This month, University IT celebrated – with our partners in the Office of Development (OOD) and the Stanford Alumni Association (SAA) – the successful launch of the Alumni and Development Applications Platform Transition (ADAPT) Phase 1 platforms.
This launch marks a significant step toward ADAPT’s ultimate goal of replacing the 20-year-old PostGrads database (and many of its associated systems and processes) to a modern, cloud-based ecosystem of platforms that will allow OOD and SAA to better serve, steward and digitally engage the university’s donors and alumni.
“The journey that led us here has been long and demanding—fueled by hard work, long hours, extraordinary collaboration across work groups, creativity, resilience, design thinking, and an unwillingness to give up on the goal, despite the challenges,” said Jon Denney, OOD’s vice president for Development.
“The successful launch of Phase One represents a huge step forward for OOD and SAA and the systems that support our work. It’s exciting to think about what ADAPT will make possible for our organizations and for Stanford in the years ahead.”
The launch included rollout of:
- Constituent and Alumni Records Database (CARD), the OOD and SAA instance of Salesforce
- Oracle Gift Processing (OGP), the system OOD will use to process gifts and pledges using Oracle tools
- Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI), the system OOD will use for robust reporting, a data warehouse, and data visualization using Oracle tools
- Marketo, a software platform for marketing automation
Collectively, these systems will significantly enhance OOD’s and SAA’s efficiency, effectiveness, and ability to serve university donors, alumni, and other constituents.
“This launch marks a critical milestone,” said “Howard Wolf, vice president for Alumni Affairs. “It’s a result of extraordinary efforts by many who have worked so hard, and for so long to develop and deliver these powerful new tools.”
The multi-year ADAPT program signifies a great deal of strategic initiative by UIT, and is another example of UIT’s accelerated march toward integrated cloud services.
“The recently launched ADAPT ecosystem of cloud services is foundational to achieving Stanford’s ambitions in the year ahead," said Steve Gallagher, Stanford chief information officer. "The UIT team looks forward to continuing our deep partnership with OOD and SAA as we expand upon our success by delivering an integrated suite of new alumni and constituent facing services.”
What’s next?
Phase 2 of the ADAPT project is already underway and will include imagining, designing, building, and implementing the best alumni-facing ecosystem in the world.
It will include a number of substantial additions to the ADAPT ecosystem, including stewardship functionality, event management, volunteer management, and advanced reporting. Phase 2 will culminate with the decommissioning of PostGrads by the end of fiscal year 2021. To learn more about the program’s phases, visit this page on the ADAPT website.
