FORUM 2026

Assembly Hall

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• Crossing the Finish Line: Capacity Flow at WFAA
  Tesha Pittenger, Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association​

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In 2023, the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association (WFAA) converted to a new CRM and, with it, a new wealth screening vendor, DonorSearch. While we were able to use the external DonorSearch platform to complete wealth validations and capacity reviews, those scores were not appearing in the CRM until integration occurred in 2025. 

This presentation will describe DonorSearch integration, addition of WFAA Giving information, ratings flow, addressing vendor limitations, and next steps for WFAA capacity scores. 

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• Angel Trackers: Finding and Referring your Institution's Entrepreneurs
  Jane Cronkhite, Michael Stevens, and Dana Vollmer, University of Illinois Foundation​

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We all have entrepreneurs at our institutions whether they are angel investors, working in venture capital or private equity. How do we track these folks and refer them to gift officers in a useful manner? Find out what we have been doing at the University of Illinois Foundation, including working with Pitchbook to integrate their API into our CRM. Don't want to go that route? There are other options and resources available to you.​

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• Notes to Self (But Not to CRM): AI-Powered Employment Updates from Contact Reports

       Jeremy Sheiko and Devika Angamuthu, Purdue for Life Foundation

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Keeping donor employment data current is one of the most persistent frustrations in Prospect Development — and one of the most common complaints from frontline fundraisers. But what if the updates were already there, buried in the contact reports our fundraisers already wrote? This session shares our initial foray into using large language models to do what few of us have the time or patience to do: systematically read contact reports and extract meaningful biographical data. Leveraging new AI capabilities available through the Snowflake AI Data Cloud, we set out to test a simple theory — that employment updates are frequently documented in contact reports long before they ever make it into the CRM.

Early results have exceeded expectations. Our audit has demonstrated over 85% accuracy in identifying and surfacing employment changes, including retirements, directly from contact report text. What started as a simple experiment is already has us thinking of other possibilities: we're actively exploring how the same approach can be applied to other biographical data, particularly relationship data, identifying family members, colleagues, and associates that might otherwise go unnoticed.

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East Room

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• AI Workflow Revisited
  Kylie Cain, University of Nebraska Foundation​

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At last year's FORUM, the University of Nebraska presented on their work to implement agentic AI into our Prospect Development operation. This AI workflow is now live in our BBCRM! We would like to share an update of how it's changed our work, show a visual to the group, and share challenges and successes in the year it took to launch this project.​

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• From Clean‑Up to Clarity: How Enhanced Dashboards Power Strategic Consults
  Kristin Kuhrasch, Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association

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We used to approach Portfolio Consults like a twice annual spring cleaning: a necessary task focused on dusting off old opportunities, stepping around past‑due items, and making sure nothing was about to topple over. Helpful, yes, but largely reactive. With the enhancement of our Salesforce Fundraiser Dashboard, we shifted that work upstream, putting the clean‑up tools directly into fundraisers’ hands. Signals like past‑due Ask Dates, no recent Activity Reports, and even a cheerful report called, “Ready to Move to Closed Won!” are now easy to spot, address, and resolve long before a Consult ever begins. In this session I'll review the creation and content of our Salesforce Dashboard (the Fundraiser Dashboard) and our enhanced Portfolio Consult agenda.

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West Room

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• Meet the University of Michigan's Dynamic Duo - MyFundraiser+2 and Prospect+, our unified experience that transforms passive reporting into a dynamic operating system for fundraising
  Paul Wiklanski, Michelle Lin, and Tyler Lefler, University of Michigan​

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Data often sits in silos, disconnected from daily action. This session focuses on Prospect+ and MyFundraiser+2, unifying the University of Michigan’s dashboards to transform passive reporting into an active operating system for fundraising. We will demonstrate how to consolidate disparate data points into a refined interface that drives the entire strategic portfolio management cycle. This session is beneficial to attendees because it solves the universal challenge of  insights accessibility by demonstrating how to design dashboards that inspire users to prioritize immediate operational steps rather than just consuming history.​

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• Trailblazers: Discussion around Emerging Approaches to the Institutional Pipeline
  Danilyn Wilce and Craig Leonard, University of Michigan

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Sharing what U-M is doing in the pipeline space, then discussion from the broader group.​