Request for Proposal ESU-24-01

Office of Advancement CRM

Questions and Answers Page

All information and updates on this solicitation are contained in the New York State Contract Reporter advertisement found at: The NYSCR

Questions pertaining to the content of an Invitation for Bid must be made in writing via email to the designated parties on the New York State Contract Reporter.

It is recommended that vendors monitor the advertisement in the New York State Contract Reporter for updates and more information.

Questions/Requests for clarification due: April 2, 2024

Response to questions/requests for clarifications issued: April 5, 2024

General Administration Communication Management Constituent Management

Contribution Management Data Management Events Management Fundraising

Prospect Management Reports and Analytics Technical Volunteer

General

We expect the responses in a formal proposal with reference to locations in the TSRD document (Column F). Please see the instructions on the first tab of the TSRD.

No. We are using Ellucian CRM Advance.

The Attachment 6 for bidder references and contract history has now been added to the NYSCR ad.

Ellucian CRM Advance that is built on MS Dynamics.

SUNY Empire project management will work with the vendor project management. ITS and the Office for Advancement staff coordinate activities and tasks as appropriate. The Office for Advancement is the sponsor and will make the configuration, functional, and operational decisions. ITS will be responsible for the technical aspects of the project. Project structure may include subcommittee to assist with the work.

No.

Ellucian CRM Advance

You may submit an electronic version on the flash drive.

The Attachment 6 for bidder references and contract history has now been added to the NYSCR ad.

None known at this time.

The anticipated start for implementation is August/September 2024, aiming for a go-live date in July/August 2025. To ensure a smooth transition, we plan to operate our current CRM concurrently with the new CRM for 4-6 months.

Yes

N/A SUNY Empire will negotiate an MSA.

Not for this solicitation.

SUNY Empire will use state funding for this solution.

SUNY Empire will contract with one vendor for this solicitation.

SUNY Empire wishes to contract with one vendor for this solution. Parts would have to be arranged through a third party, if applicable. And any third party would need to accept NYS (SUNY) terms.

Exhibit E, attached to the RFP, is the proposed SLA document.

SUNY Empire elects not to disclose that information for this solicitation.

The submission must come with a notary acknowledgement. If that is provided, SUNY Empire will accept the electronic signature.

All vendors associated with your bid should complete the Attachment 5, Non-Collusive Bidding Certification.

Yes

The CRM will serve as a multifaceted tool designed to enhance the engagement, management, research and analysis of alumni and donor interactions and relationships. 

Objectives include: 

Improve Alumni Data Accuracy and Completeness 
Improve Donor Data Accuracy and Completeness 
Facilitate Contribution Management 
Enhance Alumni Engagement and Facilitate Tracking 
Enhance Donor Engagement and Facilitate Tracking 
 Execute a Robust Fundraising Strategy 
Streamline Event Management 
Streamline Volunteer Management 
Enhance Communication and Marketing 
Facilitate and Organize Donor and Alumni Research 
Optimize Operational Efficiency 
Drive Strategic Decision-Making 
Ensure Scalability and Flexibility

5 administrators/super users and 17 standard/general users.

We are using CRM Advance from Ellucian.

No known resource constraints at this time.

SUNY Empire will not negotiate any terms provided in Exhibit A. If there are issues with Exhibit B, we request that those items be documented in your response to this RFP. SUNY Empire will examine those requests during the administrative review.

SUNY Empire will contract with one vendor for this solicitation. Any partnerships for the solution would need to be arranged between the bidder and the third party.

Three departments that roll up to the Vice President of Advancement. These departments include Development, Advancement Services, and Alumni Engagement.

ITS supports product integration and other services as needed.

We expect to be fully functional with the selected product when we go-live.

There are no shadow databases that need to be migrated.

There are approximately 315,000 contribution records that will need to be migrated.

We are not aware of any data issues in our current CRM.

Current challenges include limited access for end users to data and reports, technical expertise currently required to generate communications, limited data visualization options.

Reporting and information needs are assigned to Advancement Services so requests are added to a queue which could take up to a week for individual requests. Some requests require manual manipulation of data to meet basic benchmark reporting. Due to the complexity of generating communications from our current CRM, we are using an external bulk email platform.

Staff rely on Advancement Services or prospect research to access and provide data which is ultimately less efficient than staff having direct access. We lose engagement data when they need to be stored in other systems, rather than in the CRM.

Administration

Yes

Current Tech Stack:

Ellucian CRM Advance
GiveCampus
Constant Contact
Research Point
Live Alumni
ThankView
Award Management
Touchnet

SUNY Empire elects not to disclose contract dates.

We anticipate 5 super users and 17 general users. Super users will be members of the university’s IT staff and Advancement Services. General users include gift officers, gift processor, prospect researcher, alumni relations, donor relations, corporate and foundation relations, annual giving.

Our tech stack includes:

Ellucian CRM Advance Constituent Experience
GiveCampus
Constant Contact
ThankView
Research Point
Live Alumni
Award Management
Touchnet

Metrics are stored in Constant Contact and ThankView. Unsubscribes and Bounces are imported into CRM Advance.

SUNY Empire’s ERP (Banner) stores student education data. We utilize LiveAlumni for alumni employment information. ResearchPoint contains alumni information for donors. We expect the Advancement Office CRM will accommodate the storage of all alumni data.

ITS- 2
Advancement Services - 1
Data Entry - 1
Prospect Research - 1
Gift Officers - 3
Annual Fund - 1
Alumni Relations - 1
Donor Relations - 1
Corporate and Foundation Relations -1
Community Relations - 1
Secretarial Support - 2
Communications/writer - 1

Yes, categorization would be based on constituent affiliation/type.

Communication Management

The vendor should assume very limited technical expertise.

We currently have 102,500 mailable individuals and 13,500 mailable organizations.

We do not need to partition communications for our Advancement office. We will need to identify communication purpose (e.g. solicitation, event invitation, newsletter, etc.).

We do use personalization in our communications. We include salutations, past giving, birthdays, etc. The vendor is welcome to share additional personalization provided by the CRM.

We have not implemented this type of communication plan in our current CRM.

Yes

We would want effective dates to be associated with communication preferences, and history to be maintained. Preferences could include Do Not Email, Do Not Mail, Do Not Solicit, Email Preferred, etc.

For example, if a constituent responds Yes to an event invitation, that will trigger a certain flow of communication that corresponds to that response. A No response will trigger a different flow of communication. The preferred channel is likely to be email.

Currently, we utilize direct mail, and mass email through Constant Contact. Gift officers will call and text individuals, but there is no mass system to do this. ESU is interested in learning about different channels available through a new CRM. If that requires a partner integration to accomplish, that should be stated clearly.

The university utilizes a chatbot and its library focuses on prospective and current students. There is interest in utilizing this technology to address user questions.

Email metrics are stored and available in Constant Contact and ThankView. Engagement metrics are evaluated for each communication type (e.g. newsletters, fundraising appeals, event invitations, etc.) Contributions tied to communications, whether by email or direct mail, are also tracked and evaluated.

Ideally, all metrics and results are available from within the CRM.

ESU Advancement Office communications include email, direct mail, phone, social media (texting desired). Communication plan purposes would include fundraising campaigns, event invitations, newsletters.

Not in the Office of Advancement. We work with the university office of communication and marketing to execute some campaigns.

We are sending approximately 8-12 email communications per month (75,000 - 150,000 sends).

There are approximately 200,000 active email addresses in our CRM.

Constituent Management

Items that are relevant to grant administration include grant funder/organization contact information including associated employees and titles, email and phone numbers; grant deadlines and timelines; background information about the funder and the grant opportunities; proposal information including attachments, planned ask amount, actual ask amount, funding result and amount; task associated with proposal and follow-up reporting. This should be visible on the constituent record via a dashboard.

Examples include Title, suffix, formal name, (Mr. Jonathan Smith, Ph.D.) nickname (Jon), casual name (Jonathan Smith), recognition name (anonymous), and in the case of a spouse, joint formal names (Mr. And Mrs. Jonathan Smith, Ph.D.), joint casual (Jonathan and Samantha), joint nickname (Jon and Sam).

We would like to have the ability to monitor user activity, and we will need to monitor system event history.

This functionality would be of interest if the vendor solution includes it.

Address validation would follow USPS standards. Addresses are currently updated via National Change of Address processing through our mail center.

We are required to do updates quarterly.

Perpetually, with a status and end date to indicate a former address.

The CRM should have the ability to capture known employees at an organization with their title, email, address and phone number, and a record of communication between the university and organization.

While ESU does not have many constituents with a seasonal address on record, we will need to maintain such addresses with effective dates. Direct mail communications need to be sent to the correct address on any given date.

A default preferred address may be set to Home, but this can be changed if a different address type is identified by the constituent.

Example documents include: Gift agreements, grant proposals, research documents, scholarship documentation. Most are PDFs that are 1-10 pages in length. Volume is typically 50-100 attachments added per month.

ESU student/alumni education data is stored and maintained in the university ERP, Banner. Alumni education data is also provisioned into our current Advancement/Alumni CRM.

Yes. Examples include the name of the club, leadership position, volunteer position, location/office associated with role, and associated dates of involvement.

This is a mandatory specification.

An example includes a record for an alumnus who serves on the university’s board of directors, and formerly chaired a capital campaign. We have a defined hierarchy in place.

This is an area of interest, but the authentication requirement has been a concern in the past. The vendor is welcome to share such functionality provided by the CRM if included.

The majority of records are alumni, but not exclusively.

Contribution Management

We would prefer Touchnet/Touchnet Marketplace if possible, but are open to other platforms.

This is a mandatory specification. Examples include alumni and spouses who give jointly, and alumni who give through family foundations. Hard (legal) credit and soft (recognition) credit must be automatically associated for these giving groups.

As an example, an annual campaign tree would include an overarching fiscal year campaign umbrella with multiple campaigns and sub-campaigns under it (e.g. Fiscal Year 2024->Annual Fund->Direct Mail->Spring Appeal AND Fall Appeal). Contributions associated with the Spring Appeal would roll up to Direct Mail, Annual Fund, and Fiscal Year 2024.

This is a mandatory specification. We would prefer Touchnet/Touchnet Marketplace if possible, but are open to other platforms.

This is a mandatory specification. A phonathon pledge may require a standard payment schedule (e.g. one payment due by end of fiscal year), while a multi-year major gift commitment will require a custom payment schedule defined by the donor. The CRM should accommodate the ability to add different payment schedules on pledges.

We are currently using Touchnet for payment processing of contributions and event registrations.

At this time, we would be interested in a .csv file link to transfer to Finance. A GL interface with a future financial management platform would be of interest as well.

Data Management

Yes, this tracking is important to our business needs.

We are not currently using analytics tools. This is an area of interest for ESU.

If two records are identified as possible duplicates by the system, once reviewed and determined not to be duplicates, the user should be able to flag the two records as non-duplicates so they will not need to be reviewed again in the future.

Yes

This question is too vague and without context to address.

Events Management

Most common payment types are check and credit card. On-site payments are accepted via a dedicated online event registration form.

Two

The Office of Advancement hosts 15-25 events of 12-100 people annually.

Approximately 600

Twelve

There are 20,000 event registration records total. 300 of those are paid event registrations.

Yes, there are approximately 1,000 events that will need to be migrated with all associated data.

Fundraising

Examples include a list or dashboard that provides summary information such as last gift amount, last gift date, first gift amount, first gift date, gift type, total giving amount, outstanding pledge amount, gift designations, bequest intention, and donor status such as LYBUNT, SYBUNT, or lapsed. Priority information should be initially visible upon opening a constituent record while more detailed information can be searched.

SUNY Empire currently uses Microsoft SharePoint and Teams for collaboration purposes. The vendor is welcome to share additional resources provided by the CRM if included.

Prospect Management

Currently, we utilize direct mail and email through Constant Contact. Gift officers will call and text individuals, but there is no mass system to do this. ESU is interested in learning about different channels available through a new CRM. If that requires a partner integration to accomplish, that should be stated clearly.

Yes

There is a preference for this type of technology.

No.

The majority of our alumni donors contribute annually, except for sustaining donors who typically give monthly.

There is some data that is currently stored in external vendor platforms. We would expect to import it into the CRM solution when batch update projects are completed (e.g. employment data, wealth and ratings, etc.).

Wealth screen data (i.e. major giving, planned giving, scores and ratings) is stored in the CRM. Please indicate if your organization has a custom wealth screen tool integrated with the CRM to provide easy access to wealth data on constituents.

The purpose is to segment donors by giving, region, constituency etc. to predict future giving behavior to determine appropriate solicitation and stewardship. ESU currently utilizes Research Point.

We are using Ellucian CRM Advance, Constant Contact and ThankView.

We have not formally tracked alumni engagement rates for a number of years, but we would plan to do so from within the new CRM.

We process approximately 5,000 contribution transactions annually. This includes gifts, pledge payments, matching gifts, bequest payments, pledges and bequest expectancies. Annual fundraising totals have ranged from $700K to $2.9M in recent fiscal years.

The Advancement Office operations was without a prospect researcher for four years and subsequently we are seeing an increase in lapsed donors and a stagnation in the donor life cycle. We have filled the position and are using a recent wealth screen to build a donor pipeline and identify new leads.

The average alumni gift is around $200.

Reports and Analytics

Constituency is defined by an individual’s relationship or affiliation to the university (e.g. Alumni, Current Board Member, Retired Employee). Reports on giving to the university by constituent type should be available in the CRM.

Technical

Yes, we expect data encryption at rest.

None known at this time.

Every category listed in the TSRD is important for SUNY Empire to be fully effective in engaging our constituents.

SUNY Empire is moving toward using Ellucian Ethos for a lot of our API’s/integrations. That would be preferred but we can work with others if necessary.

ITS will work on integration with other systems. We want to use Ethos to integrate if possible but can work with flat files and other RESTful APIs.

We would like to use Ethos but can work with flat files and other RESTful APIs.

We only support the integration of data from Banner 9 to Advancement. Our CRM is hosted by the vendor, so we don’t support the technology of the tool. We have 2 people that work on the integration pieces.

Payment gateway

We would like to use Ethos integration.

Volunteer

The vendor is welcome to share information about functionality provided by the CRM if it is part of the system.

The majority of records are alumni, but not exclusively.

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Request for Proposal ESU-24-01

Office of Advancement CRM

Questions and Answers Page

General

Regarding TSRD responses, does the University expect responses in this document? Or does the University prefer responses in a formal proposal with reference to locations in the TSRD document?

Is it possible for us to access the existing CRM solution?

On page 7 of the RFP document, at the bottom of Section 4.1, it states “In response to this section complete and submit Attachment 6, Bidder Qualifications Submission Form.” We do not see an Attachment 6 as part of any of the bid documents. Please advise.

From a campus perspective which CRM solutions are currently licensed/deployed (i.e. Salesforce, MS Dynamics, etc.)?

Will this project be led by Advancement, Central IT, both, other? If multiple, which office will be responsible for what role?

Do you currently have resources who know Salesforce? If so, do they have any Salesforce certification and what capacity will they be involved in the project?

Do you anticipate having resources trained in Salesforce before or during the project to perform data loading and Salesforce administration?

What CRM system do you currently use?

Do the HECVAT and VPAT files need to be printed, or can we just submit electronic versions of these files on the flash drive? The HECVAT is in Excel format and is difficult to print in a way that is easy to read.

Where is "Attachment 6, Bidder Qualifications Submission Form"?

Other than contractual, are there any applications that cannot be retired for any particular reason?

When do you hope to retire the current solution?

Does ESU intend to negotiate and execute a direct Master Services Agreement with the selected vendor?

If a direct Master Services Agreement is not preferred or not possible given NYS requirements, what public contract vehicle does ESU prefer (e.g. OGS, GSA)?

Will ESU consider a 5-year agreement in exchange for additional discounting?

Will funding for the implementation and/or annual license cost come from the state or ESU’s private foundation?

Re. exhibit C, #15 - Will ESU accept bids from multiple vendors who are proposing to use the same technology platform as the foundational CRM solution?

Will ESU sign multiple contracts with vendors to deliver the proposed solution (eg. contract with the implementation vendor vs contract with the technology vendor)?

In the Request for Proposal 7.3.2.Service Levels (Applicable to Cloud Based, Remotely Hosted or Technology as A Service Contracts), ESU refers to an SLA in Exhibit D. There is an SLA listed as Exhibit E, but not D. Is Exhibit E the SLA ESU would like vendors to review, or is there another copy?

What is the annual budget for the licensing of this solution?

Will the University accept DocuSign (or reasonable digital facsimile) signatures for this response?

If we are submitting a joint response, do both vendors need to sign a single Attachment 5 form? Or do we sign and submit two separate forms?

Is the Attachment 5 form required as a joint proposer, if we are not using subcontractors?

What are the specific KPIs that ESU would like to impact with a new solution?

General, How many users will require access to the CRM system?

What is your current donor management solution/CRM?

Are there any institutional initiatives (e.g. Capital Campaign, Student System Replacement, etc.) that could affect resource availability?

Is ESU expecting vendors to submit any redlines or adjustments to the included General Contract Terms and Conditions in Exhibit B for ESU’s consideration as a part of this RFP response?

We have a partnership with a reputed organization that has experience in the Higher Ed space and we’d like to partner with them. Is it acceptable?

Can you please provide a high-level overview of your Advancement Office structure and how Central IT and Advancement work together?

What are the minimum functions that need to be in place for go-live (e.g., full legacy system replacement, alumni portal replacement, etc.)?

What are the top 3-5 bottlenecks or business challenges that ESU would like to address? How much time does each process currently take?

What is the impact on your team both short and long term by not addressing these challenges?

Administration

Administration-01, Do you have a defined hierarchy of user permission within your organization?

Administration-02, Are there specific field data or screens that required restrict access?

Administration-04, Do you have define roles or user groups for which these restrictions should apply?

Administration-05, Are there specific FERPA requirements that require to address within D365 CRM?

What is the current tech stack in ESU Advancement and when does each contract expire? Could you please provide a list of the application, brief description of use and contract expiration.

Please describe your advancement operation from a personnel/user standpoint. Number current CRM users, and their roles? (i.e Development Officers, Gift Processors, Event Coordinators, System Administrators, etc.)

Please identify which solutions you are using for the following: *Online Donations *Online Event Management/Registration *Email Marketing/Outreach

If you are using an Alumni/Donor Engagement solution how is data being shared today with the current donor management solution/CRM?

Administration-06, What are different sources where alumni data resides?

Is it possible to provide a breakdown of user counts by role (e.g. Advancement Services/Operations, Gift Officers, etc.)?

Administration-03, Do we have any criteria to categorize constituents for visibility? Specific constituents (accounts, contacts)?

Communication Management

Communication Management-02, What level of technical expertise do end user typically have?

Approximately how many mailable contacts does ESU have in its current alumni/constituent database?

Does ESU have a need to partition email communications by department? (e.g. alumni relations vs advancement operations) If so, how many departments within ECU Advancement will require their own partitioned solution for building and sending email?

Do you use any personalization in your communications currently? Can you provide examples of your desired personalization state?

Do you currently have the ability to automate drip/nurture campaigns? Can you provide an example?

Communication Management-04, Are there templates or formats that can be incorporated with the required needs?

Communication Management-06, Are there any requirements for tracking changes in constituent communication preferences over time? What are the criteria for constituent preference setup?

Communication Management-07, What specific actions or responses from constituents Empire team want to trigger dynamic communication? What communication channel do Empire teams want to leverage (preferred channel?)

Which communication channels does ESU intend to leverage with the selected solution? E.g. email, mobile, digital advertising, web personalization/tracking, direct mail, phone.

Does ESU have a need or preference for leveraging a chatbot to engage with website visitors?

How are you currently measuring the success of your email campaigns and other communication channels? Can you describe your ideal future state?

Communication Management-01, What communication is currently in use (Email, phone, social media)? What types of communication plans want us to develop? (e.g: fundraising campaigns, alumni event announcements, etc) Please specify.

Are you currently using a marketing automation solution (i.e. Hubspot)?

How many email messages are you sending on a monthly basis?

How many active email addresses do you currently have in your constituent database?

Constituent Management

Constituent Management- 15, Can we have financial metrics or grant-related data points that need to be tracked? or how do you want to track all these information?

Constituent Management- 17, Can you provide some examples of the different name formats you envision for recognition, mailing, etc.?

Does ESU have a need or preference to monitor user activity and event history?

Does ESU have a need or preference to find sensitive data according to ESUs specific preferences that might have been accidentally logged, even if entered in long text fields (eg. credit card, bank account, and social security numbers)?

Constituent Management- 01, What are the requirements or standards for address validation that need to be met? What is the current process for handling incorrect addresses?

Constituent Management- 02, How frequently does Sunny Empire plan to update constituent addresses using NCOA data (e.g., monthly, quarterly, annually)? How Sunny Empire currently using this service?

Constituent Management- 03, Is there a specific retention period for storing prior address?

Constituent Management- 04, What specific contact details are most important for you to track (phone number, email, department)?

Constituent Management- 05, Do we have any specific requirements or use cases for tracking seasonal addresses? How many seasonal addresses does Sunny Empire typically manage per constituent on average?

Constituent Management- 06, How to set overall preference for constituent address

Constituent Management- 10, What is the typical volume and size of documents you expect to attach to constituent records?

Constituent Management- 11, Do you have any existing systems that store education data?

Constituent Management- 12, Do we have specific types of clubs or activities that need to be tracked on the Constituent record? What level of detail do we need to track for each club/activity participation (more clarification required)?

Constituent Management- 13, We need more clarification required for this requirement. Please specify the use case or an example in this regard.