My conversation this week is with Kalyan Varma, co-founder and CEO of Almabase and someone I have known and learned from for years. In our discussion, he comments on the narrowing donor base even as dollars rise, and the technology meant to fix it is often scattered across a dozen disconnected tools.
(Watch the full length version on YouTube - 54 mins)
That scattering is why he says the word we all reach for, integration, has become “the most abused word” in advancement technology, thrown around for anything down to moving a file out of one system and into another. His team poured effort into engagement scoring, and he admitted, plainly, that very few of their customers use it, because everyone defines engagement differently and few have a plan for what to do with a score once they have one.
Kalyan is refreshingly clear that AI is an enabler of human work, not a replacement for it, and genuinely optimistic that we can make every donor feel stewarded like a major one. I think people connect to him because he is both a builder and a straight shooter, and our field could use more of both.
Big Themes This Week
Declining participation, not total dollars, is the real threat to a program’s long-term sustainability.
“Integration” has become the most abused word in advancement tech. Real integration means seeing the same person whole across every system.
Engagement and fundraising aren’t two worlds with a handoff, they’re one continuum, and our systems and teams should reflect that.
Team Discussion Questions
Are we watching participation as closely as we watch dollars?
Where do our tools promise to connect but quietly don’t, leaving the same person split across systems?
Do we treat engagement and fundraising as a continuum, or as a handoff?
Upcoming Member Events
Agora
Behind the Scenes of a Signature Alumni Event: Lessons from the Bentley Alumni Conference
A great alumni conference can do more than bring people together — it can create the conditions for relationships to grow, alumni expertise to strengthen the institution, and university priorities to become meaningful and relevant to graduates.
In this Agora, Allison Kerivan, Executive Director of Advancement Relations, will take attendees behind the scenes of the Bentley Alumni Conference, the university’s flagship professional development and networking experience, and share how it has evolved into a strategic platform for alumni engagement and donor cultivation.
Date: Thursday, September 3 from 12 - 1 pm
Faculty-in-Residence
For six weeks beginning August 17 - September 25, Speaking Engagement welcomes Mallory Erickson — executive coach, creator and host of the What the Fundraising podcast, and author of the book by the same name — as our inaugural resident. We’ll have a final live Symposium event for members on September 23.
