you with the expertise and capacity to confidently adopt new tech. Consultants like Heller can:
- Configure custom tools. Advancement teams have highly specific needs. A consultant can implement and customize specialized software, ensuring the platform is ready to drive donor engagement and fundraising momentum.
- Integrate data. Consultants help connect your different data systems into one source of truth. This ensures that instead of operating in disconnected silos, your entire institution is pulling in the same direction with a unified, 360-degree view of your donors and alumni.
- Improve relationships. Building a personalized relationship with every prospect can be overwhelming. Consultants can help you create intelligent systems that collect important donor data, from graduation date to undergraduate major. You can then use these advanced profiles to create meaningful connections with potential donors.
- Mitigate risk. Advancement tech is a significant investment. Experts help you buy exactly what you need, configure it right the first time, and avoid expensive, frustrating do-overs.
- Enhance user adoption. A successful CRM implementation goes far beyond paying for licenses. Consultants like Team Heller integrate change management into the project, providing the hands-on training and support your team needs to confidently adopt the new system from day one.
What education advancement technology consulting services does Heller offer?
Heller’s education advancement technology consulting services go beyond CRM selection and installation; we also offer strategic technology roadmapping, AI readiness assessment, and change leadership to ensure successful tech adoption among your new staff.
Can Heller integrate CRM with our existing systems?
Yes. Team Heller has deep knowledge of education advancement systems, from your SIS to your CRM. We ensure that your technology is secure, scalable, and aligned with your institution’s long-term mission.
Why should we choose a platform-agnostic consulting partner like Heller?
A platform-agnostic consulting partner like Team Heller is completely free to recommend any tool, meaning you’ll access the very best solution for your needs.
How does a technology roadmap benefit a higher education advancement office?
Having a comprehensive technology roadmap aligns your institution’s technical investments with its goals. You’ll know which legacy systems to keep or replace, and you’ll prevent redundant software purchases, ensuring better ROI in the long run.
Does Heller offer AI services?
Yes, Heller currently offers an AI preparedness assessment service for the cause sector. Designed for schools, as well as nonprofits and healthcare institutions, this service evaluates your organization’s readiness for AI, uncovers opportunities, and provides an AI strategy that you can implement.
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