Advancement Systems Business Analyst

Primary Responsibilities

• Translates business requirements into business solutions; acts as a liaison between OIA staff and DIS staff to design and configure solutions ensuring business requirements are met.
• Works directly with the Advancement Systems Manager to define business needs, evaluate solution alternatives and support evolving operational requirements.
• Covers system troubleshooting and day-to-day support activities to ensure minimal downtime for advancement systems, reporting tools, and donor-facing applications.
• Leads medium to high complexity projects by creating and managing project plans, tracking milestones, monitoring risks, delivering regular status updates, coordinating cross-functional teams and facilitating project meetings to maintain momentum and resolve issues promptly.
• Conducts comprehensive requirements of activities including stakeholder interviews, workshops and business process reviews. Produces detailed documentation such as requirements, process flows, use cases, user stories and performs gap and impact analyses related to fundraising workflows, gift processing and donor stewardship.
• Develops and maintains data models, reporting specifications and dashboard documentation. Evaluates dashboard usage, collaborates with Business Intelligence to optimize reporting assets, retire outdated dashboards, enhance existing dashboards, and ensure analytics support donor engagement, fundraising strategies and leadership decision-making.
• Designs and implements business process improvements and workflow automations to reduce manual work, streamline data flows and improve efficiency across advancement operations.
• Trains stakeholders on analysis methods, requirements techniques, system features and new workflows. Leads end-user training for new solutions and process changes.
• Supports the integration and effective use of prospect research tools and external data sources within the CRM.
• Evaluates test plans, develops test cases and executes testing to validate functionality, quality and alignment with defined requirements.
• Recommends information technology solutions that support advancement business needs and coordinates planning and implementation of new platforms or enhancements.
• Supports change management initiatives including communication plans, stakeholder engagement, onboarding of new processes and ensuring adoption of new systems or workflows.
• Ensures compliance with data governance, security, and privacy standards. Champions data quality improvements, standardization of imports and data entry, and enforcement of governance policies across donor and constituent data.

Qualifications

• Appropriate experience may be substituted for education on an equivalent basis.
• Minimum Required Education: Bachelor’s degree
• Minimum Required Experience: 5 years
• Preferred Education: Master's degree
• Preferred Experience: Direct experience supporting fundraising operations, annual giving, gift processing, donor stewardship and advancement systems in a higher education or nonprofit organizations