Name: Ellucian CRM Advance
Rating: 3.1 (3 reviews)

Overview

Product Information on Ellucian CRM Advance

Updated 13th October 2025

What is Ellucian CRM Advance?

Ellucian CRM Advance is a software designed to support higher education institutions in managing advancement and alumni relations. The software offers features for tracking donor interactions, managing fundraising campaigns, and organizing constituent records. It integrates with institutional databases to facilitate data-driven engagement strategies and reporting. Ellucian CRM Advance helps streamline workflows related to gift management, stewardship, and event planning, aiming to enhance operational efficiency and strengthen relationships with donors and alumni. The software provides tools to analyze giving trends and measure the effectiveness of advancement initiatives, thereby supporting strategic decision-making for institutions seeking to promote long-term engagement and funding.

Overall experience with Ellucian CRM Advance

DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT

Gov't/PS/ED <5,000 Employees, Education

FAVORABLE

“Good management program - missing some customization”

4.0

Jun 23, 2023

I find there are challenges in finding where data is stored. Some people may put info in Notes, where others might add a CR for it.

Alumni & Relations Program Assistant

Gov't/PS/ED <5,000 Employees, Education

CRITICAL

“Multiple Customer Databases Create Integration Challenges for CRM Advance Users”

3.0

Jul 7, 2025

CRM Advance has provided our department to manage thousands of customers' information. In my user role, I find the product is not intuitive in use but does the job.

About Company

Company Description

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with more than 2,900 customers across 50 countries, serving more than 22 million students. With decades of experience and a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features higher education focused SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future. These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, including data-rich tools for student recruitment, enrollment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement. Ellucian’s innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners and user community of more than 45,000 provides a community of practice contributing to institutional success and better student outcomes.

Company Details

Company type

Private

Year Founded

1968

Head office location

Reston, United States

Number of employees

1001 - 5000

Website

https://www.ellucian.com

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Reviewer Insights for: Ellucian CRM Advance

Performance of Ellucian CRM Advance Across Market Features

Ellucian CRM Advance Likes & Dislikes

The reports generated are great. Exporting into Excel allows you to customize the final data set any way that you wish.

I like that there are more than one way to access customer data.

The system is very customizable and that helps us to fit our institution's needs.

1. Difficult to find where data may be stored 2. Some entities are paired with spouse automatically, some are not 3. When you generate reports, some times the wrong spouse is on the list

Because it is not as intuitive for users as other products, other departments use other customer databases and they do not speak to each other without IT assistance or manual corrections.

CRM Advance, although highly customizable, can get tricky to maintain if you do not have a dedicated system administrator. Upgrades can sometimes break customizations and although Ellucian does help fix this, it is still a bump in the road that can occur from customizing the system. Integrations do exist but they sometimes do not work as expected and bring over a lot of junk data-we wish there was a staging area for data to clean it up before bringing it over completely. This product, although great does not follow one specific business practice (since all institutions use it differently) so that can become chaotic when trying to manage expectations..