Name: What an Advisory+ Partnership Makes Possible: A customer conversation
Uploaded: 2026-04-14T18:31:05.118Z
Duration: 59 min 30 s
Description: What an Advisory+ Partnership Makes Possible: A customer conversation

Transcript for "What an Advisory+ Partnership Makes Possible: A customer conversation": But today's little bit of, framing is we're gonna be talking about our advisory plus services working together in concert with a a solution a Blackbaud solution and kind of how and what that can look like practically speaking. So to get us started here, I am going to stop sharing these slides so we can have a little better view of all the folks who are joining us here. And I think first, I'm gonna pass the ball to our very special guest, the wall himself, and then I'll, move on to the other Blackbaud folks who are on the line. So please take it away. Hi. I'm Loual Puliafito. I, work for the Jesuit East province. I've been in fundraising for over twenty years. I've been a Illuminate user for over a decade. I'm a very happy advisory plus user as well, and I have eight beautiful children. And I look forward to, talking with my friends as I leave, Kevin and Ray, today about Awesome. Thank you. And I will pass it. to Nyleva. Thanks, Loual. Thanks, Ray. Hello, everyone. My name is Nyleva Corley. I am the user experience lead on our Luminate online services team here at Blackbaud. And I also, have the pleasure of working with our advisory plus customers, and Lual is one of our wonderful customers for advisory plus. So happy to be here and chat more about what this program, can potentially do for you. Thanks, Ray. Beautiful. Thank you. And, Kevin, now you're up. Alright. Thanks, Ray. Hello, everyone. My name is Kevin Duckworth. I am, based in Indiana. I've been with, I've been working in Luminate for, just a little bit longer than Loual, about thirteen years. So, we're we're right on par there. But, yeah, I'm looking forward to having this discussion, talking about what Advisor Plus can do for all of you, and answer any questions that you have, along the way. Beautiful. Excellent. So to set the stage a little bit for our audience, like, today, this is not a product demonstration. Right? This is like a more like a candid look at, you know, what changes when an organization pairs their solution, in this case, Luminate, with a sort of outcomes driven advisory plus partnership? So that's kind of what we're gonna explore today. So we'll cover, you know, some of, like, basically how this works. Right? What was hard before? What did you focus on first? What changed? And maybe what can be helpful for all of you attending to hear about how you might be able to replicate some of this goodness for your own organization. So I think the first place for us to sort of dive in is a little bit of, like, context and level setting. So I'm gonna start, Loual, with you a bit. So maybe if you can give us the quick context. Right? Your mission of your of the organization, your digital fundraising and engagement goals, and and kinda what role Luminate plays and play. Right. So, you know, our mission is to advance the work of the Jesuits and their ministries by building a durable, faith rooted relationship with our benefactors. And digitally, our goal is to move supporters from their transactions to a meaningful engagement and long term commitment to the province. And Luminate has, you know, surely been a core part of how I have developed my advancement offices in the past over the past decade and, it's our core digital fundraising and engagement platform that sits on top of our razor's edge, and it's it's kind of also serving as a system of record for our emails, our donations, through our donation forms or event forms, and our activities from our supporters. K. So then what tell me what were the, like what was the friction points? Right? If if back before this started, with the advisory plus, engagement, if you could have waved a wand and you were looking to magically, create a success that was the problem you were trying to solve, what was tell me about that a little bit. Alright. I'm I'm gonna respond in two ways to this question. One is, Sir? you know, if I could look back to the new first having Luminate and to where I was, earlier, a year ago. So. I originally got Luminate a lot younger, a lot more time to play. I thought I could do it all. And I had a lot of questions. I got great answers from the the reps at the time, but really was not uncovering everything Luminate could do. And I didn't realize. that then. And about a year ago, being turned on to advisory plus, realizing I didn't have that same time to invest in Luminate anymore and needing to go from zero to 60 very quickly. Yes. There's team members around me that are are doing things in in Razor's Edge and helping with communications, But the real things I need to drive Luminate really got answered by bringing on advisory plus to work with, a team that wanted to understand, what the mission was and to make it come to life in ways that I already knew Luminate could do, but adding it to that extra level, not just being a regular donation form or what's the event strategy. Really working with a team that was going from zero to 60 with me, thinking about donor engagement, thinking about processes, and thinking about how to make a person not just be a one time supporter. So Mhmm. that's I would look at them both ways. It was really important to think outside of the box with Advisory Plus. I love it. So, somebody once, somebody much smarter than me once told me as it pertains to software that, and technology that people make change when the pain of same is greater than the pain of change. So what was the cost to the organization of not, you know, not making change? What were you concerned about losing out on potentially? Really, for specifically in the role I am here, and I guess in the previous roles, I always find Luminate to be our best tool for long term donor engagement with some drip marketing campaigns and to have, event forms and donation forms that work for today and work with Raiser's Edge. So, one of those pain points is, you know, there's all these third party products that are promising things, but I I never get to a point where I'm happy with how things go from that process into Raiser's Edge, and Luminate does that for me. But Mhmm. but I didn't have the team in place to build Illuminate I needed for this current role, and advisory plus was able to help me. You know, Kevin and I leave, strategize, make sure that we have the right donation levels on pages, making sure that the pages are changing per, registered user, helping with different event forms that fit the what the event is, not just the standard process of how to build an event through a Lumenade form. So those pain points of producing the product were eased with with the help of Nalipa and and Kevin. Excellent. Excellent. So it sounds like, basically, you know, bandwidth and scaling was the the scale tipping. Yeah. I didn't mean to double use that, but I think that that's right. So, well, I'm gonna I've been attacking you right off the rip. So I'm gonna move over to our friends here and ask them, a couple of questions then. So, and either Kevin, I leave. I'm not sure who wants to take this, so just jump in. But if you were to describe advisory plus to a customer who maybe just thinks, okay. Well, this is just training or this is just hours. Like, what is it really? What what is the difference? Yeah. I I can start us off. So we we had a really great conversation at the outset of our advisory plus project together with Louelle about our Luminate service team being an extension of Louelle's team. And Louelle just described, you know, that as well. We are a hands on team. We wanna, as Lou Al shared, strategize, brainstorm, be a sounding board, provide, consulting, but we also can go away and do things. So when Loual is focused on other areas, you know, we can be behind the scenes working on the donation form, working on email, you know, email, setup. So we really do like to see ourselves, as an extension, of Loual team so he can reach out and, tap us on the shoulder, you know, when we need to address, something, in in Luminate. Kevin, how would you how would you describe, advisory plus, for for our Luminate customers? Yeah. I mean, I I think what you said is right. I mean, we we truly want to be in our, an extension of the, you know, team. We wanna make sure that when we're we're meeting that we are being as collaborative as possible knowing that, you know, as as someone who is, on the team that we have a vested interest in the success, of of that organization of of, Jesuits East. And, I think that really shows in the way that we take a holistic look at the, the things that an organization's doing and making recommendations based on that and also creating and developing a plan that we can put in place for not just, you know, today, but, you know, into the future. So Excellent. Excellent. And, you know, it's interesting and I leave it because go away and do some things is something that my wife says to me from time to time. So Mine. too. So sorry. I had to take advantage of that opportunity. So alright. What what did your so now keeping with Kevin and I, Levi, then give me a picture into, like, sort of the start, the what year one looks like structurally. Like, what I'm thinking about here is, like, the sort of discovery process, action plan, deliverables. Like, how do you what does that process look like? Yeah. Absolutely. So we start, every, Advisor Plus engagement with discovery conversations. We really wanna get to the root of what Loual wants to focus on for Jesuits East. You know, what are the primary outcomes that are gonna really help move the needle for these bigger picture organizational goals? So we spend some time at the outset of of every advisory plus project, looking to, better understand, what those outcomes are, apply goals to those outcomes so that we're working towards something very tangible. And then from those discovery conversations, we build a roadmap basically for that coming year. So every year, a customer was is with us with Advisory Plus, we're building an action plan, a roadmap, a blueprint for what we're gonna be working on. And so that work is what we, that we use that action plan as a guiding star basically, basically, for the work that we do throughout the year. And we're always coming back to that action plan just to check-in and make sure that we're living up to the goals that we laid out with you all, at the start of the project. We meet regularly, that's one really wonderful thing is that we have a lot of touch points. We started out with a biweekly cadence, now we're hit our stride and we've moved to a monthly check-in cadence. We're always kind of going back and making sure that, we're, meeting meeting the goals of of the work that we set out in that initial action plan. Kevin, can you think of anything else that, that we've, been working on with Loual that would be helpful for for our audience to Yeah. I mean, I think it's just expanding a little bit on on what. you mentioned. And what what I like about advisory plus is how we are developing that that road map, that action plan in the early stages. So we're really identifying the priorities, of the organization and, and kind of setting the stage for how we're going to, define success through those deliverables. And then, doing a a check-in throughout the the year because, of course, priorities can change, something can come up. So, I mean, it's not like, the action plan is completely set in stone. We can always make, you know, changes to to that to make sure that it's it's it's fully fitting into, the organizational needs. But, I I think that's one of the best things about this is that we're we're starting at the beginning. We're identifying those those, those needs, not just from working with, the organization, but also just our own evaluation of of where the, you know, the organization sits today, with with how they're using Luminate and and and bring in, expertise from, you know, not just, you know, UX or, web development, but also other consultants, other folks in, data integration. You know, there's there's access to other people who can come in and, you know, provide their expertise, along the way. So So then, Loual, I'd love to, like, kinda get your perspective on that. Right? How, so what made this partnership sort of feel different than, you know, you talked about working with support and working with previous reps as we started at the beginning? What made this different in your eyes and feelings? Yeah. One of the major things with the advisory plus team, I'm I'm just so happy that, you know, just to be to clarify, Nyleva and and Kevin are just part of the advisory plus team. There's a few other members on our team, so I don't I wanna make sure that's clear that it's actually a little bit of a bigger team than this. And everyone is bringing different, support to my work. Right? So whether it's, talking about, you know, what are the top percentages of, donation amounts that get hit on our web forms? Like, someone in the background and and on that team is working on, hey. These are the best choices for for you. Right? And I think that's what it keeps coming out. What's the best for for you, for your, for your mission to be it? And that and that's what makes a difference. And I don't wanna be cheesy, but it also comes like, this caring group that you could say, hey, I'm seeing these problems and you have some frustrations and almost like, it's not venting, but it's like, hey, help me here. I don't know what to do. And there's this support, and that is something that is so valuable when you have high pressure things going on in your world that you're trying to get an answer to and there's this team in place that, you know, in some cases as on call or an email or message away, and then also we have our group meetings that are very helpful with the cadence of, okay, we're trying to get certain things done, but that's support. Especially types of support there. There's that the idea of like, I want this, I don't know how to get to it, and then they're talking to you through that. And the other part is, I don't know what I need. Can you help me understand what I need? Right? So, yeah. I love it. I love it. Great. Thank you for that. So I think what we're migrating to now is we're gonna kind of, like, spotlight some actual components of the project and kinda talk through the the various states of working through that, sort of the before, the goals, what then changed, what improved, maybe what you expected, what you didn't expect, all that kinda good stuff. So we'll kinda start with that. And I think, did we decide we were gonna begin talking with the ecommerce card store refresh? Is that right? Okay. So, again, well, I'll ask if you don't mind, like, sort of level setting for us here. Like, what was the need? What was the problem we were trying to solve for? Can you kinda start us off there? Sure. So in the world that I am in, right, this idea of, religious fundraising, there's a world of of of an e store that involves mask cards and some other religious items during during time, different times of the year. But the e store that we were using, was very clunky, was not very promotive of what we were trying to show as available for for our, different customers or different manufacturers that are looking through what we had. So we had something that was out of date clunky, was not gathering much success. There there needed to be a revival of this because it is an important part of the work that we do or the financial needs of, the work that we do. And we needed the refresh, before we got into a high season. And this team quickly came together within just a couple weeks of rebranding the whole eStore, moving it out that we weren't even using, Luminate correctly. Right? So we we had this whole rebrand. It was so so refreshing and done so quickly. Getting me onboard right before Thanksgiving, which right. Thanksgiving through, New Year's is a high point where we see a lot of traffic to our estore. So it was very helpful. And then I'll move over with Kevin and or Nyleva, however you guys wanna take this on. But, you know so when you heard about this, when you got this in the discovery and they asked, you know, what were what were you what were you prioritizing? How did you attack the the need? Yeah. We like to start a lot of these projects with a focus on the user experience. With the mass carts in the e store, just considering what the journey should be like for Loual's constituents who are, you know, probably really excited about purchasing a mask card and sharing it with a loved one, giving money, you know, back to USA East Province of the Society of Jesus, you know, through that experience. And so just really thinking, you know, that we don't want this really to be just a transactional experience. We want it to be, you know, much more of sort of an emotional or sort of resonating experience. So we started out with some just creative conversations around what Loual big goals were for, for this refresh. And we were thinking, you know, perhaps we can phase this project out so that we can meet this sort of quick win goal for the holidays and address, you know, ease of use of the e store, as Loual was sharing, you know, do a refresh. on the look and feel. And then we still have some big plans in the future, for adding more of that, you know, sort of donor journey user experience, those elements that make it feel a little bit more experiential, in the future. So, we we love the idea of brainstorming and, you know, being curious and creative around what we can accomplish together. We love that Loual, you know, brings that to our partnership, that type of collaboration. And, yeah, that's really where we started with this. You know, what what how can we make this easier to use and make sure that it aligns with the Jesuits East brand? And Kevin, you know, was very involved in that. This, was our colleague, Luis. So, Kevin, I can turn it over to you if there are some additional thoughts you'd like to share on this specific deliverable. Oh, yes. Let's look at that. Yes. Is this, this. is the right image we're looking for. Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I think one of the things that I would say is I mean, like like Loual had mentioned, the the previous estore just didn't take advantage of the imagery and the the thing that people are coming to this this estore to really get a good idea of of of what they're, you know, what they're gonna be purchasing, what they wanna, you know, potentially send to a loved one. And, you know, I don't think we have a a slide of this, but as you go to the next, the next page in this in this process, there's a much larger image than what you would typically find in, in in the e store. So we we just made different accommodations to really highlight the, you know, the quality of the designs and, be able to present that to the user in order to to be able to, you know, give give them, you know, the the option to to pick something that looks good. Otherwise, it just it just didn't seem like it was, maybe quite as easy to to see what they were getting. Also, I I would mention that I mean, one of the nice things that Nyleva did as part of this is, you know, I don't think we were using, the full advantage of the branding because there was a a lot of really great secondary colors that, that Jesuits use uses. And so, we we got an opportunity through the UX and design phase to start leveraging some of those those other colors that, I think brightened up the the overall design. And, of course, like like anything, we wanna make sure that this is being viewed on a on a mobile device well. That's. where people are spending their time and, you know, we we've gotta make sure that, you know, things like this are are, you know, doing, performing well. Otherwise, you know, it's gonna be abandoned, and then, you know, it's not it's not gonna be as successful as we we all need it to be. And there's some hidden some hidden things that we're not covering in this. Right? But, you know, so the the design's there, the feel is there, the engagement's there. Right? So on my end, I'm now able to say, okay. This is a great product. I could put this on social media. I could push this through an email. There's there's ways now that I'm using it to engage. And then in that same point, when it's going through, like, a social media channel or other channels where I'm not speaking to the constituents that I already have in my database. It's it's collecting information when people that are new are coming into the system. Right? So now all of a sudden it's a gateway into my world, and then we're collecting all the proper information, name, address, email, phone number, the back end work that needs to be done to process this card. The person in my office that processes this card gets a direct email to them, letting them know the card type, who needs to, who needs to receive the card, what name needs to go in the card. All the processes are being built out while we're developing this together, right? So the back end work also is being included into this advisory plus plan. of how is this workflow gonna keep going, Right? So it's important to to think about, you know, there's that initial look, but then it's also how is it working with the back end. Right? And now we talk about gateways. I think we should get to our next thing is the donation form. Right? Because that's our next big, process here. Yeah. So. then, so starting with that, then, well, that what was the same it's gonna be the same question for each. one of these. Right? What was the. existing experience, and what were you trying to improve? Before we dig too into this, so I don't wanna take too long. I don't wanna belabor this too long, but either Kevin or Nyliva, I just noticed an interesting thing that Loual said previously, which was, he said, you know, we were doing something wrong. But I'm curious. Like, how frequently do you find a, you know let's say they're that a user is not using the most optimized way of doing something in, a solution as you're going through these processes. Yeah. I guess I would say, you know, Lou, you need to get a lot of credit here. Not so much that you were doing something wrong, but just Lumen eight can be a very robust platform. Lots of different ways. to configure this product, lots of different ways to use this product. And, it just may be that, you know, there were some things that, you know, we were able to tweak or optimize, with regards to ecommerce. So we were leaning heavily on our colleague, Luis, to help with that. Mhmm. So, you know, there are lots of places to sort of, put settings in place in ecommerce, and I think we just sort of surfaced that up and and presented that, opportunity. Loual, if that's if if I'm thinking about the right things there. So I would just say, yeah, Loual made a good point, early on that sometimes you just you don't know what you don't know, Yeah. and that's what. we wanna be here for, you know, just to to make sure you have the full view of what the product can do. We'll lay all of those options out on the table, and then we'll decide together, like, you know, how can we take the most advantage of of what this particular module in. Luminate can do. I think that. also brings. up another good another good point is that, you know, you know, we do this every single day, whether it's through advisory plus or working with other customers. And so, some of these solutions that we we arrive at may not be, may may may not be obvious, at first. We've we've found ways to provide creative solutions to things, over time, and it's really just, giving someone the opportunity to see it one time, Mhmm. and then, and then they can take it and run with it. So I think there's a lot of instances with that. And given how robust, like like Nyleva said, Luminate is, there are gonna be times when there's little, you know, pockets of of information that, you know, may not be obvious at first, but then, you know, just takes a little bit of, you know, sharing, and and then we're good. Beautiful. Alright. Good. Thank you. I just like I said, I wanted to unpack that a little more because I sensed there was something there. And now, Loual, we will come back to the current what the donation experience was and what you were trying to attack with that that that particular project. Right. So, I don't wanna say that the there our previous donation form in Luminate was a little bit clunky, but it was definitely becoming outdated and, you know, we're about to, release this new refresh that, I'm very excited about. But there was definitely, it wasn't helping with our monthly giving. It's not really pushing, the right kind of strategy for, that kind of place to make it easy for a recurring gift to happen. And that's one of the beauties of Luminate. It does that so well, and our form was not being original form that, it was using was not pushing that success. Right? It didn't help with the the tone. It didn't help with the experience. And and this new revised version of it, it's so simplified. It's clear. It's easy to grasp. It's not that clunkiness. The brand is there. The feeling is there. And, and that's, you know, that that movement of the gift is so important. Right? Absolutely. Alright. So then, Kevin, I'm or not Nyleva, whichever, when wherever we wanna start here. So they again, sort of same similar question. What outcomes, you know, were guiding and the convert you know, conversion, clarity, segmentation, things like that. What were you thinking about? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. For me, it it all it all comes back to the donor experience. And and that again, just like with the ecommerce, mass cards project, we started with thinking about, you know, what is a donor experiencing, when they're hitting this donation form. And so it could be, you know, first time donors who are new to USA East Province of the Society of Jesus. It could be a repeat donor who's coming back to the donation form, to give another gift. So we really just wanted to take an opportunity, with a fresh perspective to think about, you know, where are opportunities for us to, tighten up this form, to clean up this form, you know, maybe there are some form fields that we're not necessarily using from an organizational business, perspective. Are there opportunities for us to, as Loual shared, you know, put a focus on, sustained giving, and make sure that donors know, hey, you have an opportunity to give a one time gift. You can also give a recurring gift. And just make that really easy for a donor to see, in the form. So those were really our our focus areas as we as we were taking a fresh look, at this form. And I I guess I do wanna shout out that, Loual, you've been so great by encouraging, a space for us for, you know, continuous improvement, continuous optimization. And I I think that's what we like to approach, Illuminate work with, just, that goal of, you know, there's there's always a place for us to sort of, think, you know, through are there opportunities for optimizations here? You know, ultimately, we wanna get to that conversion, but we also wanna think about the donor's experience and make sure, you know, that there's there's some donor delight, in in making this gift. We don't want it to all be transactional. So that's that's the sort of spirit that we approach, donation form work with with Loual. And, again, it's it's a a a really big collaboration, between our two teams, to get to, you know, what's what's the right amount, of tweaking here. And then just looking ahead, we also wanna make sure we're keeping an eye on that data, so that the conversions that, you know, we are making or the changes that we're making, we know that they're having an impact Yep. I I don't know that I have much to add to this. You know, Loual Puliafito, Nyleva really covered, the the the core of it. I will say just just a couple things. You know, the the previous form was a little, a little the the main content area of it was a little skinnier, so it it made the the form a little bit longer. There were field the extra fields like Nyleva mentioned. So I think one of the goals, of this was to, like she said, re reduce the fields that are on on the form and and shorten it, you know, reducing friction, making the selections, a lot more obvious, from the get go. Can we get donors over to be sustain, sustainers, which which would be amazing? And then, obviously, as we've as we've talked about before, mobile is the most important thing here. We we've gotta make sure that it looks good and that it's easy, to to navigate through, to ultimately give a a donation. And then we also just have to, you know, consider our our audience, in in terms of, you know, the the types of folks who are coming to these donation forms and how they're interacting with it, and just kinda meet them where they are. And then in terms of accessibility, color contrast, things like that, you know, those are all things that we're thinking about as as people are coming to these forums, in order to make sure that they have the best possible experience, to, ultimately do what they came to do, which is is give money And this is this is in progress. Right? We are Jesuits is this this is not yet. launched? We're. not, yeah, Okay. we're not quite live, but we. we close. Right, Luau? We're very close. We're on the doorstep. Now that's that's beautiful, Des. So then, Loual, what are you thinking of, like, you if you're you're on the doorstep, so now what are you looking forward to sort of measuring, once it does go live to that that you're interested in seeing how it performs? Well, so there's there's gonna be, some vehicles that are helping drive that functionality of of success for this. You know, we have our, we have a major giving our our annual giving day is coming up, which we'll I think we're gonna talk about next. And also there are some end of fiscal year mailers going out that's gonna drive traffic, back to our our site to make a donation. I'm really looking for the metric that, how many people can we sway to being not just that one time annual donor, but to move them to being a monthly donor or forever sustainer type of giver. That's something that I think is very powerful when you're able to talk to other donors saying, look how many people monthly are saying they believe in this cause, and that Luminate makes that very easy to do when you when you have it set up the right way. Thank you, advisory plus team. Excellent. Alright. Well, that was an excellent segue then if we wanna talk about the Giving Day reactivation, and we wanna jump into that next. Okay? So what, you know, what made that I guess, what was it what was it that what is it about that day that was successful and led to wanting to reactivate that, I guess? You know, what what is the Yeah. the goodness know? you're trying to replicate there? Yeah. I didn't ask that very well, but I think you got what I'm trying to say. Yeah. So, now coming here, just a couple years ago, we did have a Giving Day, that was directly tied to our, a major part of our our work here. And, once every June, we have a thing called province day, and province day is, a mixture of, priests being ordained to be priests, and we also have almost a, state of the union from our provincial who is basically the CEO of the the corporation, and everyone gathers for this day. It just made fun that this was such an important day that we should be celebrating it, not just throughout the province with with different little parties, but also as a fundraising day. It's so so important. And like usual, I get this idea in my head, and I wanna go very quickly to get it done. And it was with the help of, both Nyleva and Kevin that I was able to get, last year for our basically, our major kickoff to having this this Giving Day. I think within just a few weeks, Kevin and I live nonstop, were were able to produce, this this great Giving Day form for me. And by hearing yes. This is great. Right? So there's four buckets that we were focusing on. One was basically senior care, the other one was formation and through vocation invocations, and then, our office log works. And we're able to pull this together really so grateful for the team to make it look like what I was expecting. And you can't tell the features here, but there's some great features that happen here when, when you're clicking different buttons, different actions were happening. When we hit a goal, confetti would go up into the air. A lot of nice little Cool. play for a donor to see. And what was really helpful for me too was I had I had an attractive place to drive people to. To say, hey. Check out this site the daycare site. And with the, you know, having the the right URL put in place for it too. Thank you, Kevin, on getting that up there. You know, all of these all of these things just made pushing for our Giving Day, Mhmm. easier, especially when a person landed here. They quickly were able to see what area do I care about the most, where are they, how many donors, what's to how how do I reach the goal, how can I help get to the goal? And when they click that red button there, it brought them to their form that was associated with that. So all the back end, counting was done correctly. And on top of that, you know, there's also then going to the right, experience. Like each donation form was specifically made for that. Right? So the wording is correct, the right pictures are in place, and this that whole narrative of bringing this all together and designing this page fell on the laps of Nyleva and Kevin. I just here's the text, here's the here's the pictures, Here's the goal. Please make it happen. And and, we had a very successful day. This was really our first major giving day, and we were to raise over $200,000. We are, revising this a little bit for this upcoming year, but for pretty much using a similar form, but using our new donation pages are really gonna be key because I feel this is how we're gonna get those sustainer gifts in place. So I'm really excited about our our Giving Day this year. Yeah. That's outstanding. I love it. Like, a little a little celebration, a little sort of pseudo gamification. Those things are always great. Kevin, Walt touched on a lot there. I just wanna see if there's any sort of background thoughts you had or you wanted to contribute around that process, some things you unlocked, journey, segmentation, reporting, anything you wanna add color to there? I mean, I think I would mention that, you know, when came to to me with this this idea, you know, and and the the vision that he had with it, the the first thing I did was send I leave a message and say, hey. What do you think, we should we should do here? Because, as we've talked about, you know, throughout this this process, you know, it is really important to our team and to us to start with UX and make sure that we're we're doing right by the information and the data that we're gathering. We don't wanna make decisions based on, we we just don't wanna make the decisions that aren't based in, reality and and and data. So we wanna start there. We wanna make sure that we're, you know and Blackbaud can obviously speak to this, a lot better than than I can. But, it was just important that, you know, I was able to to work with Nyleva to to make sure that we were putting the best thing forward. And then that surfaces a lot of different ideas and a lot of different things that we can start to, you know, build into it. So, you know, I I think the ability to start tracking some of the the the donors and and creating these thermometers. I mean, a lot of those ideas kind of bore out of of the conversations that we were having. And so, you know, it just goes back to the amount of collaboration that we're doing with, with Jesuits, with Loual, and then being able to take that information and go back internally and just kind of, you know, huddle together and just kinda figure out, you know, what's the best way to do it. I mean, it's some of the most fun things that I get to work on because I know we get to, you know, really kind of work together to to to push something forward. And and like Loual said, I mean, these go to, you know, discreet forms, that, you know you know, provide. continuity from, you know, the the the section or the specific campaign that they're going for. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to getting the the new one out this year and just see, how how much we can improve from that original 200. Let's, you know, let's let's keep it Me too. Yeah. As a as a marketer, I love this. talk. This is right in my wheelhouse. So I think that we have time to maybe So one more, and we had sort of identified two possibilities. So let's let's decide here. I think we were talking gonna talk about either the gala or the happy birthday responders. Is there one of those two that we think is a better example to talk through? I know. Pressure's on live to decide. Boy, I would let I would let Nyleva or Kevin decide on this one. because. I. like it. Yeah. I Maybe we, love maybe we talk a little bit about the the gala. So. that's a a component in Luminate, in in calendar events and takes advantage of ticket event registration functionality. So that might be of interest. to, to the audience here. So, Loual, again, you know, I I I think there was a time constraint, when you were working on this. Right? And, and you had some sort of, I don't know, some had to haves for this. So maybe set the stage for us on what we were trying to resolve here. Right. So, you know, the the regular event form in Luminate is is great for, I guess, I forget to say it a regular event. Right? But I clearly needed something a little bit more robust for our it's it's a major gala that we have every year. We have over 600 guests. We've already raised over 2, dollars 2,500,000.0 for it. And the donation or the the gala event form needed to be a little bit more robust because of different sponsorship levels, be able to be attractive for our our, I guess, our constituent or our benefactor coming there. And and the and the way I had it set up without help in the previous time before advisory plus, it it was it was just overly clunky, and that's the best way to say it. And now, I know we're gonna show an image of of the the new gala form, but it doesn't do it justice until you actually use it because it does great on on, on your on your regular computer screen, but the one thing I really love about, because we keep talking about the use of a device. Right? Many of our people are using devices. And when you move this to a device level, it breaks out all the sponsorships into its own little square. So as you're searching through, it's much more easy to navigate what level you are, what do you get at your level of gift, and it really excited me because I finally have an event form for the gala that matched the gala I was producing, and I would not have had that without Advisory Plus help. Right? So that's just, yeah. It it just gave me the right landing page for I'm going to go right from an invitation to a processing form that was attractive and met the standards and the quality of what this gala was. So, you know, I I love Luminate, but this event form is my favorite ever in my over a decade of using Luminate. Sorry for. really rounding think in that one. that's that's great. I think we picked the right example. So so okay. With, you know, Nyleva and Kevin, with the understanding of the importance, the value of this to Loual and the organization, then just, you know, talk me through your thoughts on how you kind of attack this. Yeah. Absolutely. I I I think, the theme that Kevin has mentioned a couple of times now just and what Luau just shared, focusing on the experience for, registrants, on mobile devices was really, you know, how we how we approach this. We wanted to make sure that no matter, what device, a constituent was using, this was gonna be a really easy process to quickly go in and and fill out this registration form, for this signature event for Jesuits East. So just, you know, keeping in mind how very important, this event is, in the life of Jesuits East, making sure that we focused on the mobile experience, in addition to to all of the others or desktop and laptop experiences. So yeah. So we reconfigured some of the elements on the standard, ticket registration page, registration page, move some things around, really thought about the sequence and cadence of the elements on the screen, and putting ourselves in the shoes of a registrant who may be a busy person and just you know, wants to get in, submit the registration form, and receive the confirmation that, you know, that that all of that's in place and then be excited about the event, on their calendar. So that was those were really the the big goals with, Loual and his team's help sort of guiding us on on what those focus areas should be. Kevin, did I did I miss anything in in, thinking through, how we approached this one? Yeah. No. I think, I I think Loual right. The, the screenshot probably doesn't do it justice. I was thinking the same thing about, the the donation for just because some of the elements are are so bright that you can't see, outlines of things. So, you should just go to the the page. But, I think one of the most important things about this particular one of the there's so many options on this particular, form. And so as we get to mobile I mean, it's obviously easy to see when you're on a desktop, but when you get to mobile and there's that many options, I mean, you need to be able to quickly identify the, you know, the sponsorship, the sponsorship level or or exactly what you're looking for. So, you know, so reducing like, I I think I I was thinking originally that I was gonna that I wanted to say that we just made it look more modern. But I think I think what we tried to do is we we tried to just, clean it up, and overall streamline the the look and feel of it. So, whether or not you call that modern or not is is is, you know, whatever you think. But, I think that was the important thing is just trying to get it clean, so it was easy for users to identify where they needed to be. So Excellent. Excellent. And, Loual, you said I mean, this was your favorite your favorite form. So what were the you know, what how is that. a question of ease, design, fewer issues, better data capture? What are the what makes you love it? No. The design really, Mhmm. is the part that I love the most. And and, like, we've just been saying, like, the, you you know, I don't think it's the word that you modernize it. I think you made it user friendly. Especially I have an age group of population that is, I have an older person trying to do this and I also have a younger person trying to do this, and this was easy for both to achieve. Right? From. a device, from a website, this it just it just checked all the right boxes for for us. And that's what I think is beautiful about this kind of, like, conversation of how advisory plus has worked with me. You know? Mhmm. And, you know, if I could expand on one other thought about advisory plus working on me with me is. that, you know, my original love for for when I started using Blackbaud was that it handled so many things that I get tons of emails of, like, third party wanting you to do this, or third party wants to help you do this. And when you go down those roads with these third parties, it doesn't always equal your expectations, especially with the idea of ease of use, data capture, donation process. There's a lot of different things that need to happen for it to work. Blackbaud, it does so many things. So if we looked at that, our our Giving Day form, like, that, you know, that that could be a third party who's selling you on forms and how you have land planning. We we didn't talk about our emails, but one of the big things that we do with our emails is we send out these thank you emails every basically, they go out every two days. Every they go out every day to someone who made a gift two weeks ago, and it's a video personalized message to them in in text, and it brings them back to Blackbaud page just about them saying, thank you for your gift, Ray. I hope you really enjoyed it. You know, and and this is a video from our our provincial, our CEO, and it it brings that engagement there. And then when you add on that, we could do we do other things like a happy birthday video very similarly. Mhmm. There's this there's these all these flows of engagement that could be that could be done, and you don't have to go to that third party, you have it in Luminate, and then when you have Advisory Plus, they're helping you find out how to turn it on for you. And that has been, an easier path for me to be happy with the work that's being produced to do those things. And, like we've been talking about the quality of this, the donor engagement, those are all high priorities. Those are the things that if there's a problem with that publicly, I'm gonna hear about that from my boss and that's not good for me. And that gets handled by having this Advisory Plus team working with you. So, I wish I had Advisory Plus a long time ago. I'm very grateful for the work that we've done, and and the I just can't wait to see where we go over the next this next course of this next year. So, just thankful. And if anyone had any of my personalized questions, I would you know if someone sent an email or anything, I'd gladly answer that. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna take us down the home stretch here. I will say if anyone has any questions, drop them in the QA, but we're gonna wrap up a few things here. So, Loual, if you could maybe put yourself, take yourself back and, and maybe put yourself in the shoes of some of our our attendees here today. If they wanted to start a similar process, how would you sort of advise them to handle and take on the first, say, thirty, sixty days of that Yeah. I would I would think? I would think about what is some real stress points even if they're not something that you think already might exist in your world and this I would I would just list out what stress points you have as one of the first options of, hey. These are the things that I'm having problems with and discuss that with the with the advisory plus team. That would be probably round one of of thought. And then round two would be, here are some things I have directly going on, like donation form issues or event form issues. And that would be, like, part two of those questions I would prepare myself for. And then the third thing would be, if I know that, for example, I should have started Advisor Plus earlier, but if I knew I was gonna start, I need this major giving day, and I need help. You know, if you have goals that one year out or six months out, you should probably start talking about them now. Like those should be also on that list of ideas because you wanna have enough time with the team to flush out the best version of those ideas. And like I said, if you just have stress points, you should just talk about them because you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I I swear, I think sometimes we, you know, we defeat ourselves too early sometimes. You know? When I was when I talk to people about, some of these solutions that we have at Blackbaud, I'll say to them, like, hey. Let's just fantasize for a second that you could do anything. Like, if you could have software that could do anything for you, forget about what's possible. Just and because sometimes just because you, you know, you can bring your own prejudice to it, right, and think, well, we can't do that. They can't help me with this. And if we don't hear that, if Nyleva doesn't hear that, if Kevin doesn't hear the need because you've made the assumption or someone's made the assumption that it's not possible, it may be possible. It may not be possible in the way that you thought about it in your mind, but we might be able to achieve that end in a way that you're not even aware exists. And so so important to, like, have that open mindedness and have that curiosity and just sort of expose the things that you're trying to improve on. And then, you know, we can go right? We got Nyleva, Kevin, and their cohorts can filter through what we can address and maybe what what we need because maybe the result is you have more time now to dedicate to some of these problems that require a manual process. So then Nyleva and Kevin, you know, talk through, like, what are the common starting points that you see, particularly for Luminate customers and fundraising engagement, connected outcomes, that kind of thing. Yeah. A lot of times we'll, you know, try to tackle, you know, what's the lowest hanging fruit, you know, or any quick win, you know, that we can sort of help move the needle on. And a lot of times that's tied back to to larger fundraising and engagement outcomes. I think that was certainly the case, Mhmm. Loual, you know, for for us for year one, working on the donation forms, that's the front door donor experience portal for Jesuits East linked directly from luau's.org website. Tackling those things that may feel obvious, but we know that we can immediately put into action and reap a lot of benefits from donor engagement, stewardship, nurturing relationships with donors, working toward making sure that, we're not just going after a one time gift, we're going after building a relationship with the Jesuits East donors. So those are the things that I sort of I like to come to the table with thinking about for, for the outset of of, an engagement for advisory plus. Kevin, what do you think on that one? Yeah. I mean, I you know, just just coming at it with a with a group of people that have a fresh set of eyes on, on a donation form or or any other aspect of the the way that Luminate is is currently being used by the organization, I I think, is kind of the the first step, for us. And then just making sure that, we can set that, you know, that list of priorities based on that. But, yeah, I think it's, I I think the last one of the things that we talk about a lot is some of the some of the best engagements that that I think we have experienced over time is when we, all kinda come to the table with a level of enthusiasm and excitement about what we're trying to accomplish. You. know, sometimes it it it sometimes working, you know, in, a a product can be, challenging. It can be, you know, it can feel difficult at times. But, as we talked about at the very beginning, you know, we we are an extension of of your team, and we are excited to be here. We're excited to make, your life better, your work life better, and help the organization move the the needle forward. So, we we always, when we come to these meetings, I mean, we're excited about, you know, meeting and and trying to figure out how we can, you know, improve the next thing. So Love it. Alright. Lightning round for Kevin and Nyleva. One answer. What pitfalls should teams try to should teams avoid? Nyleva. I I have a plan. We're planning nerds, on the Luminate Services. team and, having a really solid plan like Louelle was describing that, like, you know, Okay. will go a very long way. Kevin, I I would say make sure that. base I I would I would say based on that plan, make sure that all stakeholders that you need to have are are in the loop, whether that's from a, you know, any aspect of of of the of the business or the organization. Make sure those folks are involved so, you know, we can make sure that everyone gets gets heard and we we are, delivering the right thing for everyone. I love it. I'm gonna say for my lightning, prioritization. Right? Everything, everywhere, all at once is a great movie, but it's not a good strategy for getting good work done. And, Loual, I will ask I don't know. We'll say thirty to sixty seconds. I'm a peer, and I'm skeptical about adding, these services to my engagement. What would you tell me? I think if you are if you're feeling that you have other conflicts that are going on around you that you might not be, seeing what the the bonuses of advisory plus are, and I. would definitely say that, you can't you can't get to having the change unless you're trying something new, I think. And you should take. it you should take the the chance and jump in. Yeah. Yeah. Right? At least have the conversation. Right? Yeah. You should definitely have agree. Have that exploratory call, figure out what options are there for you. You can't, yeah, you can't make change unless you try something, so you gotta do it. You just gotta jump in. for sure. That's for sure. Alright. Well, beautiful. We have come right up to a moment or two after the top of the hour. So first and foremost, I want to thank you, Loual, for taking so much of your valuable time to speak with us today. We really appreciate it. These were great examples, and it really helps, I think, frame what we're trying to accomplish here with this process, in a super, super effective way. Kevin, thank you so much. Nyleva, thank you so much. And thank all of you who attended for your time today. As I mentioned at the beginning, you will receive an email in about twenty four hours with an on demand recording of today's session, and you can also engage, with Ali through that email, to answer any questions you have about, exploring these services for yourself. So with that being said, everyone have a great day. Have a great rest of your week, and happy fundraising. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.