From the Nominator

During a recent major CRM conversion, Emory University's advancement team identified a critical gap: Highly engaged faculty now had no access to our giving database (VERAS), due to cost, training, and privacy constraints. Our faculty partners play meaningful roles in donor stewardship and cultivations. So rather than expanding licenses and incurring costs, we reimagined automated gift notifications as a way to empower faculty to engage donors in a convenient, trackable way. We built a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement automated journey that delivers fund-specific daily notifications when qualifying gifts post. Emails summarize new gifts, pledges, and pledge payments for up to 10 selected designations. Content is generated by AMPscript-based templates powered by CRM data, with privacy safeguards embedded—including suppression of anonymous gifts and restriction of information based on contact preferences. Subscription management is maintained through a “key contacts” framework linked to each designation in the CRM. This solution delivers just enough information to support stewardship without overexposing donor data or costly system access. It also unlocks and tracks a previously untapped cohort of faculty stewardship champions. The result is a scalable, private model that strengthens donor relationships, elevates institutional partnership, and modernizes advancement communications—using tools we already owned.

From the Judges

This is a creative and practical solution that gives faculty partners timely access to relevant fundraising activity, while maintaining appropriate safeguards around donor privacy. The project makes smart use of existing Salesforce tools to create an automated, auditable process without new licenses, integrations, or major system changes. Its “privacy by design” approach, including suppression of anonymous donors and careful handling of contact preferences, is particularly strong. By empowering faculty stewardship champions and reducing ad hoc inquiries, the solution strengthens collaboration while saving staff time.