Name: From Paper to the Cloud: USC Foundations’ Journey to Digital Transformation
Uploaded: 2025-07-16T18:31:33.616Z
Duration: 46 min 36 s
Description: From Paper to the Cloud: USC Foundations’ Journey to Digital Transformation

Transcript for "From Paper to the Cloud: USC Foundations’ Journey to Digital Transformation": Hi, everybody. Welcome to today's webinar. I'm Sarah Curry. I'm part of the marketing team here at Blackbaud, and I'm gonna be your host today. I'm gonna go through a few housekeeping items before we get started. So on the right hand side of your screen, you should see the engagement panel with all of our engagement tools for today's webinar. We use a platform at Blackbaud called Goldcast to broadcast webinars. So you should be able to see me on your screen, and our speaker will join us in just a few minutes. You should be able to hear us through your computer's audio system. On the right hand side of your screen, you should see that engagement tools panel that I mentioned. I see a number of you already, chatting in, so thank you for doing that. You can use the chat throughout. You can send us messages there, talk to each other, just comment on what you're hearing from Wendi. A few times throughout the presentation, she will ask some questions. You can answer those there. If you have any formal questions for us that you wanna make sure we answer, you can either drop them in the chat or if you wanna make sure that we see them because sometimes the chat gets busy, you can use the q and a tab in that panel. It's on the far right side. You can also send messages directly to me or to your fellow attendees. If someone says something and you wanna ask a question, you can search for them there. And then in the docs tab, there are helpful resources. So at the top are the slides for today if you'd like to download that PDF. We don't have a ton because we're mainly gonna be talking through the case study, but, if you'd like to download that so you can take notes throughout or just so you have a record of kind of the key points of the conversation, you're welcome to download that. We also have a few upcoming webinars. So there'll be part two of the session we're discussing today in one week, so there's a link to sign up for that if you've not yet. I also have two links if you're interested in learning more about Financial Edge NXT and are not a current customer. We have links to live product tour for those coming up in the next couple of weeks. And I've also got links to two upcoming webinars. The first is warning signs your accounting office isn't efficient. So that's part of our ultimate CFO series. We're gonna go through that, at the end of the month. And then I have a link to explore the Blackbaud partner marketplace. Wendi gonna talk about a few of our fabulous partners today. And so if you'd like to learn more about what's available to you, you can go there to do that. Lastly, if you run into any streaming or connectivity issues, typically, the best trick is to refresh your browser. Just like many other computer issues, the the refresh tends to work best. You're also welcome to reach out to me if you have any any issues. Alright. I did wanna let everybody know that we do have a representative from our sales team on the line, Nate. Hi, Nate. Thanks for joining today. So if you have any questions about sales specific stuff, you'd like to sign up for a demo, you have a question about pricing, anything like that, Nate is your go to for that. And he is on the line. He can chat or message with you, and there's also a link to book a meeting with him if you're interested in that as well. Thanks, Nate. And then the last thing I will touch on before we get started, if you're a current customer and you have any questions for us or support or chat or anything like that, I've got a link here to that, to see you've got it handy. I do try to answer questions, and we have some product folks on the line. But sometimes we miss things, so would recommend using that chat. Alright. Let's get to the fun part. So I am joined today, by Wendi Brazell, one of our consulting wonderful consultants, and she is going to share her story, in just a few minutes. I'll wait for her to come on the stage. Oh, yes. About about working with, USC Foundations and her long experience moving them from paper to the cloud. So I will go ahead and hand it over to her to introduce herself and get going. Thanks for joining us today, Wendi. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I thought that first off, I could just introduce myself, give you a brief background of, what I've done in the nonprofit sector. Just as, like, an overarching note, I am a graduate of University of South Carolina, and I started at the foundation as a student employee when I'm still attending school there. So this was a long and gradual process of my decade of time that I worked at USC Foundations. But just to get to know me a little better, I love art. I love film photography. So prior to getting involved in the nonprofit sector, I worked at Ritz Camera up until they declared bankruptcy back in the day. That was my, big job out out of high school. I have a couple cats and I have a dog who I'm really hoping will not make his presence known on the, during the webinar. I put a note on the door to please don't knock, so hopefully, he will behave himself. But if you do hear some barking, that is Kevin, my corgi mix. So, yeah. So just as, like, a brief overview of what we're gonna go into depth on today, I started at USC Foundations in 02/2011, and I worked with them through so many different stages of, like, digital transformation, over the years. And I'm gonna cover what I started as as a student employee and then all of the different implementations that we took on, and how we brought them into the the modern digital age. So as a brief overview of USC, so University of South Carolina Foundations is a very complex, structure in their Blackbaud environment. They run multiple entities out of their same FE environment. So there is the USC Educational Foundation, which handles a lot more of the, donor controlled gifts, things like, scholarships, you know, chairs, things like that. And then there's the Development Foundation who controls a lot more of the, like, properties and, building endeavors that are happening around the university at any time. At the time that I left the USC Foundations, they were at nearly 7,000 projects in their system. Between the foundation and the university together, their endowment was about $1,000,000,000. And most importantly, the staff of the USC Foundations was actually quite small. So all of these upgrades and digital transformations we brought on, we're trying to make our small staff, more efficient so that they were able to control everything without it just burning through their entire day on, you know, menial tasks like reporting, which that will be toward the end of this. So the steps that we went through, when I started in 02/2011, they have been in FE for about ten years at that point. Everything was still database view. We have not gone to the cloud. We had an on premises, server. And so everything was in house. And then there was a big push for us to go paperless. We were trying to get rid of the old file room and trying to make things a little easier to track and find. And that led us into looking into workflows, ways to make, things like accounts payable more efficient, things like the gathering signatures on a, gift agreement for their different funds. And then also making the, availability of reports a little easier for all of the end users on the different campuses. USC has multiple campuses throughout the state. And just making everything a little bit more transparent and easy to follow was the end goal. So the massive undertaking of scanning was where I came in as a student employee. And I thought it would be interesting to know how many of you guys have predominantly paper records still in your organization. When I was a student employee, I can remember I was held up in a cube where we had our board table, and I would have files strewn all across this long table taking up all of the space so that I could sort through project documentation that went back to, like, the nineteen sixties. And I was organizing things, getting things scanned, and getting them uploaded into the media tab of our FE environment, as well as our original EDM. So it was a it was a big undertaking. And then it wasn't just a project documentation, which was my forte. We also had a couple of other students who were actively every week scanning in, our check requests for accounts payable, the journal entry backups. It was a lot of paper. And so as we were scanning things, we were getting it boxed up to send to Iron Mountain. And, we put our retention policy in place so that we could try to, you know, not keep anything that we didn't have to. But it's, you know, it was a long process of getting us off of paper. Eventually, we were able to box up the entire, file room and get things held in Iron Mountain. That way, if we did need those paper documents, those old retro records, we could always call them back in. We could, go through what we needed and then we'd send them back to Iron Mountain once we were done with them. But what was really helpful is being able to have, you know, access to those if we needed it. But mostly just a quick way to pull something up digitally and share it with another user was critical. So that was where I initially came in, was scanning all of those paper documents. I see a lot of you have gone paperless, but, you know, back in 2011, I think a lot of us were still on paper. So, I'm glad to see that we've made a big push to get, paperless. That it just makes everybody's life a little easier, especially during audit when you need to find something quickly. So when we went paperless, we, found Paper Save, and that was a big transition for us. So we got everything uploaded into Paper Save, and it was primarily document storage for us initially. We were just, storing all of our project documentation. We had invoice documentation, journal entry documentation, and it was a nice clean way for us to have everything organized, really easy to sort through, and it links to FE, which was super important. So we could go directly from our financial edge environment straight into Paper Save. And then once, FE NXT came around, they had a window right on the, project record or journal entry record so you can see your Papersave documents within FE without having to leave and go to the Papersave. So that was, a critical piece for why we chose them. But then what Papersave gave us was an opportunity to take not just the document storage part paperless, but the actual workflows, especially for accounts payable. So earlier, I mentioned that USC Foundations, they're very complex, and that extended to their accounts payable. So in their FE environment, since they're managing these multiple foundations in one place, they have certain vendor IDs or educational foundation vendors, and certain vendor IDs are development foundation vendors. Each one of those might have different rules about who needs to review them when they go through. The same one for projects. There were certain project IDs that were educational, certain that were development. And so each one of those, invoice submissions that we had come through our AP might have to go to a different person. And Paper Save was a great, solution for us there so that we were able to have project level permissions on and route things in very specific ways based off of the amount, the vendor that was selected, and the project that was selected. And so they gave us a way to make those approvals way more streamlined. Before that, we had a courier that was running around campus with folders full of papers to gather signatures for AP and bring it back. So this was a way for us to send those things digitally directly to the person that needed to prove approve them. They could leave any comments that they wanted, and it would stay in the audit history for that item. So it was a really good way for us to gather all of those details. Like, if they had a question about a a project ID that was selected or a vendor change that they wanted to make, All of that was saved on the original request. And you could see down to the second when somebody had reviewed something and approved it. So it was a fantastic improvement for us for audit, which I mentioned that it has a very transparent audit history. You can see who, reviewed it when and what their comments were, and it moves from the workflow into document storage with that history intact. The, cross campuses was a big deal as well. We were able to let our campuses that were away from Columbia, which is where the main University of South Carolina campus was, also get into the AP process without having to involve sending paper documents to them or sending things via email. They were able to just log in to Paper Save, review their submissions, approve it, move it on. And the integration with FE NXT, again, was so so amazing. It already has all of the metadata for the invoice before they even make the approvals. I'm sorry. Not before they make the approvals. After they make the approvals, it has that metadata for the invoice already on there. So we know exactly which invoice ID it was, the payment date, all of that detail moved from FE straight into Paper Save along with that invoice documentation. And it was just such a, big deal for us to have that in the aftermath of the pandemic. When we all got sent to work remote, that was when we were right in the middle of this implementation. And if it had been fully completed, I think everything would have gone extremely smoothly. But, it was still a good start for us for being able to sell documentations, and that push to make everything cloud based was a, it was a big deal for us getting this finalized, pushing it through, and getting it over the finish line. So that implementation was huge for us, especially moving from fully paper to digital. The next thing that we ran into after we had implemented the AP workflow was a way for gathering vendor information. So they were doing a big push to try to get everybody off of paper checks, and we wanted to make our vendors, convert over to being paid by electronic funds transfer, so through ACH. And we needed a good secure way to gather up banking details. We didn't want that to be emailed to anybody or put in a way where somebody's, PBI was out there where it could be briefed in any way. And the solution that we found at the time was Jotform. So University of South Carolina, foundations, they got the Jotform enterprise, solution. And that allowed them to have a database on the backside where they could look through previous submissions, but it was fully encrypted. If the form came through the emails that our vendor maintenance professionals, she would, see the encrypted emails until she put the encryption key in place, and that would keep everything nice and secure. If you were to go log in to the backside of our job form and then not put that key in place, the whole spreadsheet would be encrypted. So it was a really good way for it to keep everything nice and secure. So we were able to gather their, banking details and their w nines. And so that was all stored in one place, and then we were able to take those and move them into FE so that we could create our new vendors, as EFP vendors right from the start so that they were set up to be paid, electronically. I believe, after speaking to the CFO that they are now looking into a new option, option, with their vendor maintenance that might give them this, ability to feed this information directly into FE, which that was a big push for Paper Safe for us to feed those invoice documents and those approvals directly into FE without us having to manually key it in. So if they are able to make that final step to get the vendor maintenance directly into their Financial Edge, then they won't have to manually key that as well. And that would be another big step for making everything nice and automated and streamlined. So another thing that we ran into with, the USC Foundations is they have a massive user base. So across multiple campuses, there were hundreds of users. Each one might only need to see one project. They might need to see a whole department or they might need to see part of a department but not the other part of a department. And so we needed a good way to give them access to the reports that they needed to be able to see and make it so that our team wasn't having to run those reports manually. So Reporting Express was our solution there. And one thing that was great about Reporting Express is we didn't have to make a view only user for all of those people. So we didn't have hundreds of cross campus users in our FE environment. We were able to keep them external from that in Reporting Express. And so we had reports that ran every single day and they would be at different levels. So there would be project level, department level, college level, or division if that's your terminology. And those would be viewable by the people that we set up with those permissions and it would automatically disseminate to them. So they would log in to the portal. They could pull up their reports. They would only see the reports they had permission to. They could also sign up to have those reports delivered to them, straight into their email inbox that they wanted to. And it was a really good way to just eliminate the amount of time that our staff was having to hop off of what they were doing to run a report for somebody and email it back. So it was it was a good streamlining tool for that. But just the amount of time saved was astronomical. Like, once we had that in place, I didn't realize how much of my work day was spent running reports for people. So I will say there I was playing around with Effie recently, and it looks like there's report scheduler now, which I think would be really good for a smaller institution. This was definitely a a solution we needed for the hundreds of user situation. So, but Reporting Express also gave us the opportunity to make custom reports, which was a really big deal for us. We were able to take some AP information. We could pull, like, a mini income statement and all of the custom fields or attributes from our project and consolidate that into one single report. So it was like a one stop shop for all of our, users. They could log in and they would see all of their project details and, like, the recent revenues, recent recent expenses, a mini check register for the single project. And they were also able to see who their approvers were for the, Paper Save workflow. So they would see on that particular project, if an expense came through, this is the person that's gonna sign off on it. So it was a really good just snapshot of their projects and keep everybody informed about everything that was going on, at any given time. And that way, they could see those balances day to day. Another thing that I forgot to mention at the beginning is that, the foundations uses transcode so that they can run, simultaneous balances across their, their principal balances for their endowments, the reserved earnings, and the spendable. And because of Reporting Express, we're actually able to grab that, break that apart, and give them a day to day look at what they're available to spend balances in those projects. So that they should, they can see the full value of the endowment and their principal balance, but they can also see how much they currently have to spend on scholarships, on chairs, anything that, whatever the donor originally intended. And we always try to keep that information clear for the, users as well. The another great integration with Reporting Express was that it not only integrated with FE NXT, but it integrated with Paper Save. So we were able to give all of those users across the various campuses one place to go where they could see their project documentation and the reports all in one place. And we didn't have to make tons of users in our Paper Save environment or in FE NXT. So it was just a really nice place to send everybody to one spot, and they could open, project documentation directly in their reporting express portal so they could see the original gift agreement, any memos from the donors. So if they ever had any question about what the purpose of those funds were, they can go and find that immediately in the same place that they can see their current balances. So as we did this digital transformation, it definitely was constantly evolving. And that was something that I don't know if we ever could have anticipated, but it's something to bear in mind if you're making up, a jump from fully paper to fully digital. Is what is your end goal here? And I think with USC Foundations, our biggest end goal was trying to make everything a little bit more time efficient, make everything a little bit more transparent, and also just make it available. So any of those users at any time, they could log in to one place. They could get all of the information they need, and it would hopefully eliminate the amount of unnecessary questions coming to the foundations, but also just make them feel like they could give the information they need at any time. So they were able to see those up to date balances, the recent expenses. They could see invoice documentation in a check register that we were able to build for them so that they could see all of the previous accounts payable information at a glance for a single project. And it just made everything a little bit more interactive for everyone. And like I said earlier, because of the pandemic, it made it very obvious that we needed a cloud based option. Something that people could access if they were working remote. Because even when we came back from, you know, being shut down, a lot of our offices, around campuses stayed remote or they went into more of a hybrid situation. And so sometimes people would be working in different places. It also was really important for our, directors of development when they were out doing donor cultivation that they could pull up things that they needed really quick. If they wanted to show a donor how their previous endowments were doing on fly, they could pull everything up mobilely. And it just made everything so much more accessible. And it it didn't I didn't realize how tied down we were to the paper methods before that. Another very big important thing that I touched on very briefly is that we were audit ready, and that was huge. Just having everything already scanned, the auditors would come into our office each year, and we would give them access to the Paper Save environment, and they were able to pull the documents they needed. And they could look through those, just they would do their spot checks, find what they needed. They also had reports that were ready for them as, needed. So we were able to pull, like, the general ledger reports for them. Any of those financial statements that they needed for their audit were already ready by the time that they came in, and then we were able to just do cleanup options. So I as we got more and more integrated and automated, it was like every year, audit seemed like it went a little bit smoother, which was just so nice. We know because audit is very trying. So that, again, saved on man hours. Just the amount of time that we spent running around looking for things, like, if something wasn't in the file cabinet, was it on someone's desk? So it just made it a lot easier to find what we were looking for. And almost always, everything was there. And it was just so nice that it was, just so much easier for everybody to find what they needed. And the automation, like I said earlier, just saves so many man hours because it seems like every time you have to stop what you're doing to do a separate task, it just takes you a while to get back into the into the group when you switch back to what you were doing. And so that made that whole process, like, the day to day functions, just operations move more smoothly. And I think that was just a huge turning point in the in the office was just making sure that all of the systems were moving very smoothly. Being able to help people if they needed help with the systems was what my job was. But just making sure everybody was set up. They could get in. They could see what they needed. And then once the initial setup was set, it was kind of hands off. And it was great. They we only had to do any sort of additional, setup or training when there was, turnover. So if there was a new staff member, we had to train them. But other than that, it just made everything move so much smoother. I will say the digital landscape is ever evolving. So there's always gonna be new integrations that might need to be done. They were looking at integrating their credit cards with Blackbaud. They were doing a, a push, like I mentioned, to make a vendor entry straight into Blackbaud. They also had, brought on a I think it was called incognito forms as a way for them to gather donor signatures on the actual gift agreements in the first place and route those, you know, around so that they could get signed by advancement and signed by the foundations. And then they were put right where they needed to be so that we had that, documentation on place as well. And that's it's it's constantly changing. And every now and then, they'll come back and have a a new idea for some new automation or a new digitalization that could be done just to make everything run smoother. And so I think as long as you have a good end goal in mind about, like, what you want to do, it's gonna make everything, you know, it'll it'll come together is what I'm saying. I don't want digital transformation to seem like it's too, overwhelming because it does change constantly, but you can always tweak things. You can always make things work a little better. And so I just wanted to kinda give an overview. And I know I talk a little fast, and I do apologize for that. So I got through this a little faster than I meant to, but I feel like that gives us more time for q and a because I'd love to answer some specific questions if you guys had any. Anything about your, organization that you might think this would be a good solution for you, I'm happy to elaborate on anything. And next week, I did wanna mention that the webinar on the twenty third, I'll be going into more depth about, like, the individual FE, pieces that were crucial for this process. So, like, the way that the USC Foundations use trans codes or custom fields and how that allows you to make the most out of your FE environment and just taking advantage of all of those pieces that you already have at your disposal. But, yeah. So, Sarah, sorry. I didn't mean to rush through that so quickly, but I'm happy to open it up to a q and a a little early, if that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. You're fine. So, yeah, please feel free to drop questions, in the chat. And like Wendi said, go ahead and ask if you have a specific question, use case you're thinking of. We'll try and answer. And if we're not able to, then we'll get we'll get back to you. I do wanna ask Wendi because in all of our conversations about this, I've never asked you. Did y'all run into any change management issues in terms of you know, you made a lot of changes, but it seems like you did them gradually. Like, how was that with staff and the various teams across campus? So I will say the, we did start to document things a little differently when, as we brought on these different, solutions. So we let's see. I'd I'm totally spacing on the name of the, it was a, like, a Kanban board sort of situation that we had brought on to keep track of, like, change requests that have come through. And that way, we would also have a trail of, like, internal requests that had come through. So, like, let's say the CFO decides that there's a new report we need, I would make a, note on that board so that we could see who requested it, what steps were done to implement that, and keep track of, like, the time that it took to get it done. So we did have to make some changes to the way that we handle things. Because before that, you know, it was a lot of just walking over to somebody's office knocking and saying, like, hey. Can you do this? And we Yes. Yes. A digital record of those sorts of things to go along with everything else. But, yeah, that was the that was the main thing. We didn't run into too much with, the university itself because USC Foundations was a completely separate entity from, the university. So that kind of gave us a little bit more autonomy to make the changes that we needed to, and then we just kind of let, that USC in the loop. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Let's see. So this one is from Kirsten. How many third party vendors are you using? And it sounds like that's changed over time, but Yeah. I see. I see right now. So, when I was still at the foundation, so this was early twenty twenty four, we mainly had, FE NXT, Paper Save, which is a Pearsoft product, Reporting Express. And then we were using, JotForms and, that ticketing system that I mentioned for keeping track of our change requests. Since then, they are looking for a solution to replace JotForms. So that would still give us another one unless they find a way to use one of their existing vendors for this. Previously, the way that these part third parties integrate with, Blackbaud is through the Sky API. And depending on which calls are available on the API would depend on what you can accomplish with those integrations. And one of the places, for obvious reasons, that you can't really access through the API is banking information on a vendor or their social. So we needed a a way to gather that, but that's one of the things they're looking to replace. We did try to make the most of the third parties that we already had where we could. So, for example, one thing that I remember is we had some redacted, project documentation where the donor wanted to stay anonymous, but we needed a record of the original documentation as well. Paper Safe had a section for documentation that wasn't, linked to FE. So it was kind of just like its own separate file cabinet. And so we were able to use that instead of having to, use a different storage place or but, we had a big shared drive that we used to store everything on. So it was a way for us to keep that still in paper safe so that the internal staff could access it, but nobody else would be able to see it. And Reporting Express was another, big, ever changing partner for us. So we were constantly coming to them with new ideas. One of the last big integrations I did with them before I left was, previously, we had been using, it was Mail O Matic, was an integration that was on, like, the old database view, FE, that would notify our, EFT vendors when they received the payment. And we started to have some issues with that. It was, like, removing our logo and just doing some weird stuff that we couldn't control. And so through reporting express, we built a, special report that would talk about, like, all of the AP payments that were made that week. You could see the the payment number, so whether it was a check or an EFT. And then those EFT vendors, it would gather their, emails off of their vendor record. It would take all of the details of their, payment. So which invoice numbers were involved, the invoice, amounts, and send them a just really nice formatted. It had all of our logos and colors on it, and, it came from the USC email address, which was great. So they would get that nice notification from, reporting express that would tell them that they have received the payment and for how much. So, we were always kind of trying to come up with new ways to take advantage of it. But I think we were using four to five at any given time. And the university, like I said, is separate, but they use CRM. So we were able to kind of, take Blackbaud and feed that into the foundation's FE environment. Okay. And that was one question, Shirley asked was, do you have experience with the integration of Raiser's Edge NXT and FE? So not Baby CRM, but, yeah, Razer's Edge. So not through, USC, but since I, have struck out on my own with the consulting company, I do have some experience with integrated users. So I've worked with a higher ed slash health care, foundation that does use Raiser's Edge and FE, And they have it integrated, so they're able to import those gifts straight over through the, the admin portal of RE. And I've worked with a couple of other customers that also have Raiser's Edge and, Financial Edge. Some of them have it integrated, and some of them have them as, like, two stand alone. So I guess it's kind of depending on your, use case. But I have, and I was gonna touch on that briefly in the webinar next week where I talk about the taking advantage of everything that FE can do. So if you are a Raiser's Edge user, I will be going into a little bit more detail about, that then. But since USC doesn't use Raiser's Edge, it'll include it here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shirley, if you have anything specific you wanna know, let us know. You can either message us or put it in the chat, and, we'll make sure you get that. Alright. And you you kinda touched on this, but Natalie asked if you know what made USC go with Paper Save versus another provider. So, originally, we were using a different EDM, and we ran into an issue where, something had gotten corrupted or there was a lost backup or something like that. And we lost months worth of, scanning. And, thankfully, like I mentioned, we had that huge shared drive. So when our, army of student employees was scanning things, they were putting it on that shared drive, and then dragging it from there into the documents bridge. So we still had a backup. And after that happened, we kind of got spooked a little bit on our previous EDM, and we went searching. We there was a lot of, demos that we sat through, and we originally went with Paper Save, because they did have, their documents were encrypted. So it was nice and secure because we did you know, we have vendor documentation and everything. And they also had that workflow, and it was still kind of, this was a long time ago. So this was probably 2016, 2017, that we started getting involved with the workflow with them. But that was a big deal for us just because we didn't have another solution for the AP that worked for that level of foundation just because there were so many if then statements that got involved. So, Paper Save was just a good fit for us, and it was something that we could grow with, as they were, changing. So, they were still, I I won't say they were small when we got involved with them, but they were still, you know, close knit enough that I had a chance to go to Miami to their headquarters to train with the man that had built it, when he doing the trainings for the workflow himself. So that was really nice too because it felt like you, you definitely had a voice, with them. And everybody I've worked with, at Paper Save when it was still just a stand alone and at PairSoft, they're all just so knowledgeable and really helpful. And they can you know, sometimes they'll they'll tell me if I'm getting a little ahead of myself with the ideas of how we could make things run better. But, in the, you know, majority of the time, they are very accommodating for all of our grand ideas and making things work. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Alright. Lisa asked, did you do a cost benefit analysis to get budget approval for the new systems? And and then a kind of a follow-up to that is what would you recommend in terms of selling that cost to the board when they're approving the budget? So I think I'd I wasn't, personally involved in the the financial side of it, but I was talking with our CFO, the the controller, the COO as well throughout this whole process. And anytime I had an idea, for something that I thought would be an improvement, I would go to them with the cost, and I would just just be like, this takes approximately this much time. You know, this is how much it would cost us to hire somebody to do this, but we could take advantage of it already in here. And I would provide them that information. But I think a big part of the cost analysis was just the fact that, you know, some of these integrations that we were able to take advantage of made it so that we didn't have to hire a new staff member. So even though it was a decent chunk of money upfront, it was still less than a whole salary was. So we were able to keep our small staff was a a big deal. And so I think that's a big point for selling things to the board is you can say, like, this is our current, you know, staff allotment, and this is how much capacity they have. This would alleviate some of their workload, but also give them more capacity to take on other projects for things that are upcoming. I think that's a big selling point. Mhmm. Yeah. Absolutely. This one's from Amy. How long did it take you and your colleagues to scan the previous year's documents? It took a it took a long time, but the USC Foundations was, founded in the sixties. And so some of these documents, you know, you're trying to sort through. I I don't, I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about, but they they had some of those documents where the onion paper stuff that where it was, like, so thin that it would, like, transfer. So, like, you're trying to scan those and the scanners would eat them. And thankfully, I think scanning would take a lot less time now because scanners have gotten better, so they don't Mhmm. Consume your documents when you're feeding them through. But, it it took a couple of years. Admittedly, a lot of our scanning was done by students, and so we were, working around their class schedule. After I became a full time employee at the foundation, eventually, I moved up into the, position of student manager. And so a lot of times, you know, I'm trying to work around their exam schedule or if they need to take the time off the study and things like that. So there wasn't a set easy to, calculate time frame, but I would say it took us probably about two or three years to scan the project documentation because that was the bulk of it. And, you know, we we have legal size folders, and they'd be, like, this thick, and there would be, like, three of them for a single endowment. So it was a lot of sorting, finding out what was actually worth keeping. And since the documents were so old, that they were from, like, early Internet ages, people would, like, print off emails and then put them in there, and you had to decipher if that was actually, like, important. So I think if you if you have a Mhmm. Theme paper file, that it's already been cleaned out and there's not a bunch of old post it notes and stuff in there. I think it would scan a lot faster. It was a it was a cleanup and an effort. Yeah. Yeah. That exploded. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. My first job was, digitizing or scanning, records for a pharmaceutical company, and we would just set a timer for twenty minutes and just go go in and just try to see how much you could knock out. But that that pile of paper is overwhelming when you first get started. Our original, document storage, it had an interesting way of scanning things where you had a, you would have to print a UPC. So we were actually wasting paper to go paperless, which, you know, there is. But you'd print a UPC and it would be, like, for the project and then the document type. And so you would put that, in the stack ahead of all of it. So, like, if I had project one, two, three, four, five and this is, reports. I would put any report behind that, and then I would put a new UPC when the document type changed. And I would get a huge stack and then start feeding it in there. So I was like, that was my method when I was a student. Just put the giant headphones on, make a big old stack, and then just start scanning it. That would be great. I think it was all good. Yeah. A little less burdens of what we get the project stuff done. It was just ongoing invoice screening after that. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Last question for now. So Curry asked, Paper Save and JotForm were great solutions for USC Foundations. What recommendations would you have for organizations evaluating systems to make sure we get the right solution for us? Like, questions you'd ask the vendor. Yeah. So I think one thing that I think is really important is, making sure that you are currently using what you have. So like, I mentioned earlier, there's a report scheduler within, FE NXT now. So, like, if you only have a couple of reports that just need to go to a few deans, that might be enough and then you wouldn't need another vendor. But if you have something that gets more complex, I think the thing that go into any discussion with a a vendor is, letting oh, sorry. My cat is on her scratcher right next to me. But, go into the vendor and let them know, like, we have this level of complexity. Is that something that you would be able to accommodate? And make sure that you know on the front end whether or not they can meet, that need. So, like, if you have really complex workflow or approval process, it's important to make sure that they can handle that. But if it's something that's really straightforward, FE might be able to handle it. So, yeah, I think it's, it kinda depends on how complex your situation is. But letting the vendor know upfront what you're hoping to get out of it is really important to make sure that they are a good fit. And, I would ask to get references. That's a big thing. So, like, we we did that. We, would ask other higher ed foundations that had used their product if we could get their contact info so we could talk to them. We also would have site visits from other higher eds where people would come to Columbia to see how we were making use of all of the, vendors that we were using and how it helped our workflow and process. And so I think, that sharing amongst all of the the nonprofits, that's really important because then you can see how other people are making use of it. It might give you an idea you never even thought of. Mhmm. Like, at USC Foundations, you know, we build our workflow to be really complex on the approval side. And then after I worked with USC Foundations, I had a chance to work with any USC Foundations. And they took Paper Save, and they made it really complex on the form side. So, like, when people would fill out the reimbursement form for, like, traveling for donors, it would, like, automatically calculate amounts that were allotted for mileage or per diem based off of the current, limits. They they have their AP policy added into the form so that it would, tell people if they exceeded a limit on, like, a a flight or something like that. So, yeah, there's a a lot you can learn from other, nonprofits as well. So if you need references, ask ask those vendors, like, if they have contacts for other, nonprofits they work with so you could see how they were making use of it. Yeah. That's great. And that's huge too to be able to flag you're going over ahead of time and not discovering that on the back end. Oh, yeah. I I I was gonna have some screenshots for that in the next, the next webinar going over how they made use of the, built in policy in Paper Save so that it's technical upfront. Like, nope. You can't do that. Yep. Okay. Well, perfect. That's a good segue. So, if you have not signed up for part two, you can do that at the second link in the docs tab. And, we're gonna go over a health care foundation, a cancer research organization, a university, and then she's got another few small examples from other organization types. So there'll be a little bit more of a mix of organization types, but it'll be similar conversation to today where we'll go through use cases and kinda dive into the nitty gritty and then take any questions that anybody has about how did you do that, have you thought about this, what was the thought process as you were making those decisions. So it should be a fun part two conversation. So please sign up for that if you haven't had a chance. Alright. Well, we'll wrap it up. So everybody has a few a few minutes before their next meeting or webinar. But, Wendi, thank you so much for doing this. This was really fun. Oh, thank you for having me. Yeah. Alright. Well, I hope everybody has a great rest of your day, and we'll see you next week. Thank you. Thanks. Bye.