University of New Haven

Tara’s career began in university publishing, where she enjoyed writing and working with academics. The job also required a good deal of travel—too much travel, to be precise. As Tara began to look for something different, she ran into an old friend who had taken a job in donor relations at a Connecticut university. “Donor relations?” Tara had never heard of the role. Looking for something different, she interviewed and landed a job with the stewardship team.

“My first job in this space was with a big institution,” Tara explained. Her role was focused on stewardship. “Just stewardship,” to be exact. In a development office of over 300 people, Tara learned the intricacies of the gift reporting process. She enjoyed the work but wanted to find something “less siloed,” so she joined the University of New Haven’s donor relations “team.”

Upon arrival, Tara realized she now was the donor relations team. She hired an assistant, and was soon followed by a new VP of Advancement. With plans for growth and plenty of reporting needs, Tara realized the need to build some efficiencies. The process she inherited was typical: Word documents, spreadsheets, and lots of manual manipulation. Her goal was to transition to digital reporting, and that’s when a colleague introduced her to Mythos.

“I thought Mythos was only for PDFs, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the digital reporting tools,” Tara explained. “Mythos became a member of our staff.” Becoming more efficient and spending less time on reporting allowed Tara to focus on non-stewardship tasks. She now joins principal gift strategy sessions and heads up many of their events.

Tara, like many of our clients, is full of new ideas for the Mythos Platform—manty of which we are exploring in our roadmap committee process. But most importantly, Tara has reminded us that every gift and institution—regardless of size—has a story to tell.

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