DOI: 10.69554/zmom8425 ISSN: 2397-0634

Collaborative intelligence: Unlocking annual giving insights with Tableau and Snowflake

Muza Furin-Carraux, Julie Knight
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Higher education advancement teams are increasingly expected to make strategic decisions using real-time, reliable data, even as many institutions undergo large-scale customer relationship management conversions. This paper examines how Carnegie Mellon University addressed this challenge through a collaborative project that paired annual giving strategy with advancement information services analytics during a multi-year migration from Advance to Salesforce. Rather than replicating legacy reports, the teams designed a sustainable reporting framework using Snowflake as a centralised data warehouse and Tableau as the primary visualisation layer, embedded directly within Salesforce. Three core dashboards were developed to replace operational reports and enable deeper insight into donor behaviour. These tools support year-to-date analysis, donor movement across giving bands, and data for improving financial reporting, while maintaining consistency with institutional business rules. Outcomes included significant reductions in manual reporting time, improved transparency, and greater confidence in data-forward decision making across the division. This paper demonstrates how intentional collaboration, paired with modern data architecture and a structured technology adoption strategy, can strengthen data culture and position annual giving programmes for long-term scalability during systemic change. This paper is also included in The Business & Management Collection, which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

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