University of Iowa Center for Advancement:
A six-month blueprint for moving donor reports from print to digital
What the University of Iowa Center for Advancement did before, during, and after its first digital send
The team broke the process into 10 steps
Most teams that move donor reports from print to digital start with the software. The University of Iowa Center for Advancement started with its donors.
For more than 30 years, Iowa's donor fund activity reports were printed and assembled by hand. The first year, the team printed 220. By 2025, it was more than 2,500, assembled over a week in a reserved hall by seven to nine staff members working in shifts, then mailed with no way to know whether anyone read them.
In October 2025, after six months of deliberate work, Iowa sent just under 2,100 reports digitally and mailed 470 in print to the donors who wanted paper. Donors now spend an average of 17 minutes with their reports.
Here's how Jennifer Smith Wyatt, Megan Johnson, and their team did it, step by step.
Part one: getting to yes
1. Be clear about why you're changing
The hours alone justified a change. They weren't Iowa's reason. Donors wanted their information on demand, on their phones, with stories alongside the numbers, and some were already getting that from other institutions. With the $3 billion Together Hawkeyes campaign closing at the end of 2027, Iowa needed a better way to show donors their impact.
"What really pushed us to act was realizing the experience we were delivering to those donors no longer matched what they expected," Jennifer Smith Wyatt, Executive Director of Stewardship and Campaign Management, University of Iowa Center for Advancement, told us during a recent interview.
Leading with the donor experience, not efficiency, gave the project a purpose everyone could get behind.
Previously, they had to manually check accuracy and had fear somethign would be incorrrect.
2. Let the donor experience lead the technology
Before looking at any platform, the team agreed on one rule.
"Technology decisions should never lead the donor experience. The donor experience must lead technology decisions. That principle guided every step that followed," Megan Johnson, Stewardship Program Manager, University of Iowa Center for Advancement, told us about the decision during a recent interview.
3. Assess your readiness honestly
Iowa did significant internal work before selecting a partner.
Is our CRM data clean, and what do we need to extract? Which print workflows translate to digital, and where does staff time need to shift? Who needs to champion this, and who needs convincing? How do we protect donor information in ways print never required?
Every answer shaped what the team asked of a platform.
4. Fix your data before you need it
In spring 2025, the team reached out to every report recipient without an email address on file: 528 households by mail and 128 by phone. They added 90 new email addresses and confirmed delivery preferences along the way.
The outreach turned into a stewardship win of its own. Development officers, annual giving staff, and summer interns treated each contact as a chance to connect with a donor, not just a data request. Iowa now runs it every year.
5. Plan for the budget path
Because this was new software, Iowa's budget request had to run through the IT department, where technology expenses live. That added time for approvals and a security assessment.
Knowing your institution's path in advance keeps it from becoming a surprise.
6. Choose a partner who understands where you're coming from
Iowa reviewed multiple digital report platforms. What set Mythos apart started with paper.
"What made Mythos stand out to us was that [Mythos] started as a print company, and so knew the back end of all of that. [The Mythos team] knew where we were coming from," Jennifer said.
That mattered because going digital couldn't mean leaving print donors behind. It also mattered that the partner understood advancement: fund structures, stewardship obligations, data governance, and security, without needing to be taught. And that it would push back when needed.
"They help us avoid building something that's so customizable that it becomes unsustainable," Jennifer added.
Part two: making it work
7. Name every role
Right after budget approval, Iowa defined who owned what. Jennifer served as project sponsor and Megan as project manager. A data lead owned data integrity and output readiness. An IT manager owned systems integration and security. A project coordinator kept deadlines on track. The communications team owned the design. Stewardship staff served as content specialists and accuracy partners. Iowa still works in that structure today.
8. Bring your skeptics inside
Development officers wanted to be sure they would still play a role in the process. Iowa's answer was collaboration: officers can see exactly what their donor will receive before it goes out, then follow up with a call to walk through it together. Stewardship staff had face-to-face conversations with fundraisers, and a one-page guide explained what donors would see.
"We were able to say, no, no, no, we trust the process. And absolutely you can still be involved," Jennifer said.
Longtime team members, some with decades of print reports behind them, needed to trust that the data would line up without checking every page by hand. Showing them was what worked.
"Being able to sit with any of our colleagues and show them this is how a story is created, this is how a report comes together. And it really is as easy as Mythos told us," Megan added.
9. Start simple
In year one, Iowa intentionally left narrative stories out of its larger group of Level B reports. The team focused on getting the foundation right first: data accuracy, the donor experience, security, and adoption.
The smaller set of Level A reports for top donor families used more of the platform's dynamic content, so the team could learn the full capabilities on a smaller scale.
"This was the right decision for us because digital stewardship is iterative," Jennifer said.
10. Keep print as a choice
Iowa expected preference diversity and planned for it. The 470 households who received print got reports that mirrored the digital version, printed and mailed by Mythos, with instructions for switching to digital if they wished.
Longtime team members, some with decades of print reports behind them, needed to trust that the data would line up without checking every page by hand. Showing them was what worked.
"Some donors will always prefer print, and that's okay, because digital delivery doesn't eliminate choice. It expands it," Jennifer said.
The timeline
Start to finish, implementation took about six months.
- April to May: budget and contract approval, IT requirements, donor preference outreach
- June to September: staff training, data mapping, process development, content and media gathering, design
- October: data upload, report creation, then testing and proofing, and more testing and proofing
Megan spent much of that time perfecting the data mapping document, the piece that turns raw data into impact a donor can see, working back and forth with the Mythos team until it matched Iowa's vision. Mythos trained the whole team, provided reference guides, and designed the report templates.
"Understandably, we had many fears of the unknown with new technology, and they truly alleviated those fears. I cannot overstate how reassuring it is to have an incredible partner like Mythos," Megan said.
On October 31, a small group huddled around one computer in Megan's office and hit send. A year earlier, the same work had filled an assembly hall. "Thankfully, it was a Halloween treat and not a trick," Megan told us with a laugh.
Define success beyond the numbers
Iowa measures success in four places.
- Donors better understand the impact of their philanthropy.
- Fundraisers have more informed conversations.
- Staff spend more time on relationships and less on assembly.
- And the platform keeps evolving as donor expectations change, without being rebuilt from scratch.
Treat it as infrastructure
Iowa is now sending its second year of digital reports, and treating them as infrastructure for the future rather than a one-year project. This year the team moved all Level A outreach (scholarship, alumni, and faculty notes) into Mythos Surveys, added financial data points for more spending transparency, tested sample data earlier, and tracked every moving part in one Mythos Projects view. Donors can now open their reports from previous years, something Iowa could never offer without reprinting them.
The events team has adopted the platform too. Event landing pages now put everything an attendee needs in one place, and they've become Iowa's standard approach.
Five questions to start with
If you're weighing the same move, Iowa suggests starting here.
- What donor experience are we creating?
- Is our data ready?
- Who needs to trust the process?
- Where should donors retain choice?
- How will we measure success?
"For us, this wasn't about adopting new technology for the sake of innovation. It was about creating an experience that better serves donors while giving our teams better tools to do their work,"
