Mission Statement
The mission of the Office of Advancement Services unit is to maintain an accurate database of alumni, constituents, and friends so that they can receive invitations to events as well as the Tougaloo News magazine and other publications. The Office provides research on corporations, foundations, and individuals able to assist Tougaloo College in meeting its institutional mission, vision, goals, and objectives. In addition, the Office of Advancement Services is responsible for donor relations and stewardship, special event planning, and for the timely recording, receipting and acknowledging of gifts to Tougaloo College.
Goals and Objectives
Goal 1. To provide the necessary services and support in connection with Tougaloo College’s comprehensive fund raising and alumni relations programs, including prospect research, donor relations and stewardship, gift processing and special events.
Objective 1.1. The Office of Advancement Services will ensure that a current and accurate database of alumni, friends, corporations, foundations, and other donors is maintained and respond to requests within five working days.
Strategy 1.1.1. Conduct weekly review and update of Raiser’s Edge system.
Strategy 1.1.2. Donations will be properly recorded on a daily basis; donors will be sent a gift acknowledgement card on the day the gift is received in OIA; official acknowledgement letters with receipts will be mailed to donors within five working days after receipt of the donation
Strategy 1.1.3. Create batch templates, mail merge templates, reporting templates and development of gift processing section OIA of policies and procedures manual.
Strategy 1.1.4. Decrease the number of returned mail items by 50% each quarter.
Strategy 1.1.5. Update all staff semi-annually regarding the best practices and trends in their units.
Strategy 1.1.6. Implement gift acknowledgement plan to enable more timely responses to gifts.
Objective 1.2. The Office of Advancement Services Team will help to facilitate and increase private gifts by 15% each year
Strategy 1.2.1. Identify, cultivate and steward an additional 10% of major donor prospects and 25% of other donors for further research and cultivation.
Strategy 1.2.2. Identify ten new donor prospects per month for cultivation.
Strategy 1.2.3. Reactivate at least 20% of former constituents.
Strategy 1.2.4. All Advancement staff will become familiar with CASE Management and Reporting Standards, Internal Revenue Service regulations on fundraising, gift receipting and related aspects.
Strategy 1.2.5. Support, coordinate and assign major and special fund raising events initiated by OIA, alumni, and volunteers.
Objective 1.3. The Office of Advancement Services Team will facilitate effective donor relations and stewardship.
Strategy 1.3.1. Create and implement a donor relations and stewardship program and include information in the OIA policies and procedures manual.
Strategy 1.3.2. Initiate and implement a recognition policy so that a minimum of five major donors are recognized each year.
Strategy 1.3.3. Plan and implement five stewardship events annually.
Strategy 1.3.4. Initiate a stewardship calendar of activities to ensure that donors are always a part of Tougaloo College events
Strategy 1.3.5. Produce and distribute volunteer service literature to current and prospective volunteers.
Strategy 1.3.6. Conduct a minimum of one volunteer training session each year.
Strategy 1.3.7. Increase volunteer participation in the operations of Institutional Advancement.
Strategy 1.3.8. Define donor recognition levels and the awards of gifts.
Objective 1.4. The Office of Advancement Services will facilitate gift processing and fund management.
Strategy 1.4.1. Identify major problems in processing gifts.
Strategy 1.4.2. Devote one to two days per week to purging and resolving database issues.
Strategy 1.4.3. Create batch templates and conditional mail merge plans.
Strategy 1.4.4. Request IT to perform daily/weekly back-ups of the server.
