Wellesley College Selects Reeher Fundraising Platform

Press release (March 22, 2012) — Reeher LLC announced that Wellesley College has joined the Reeher Platform, the first shared management system dedicated to higher-education fundraising in which features and tools added for one customer benefit all. Located near Boston, the world’s pre-eminent liberal arts college for women serves approximately 2,400 students and 31,000 alumnae, and is regularly included in the top 10 of U.S. News and World Report’s National Liberal Arts College Rankings.

While philanthropy is strong among Wellesley alumnae, and every campaign has set a new record for giving, development leaders turned to the Reeher Platforms for Major Giving and Annual Fund to provide a faster, user-friendly way to share information with its gift officers any time from any location to enhance alumnae engagement and giving.

“The Reeher Platform and Targeter tool provide an interactive, real-time and outstanding visual presentation of data that’s easily accessible to our gift officers and leadership, allowing our team to be faster, more efficient and take advantage of opportunities to meet with more alumnae,” says Kathy Flynn, Wellesley College director of development operations. “Immediately after training, our gift officers were out on the road using the Platform to plan trips, identify new potential donors who have an affinity to Wellesley but haven’t been on our radar, and add more appointments while on the road. They’re using the Platform on their iPads and laptops, which provides the speed, independence and empowerment they need to continue improving the outcome.”

Cameran Mason, vice president for resources and public affairs, says the design of the dashboard, views and accessibility appealed to the Wellesley development team, along with its customized predictive models capable of uncovering previously untapped top prospects. Mason was also intrigued by the shared knowledge of the Reeher Community Network, which is made available to all users to improve and benefit everyone using the Platform.

“The Reeher Platform is a standout – the combination of offerings is pretty unusual,” says Flynn. “And they go far beyond what we typically experience with vendor relationships. They are truly partners and advisors, and that has to do with the Reeher team’s deep understanding of development work. For example, on the annual fund side, we’re excited to have the Reeher team collaborating with us to tailor approaches, creating strategies and tactics designed to increase participation.”

The Reeher and Wellesley teams worked together to implement the Platform from September through mid-November, going live within 10 weeks.

The innovative Reeher Platform subscription model provides a cost-effective solution to improving fundraising for institutions of any size or any budget, bringing the concept of “sharing best practices” in the collaborative world of university fundraising to a more practical level.