Fund Services Survey Results - 1997

This page contains summaries and compilations of the Survey developed by and for the Fund Services listserv in 1997. The survey contains a great deal of pertinent information about Advancement Services at over 70 institutions. I am maintaining this more for historical interest than current value. More current information is available at the R I Arlington Advancement Services Survey Site.  Much of this same information is being captured in a series of surveys that summarize and display the data automatically.

Summary Information

Vendors Used - See which other institutions use a system that may interest you - a colleague to assist with a system like yours or with a system that you might be considering.

Vendor	Count
Datatel	13
BSR	11
Home-Grown	11
SCT & SCT/IA	8
Quodata	6
Blackbaud	5
JSI/Shy	4
Univ of Iowa/Ascend	2
UST/Iowa State	2
SRN	2
Abacus	2
Unknown	2
Other	6
Total	74

Institutions using Special Technologies or Techniques - View the detail to see who is using an approach that is of interest to you.

"Technology"	Count
Search Service	26
Scanning	7
Bar Coding	9
Lock Box	12
Predictive Dialers	5

Other comparisons of interest

	Bio Records - Databases ranged from 6,200 records to over 700,000 with 25% under 50,000 records and the top 25% having over 150,000 records on file.
	Gift Records - Of the institutions reporting, the number of Gifts processed last year ranged from 1,100 to 150,000. About 80% of the respondents reported under 30,000 gifts processed. The Total Gift Dollars ranged from under $1M to over $150M.
	Staff Sizes - Staff sizes ranged from 1 to 23. (There were two institutions reporting staff sizes of 25 and 28 - I think they may have meant total Advancement Staff.) The average staff size for respondents was nearly 8.
	Organization - The organization was named Advancement Services or Development Services in about 25% of the cases with a variety of other names. The head of the area was titled as Manager or Director for over 70% of the respondents. This area reports to a Vice President, Vice Chancellor, Executive Director or President in about 50% of the responding institutions.
	Standards - Respondents reported using Word Processing: 42 use Word and 31 use Word Perfect. Spreadsheets: 56 use Excel, 11 use Quattro, and 5 use Lotus 1-2-3. Planned Giving: 35 use PG-Calc, 15 use Crescendo, 3 use Paragon, several reported using multiple packages too.

Hope these facts, figures and factoids pique your interest to get copies of the surveys in various formats offered below. Thank you for participating. I welcome regular updates and new respondents.

Text File Updated 4/2/97