Minnesota Medical Foundation

Minnesota Medical Foundation Gets More Robust and Flexible Reporting with Blackbaud Performance Management

The Minnesota Medical Foundation at the University of Minnesota is a nonprofit organization that raises millions of dollars annually to help improve the quality of life for the people of Minnesota, the nation, and the world by supporting health-related research, education, and service at the University of Minnesota. Founded in 1939, the Minnesota Medical Foundation is the oldest of four foundations recognized by the University of Minnesota’s board of regents. The Minnesota Medical Foundation raised $124.9 million in FY2009 — a record year of philanthropy for the foundation. These gifts have supported the advancement of medicine and public health discoveries at the University of Minnesota.

The Challenge:
With such a large volume of gifts, staff members at the Minnesota Medical Foundation are constantly providing data to various groups, including upper management, the Foundation’s board of directors, and major gift donors regarding success metrics and performance outcomes. The organization tracks such statistics as gift production, dollars raised, new gifts, and new planned gifts. The Foundation staff also needs to ensure that gifts received correspond to the right gifts, whether it is gifts of stock, pledges, revocable gifts, or non-revocable gifts.

The Information Edge™ from Blackbaud has provided the Minnesota Medical Foundation with a reporting structure that met these needs. By compiling data from the Foundation’s Raiser’s Edge, Financial Edge, and custom database systems, The Information Edge has provided staff members with the data they need to make better decisions.

In 2008, Microsoft® released SQL Server® 2008. The new version of the software included significant changes and enhanced reporting functionality. In order to ensure that customers could take advantage of the enhanced SQL Server 2008, Blackbaud developed and subsequently released Blackbaud Performance Management™, which was built on technology from The Information Edge.

As The Information Edge application became outdated and as users at Minnesota Medical Foundation became more savvy and required greater access to technology and information to help them better do their jobs, the team wanted to simplify its reporting functions. SQL Server® 2008 and Blackbaud Performance Management provided this opportunity.

Additionally, as the organization grew and changed, so did its reporting needs. The team wanted a faster and more flexible reporting system that would evolve as the organization’s goals changed. The team also wanted a system that was more user-friendly and provided more out-of-the-box functionality. They wanted a system that would save them time while giving them more.

A key example occurred in 2008 when Minnesota Medical Foundation initiated a new fundraising strategy, which drastically changed how donations made to Minnesota Medical were categorized,focusing more on disease area versus departmental. Each gift the Foundation received would be classified into one of seven corridors: cancer, children’s health, diabetes, heart and lung disorders, special initiatives, brain, nerve and muscle disorders, and scholarships and medical education.

This meant the team at the Foundation would have to not only shift the reporting structure, but would also have to enhance the structure to align with the campaign’s key indicators. The team learned that Blackbaud Performance Management™ would enable it to enhance its current reporting while providing the flexibility and speed it needed to address the various reporting needs of the organization.

The Solution:
In 2005, Minnesota Medical Foundation selected Blackbaud’s The Information Edge™ to meet its reporting needs. The Information Edge provided the Foundation with the reports and data it needed to track main indicators of progress. The organization effectively tracked and reported information from The Raiser’s Edge, The Financial Edge, and the organization’s custom database into a single, easy-to-understand view, enabling the Foundation to answer the questions that would help the organization make better business decisions.

When Microsoft® released SQL Server® 2008, the Foundation wanted to utilize the enhanced features and provide a more flexible reporting structure. That meant moving from SQL Server® 2000 to SQL Server® 2008, but Minnesota Medical Foundation still needed an analysis tool that would effectively pull data from its Raiser’s Edge and Financial Edge systems, and also from its legacy custom database. So, the Foundation moved from The Information Edge to Blackbaud Performance Management.

Blackbaud Performance Management, built on the power of SQL Server® 2008, provides the Foundation with powerful analysis and reporting capabilities without compromising speed, security, or ease-of-use. It effectively meets the new reporting requirements that were established by the seven-year long campaign and maintained much of the organization’s previous reporting.

“Blackbaud Performance Management is much faster to work with and provides more extensive cubes,” said Margie Zenk, senior data manager for the Minnesota Medical Foundation. “With the new cubes, we have much more freedom and more information at our fingertips. My background is in working with data, not coding, and I am able to write reports with the cubes and not have to do any hardcore coding. It saves a ton of my time and provides reports to our teams a lot quicker,” she added. 

The Results:
Minnesota Medical Foundation has experienced a number of benefits since implementing The Information Edge and Blackbaud Performance Management.

• Streamlined processes: The ease of use afforded by Blackbaud Performance Management means that the team is now empowered to build and run comprehensive reports without the time-consuming process of relying entirely on a developer. 
• Time savings: The speed at which the Foundation can create and run a report has saved the team a significant amount of time.
• Ease of use: The system is intuitive enough that a developer isn’t needed to build, add, or modify reports once the data environment is configured to suit reporting needs.
• Security: The Foundation is able to limit who can modify reports and how much they can change and which user groups can modify cubes while giving everyone access to the information. 

According to Mary McCarthy, associate vice president of information systems at the Minnesota Medical Foundation, end-users really enjoy the interface enabled by performance management. Because it is similar to Microsoft Excel®, a common application, users feel comfortable modifying the reports as allowed to fit their individual tastes and needs. Ms. McCarthy also believes that the familiarity at which the reports are presented to staff lends credibility to her team and gives a more modern look.

For Ms. McCarthy, having a platform that is integrated is a dream. And Ms. Zenk appreciates having the applications on the same platform, too. “Since they are built across the same infrastructure, it uses the same logic, making it easier to use and saving us time,” she said.