How UC Riverside went from a 56% to ~100% response rate on impact report narratives for funds utilized in FY25

The Challenge

UC Riverside’s donor relations and stewardship team faced growing pressure to maintain donor trust while managing increasingly complex reporting requirements.

Key obstacles:

• Manual and decentralized processes: Reporting data was scattered across multiple systems, with dual endowment pools and decentralized fund administrators complicating reconciliation.

• Limited staff and escalating costs: Heavy reliance on printed annual reports caused rising printing costs and production delays.

• Disparate data sources: Financial and narrative data had to be merged manually across departments, leaving room for inconsistency.

• Operational inefficiencies: Audit cycles (July–September) constrained reporting timelines, while staff struggled to coordinate impact narratives and fund usage across campus.

• Shifting donor expectations: Donors increasingly expected transparency and earlier delivery of impact reports, but UCR’s traditional processes made this difficult to achieve.

The Solution

After evaluating 25 different vendors, UC Riverside selected FundMiner as their reporting platform, as it delivered on their requirements.

Implemented solutions:

• FundMiner Intelligent Reporting: Integrated fund, finance, and recipient data into a single platform for report creation and distribution.
• Automated workflows: Streamlined narrative collection, reminders and status trackers, reducing the manual back-and-forth of email requests
• Unified templates and digital distribution: Created consistent, branded reports that could be delivered via PDF, print, or personalized microsites.
• Operational alignment: The team is now thinking about the full Fund Management suite to further integrate fund administration, reporting, and impact data.

The Results

Immediate impact:

• Delivered reports three weeks earlier than previous years by using FundMiner's integrated reporting and packaging capabilities.
• Increased narrative collection response rate from 56% to 100% for FY25 funds utilized, by leveraging FundMiner's narrative collection features.
• FundMiner platform paid for itself by the savings in printing costs
• Improved accuracy and accountability, eliminating errors from manual spreadsheets.
• Cross-campus efficiency, enabling decentralized units to contribute narratives without any additional staffing needed.

Looking Ahead:

• Given the ability to produce reports more efficiently and effectively, the UCR team is now looking to establish an earlier distribution standard for future endowment reports.