May 2026 Donor and Engagement Experience Update
A sincere thank you to everyone who participated in the CEMI-DEEP Phase 1 Kickoff! Your enthusiasm, engagement, and thoughtful participation helped make the event a strong start to this important next chapter of the program. We’re excited to continue building momentum together as we move deeper into planning, discovery, and implementation activities across the initiative.
📅 Major Progress Update: Epic Timelines and Bio/Demo Milestones
We’re excited to share a detailed look at the current DEEP implementation roadmap and the progress already underway within our first major workstream. Please feel free to share this update with your teams and colleagues as appropriate. This communication has been shared with stakeholders and partners across Ithaca, Cornell Tech, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Weill Cornell Medicine.
Epic Timeline Overview
Below is the current projected timeline for each major implementation epic:
- Epic 1 – Bio Demo: 03/23/26 – 08/06/26
- Epic 2 – Campaigns: 07/13/26 – 09/11/26
- Epic 3 – Gift Processing: 08/21/26 – 01/05/27
- Epic 4 – Prospect Research/Manager: 11/11/26 – 03/25/27
- Epic 5 – Membership & Engagement: 02/12/27 – 06/10/27
- Epic 6 – Backlog: 04/49/27 – 07/01/27
- Epic 7 – Security and Permissions: 05/07/27 – 07/23/27
Bio/Demo Epic Progress
The Bio/Demo Epic has already seen significant engagement and collaboration across teams:
- 45 days of active work completed
- 558 use cases identified and reviewed
- 174 decisions documented
- 12% complete overall
These numbers represent an incredible amount of cross-functional collaboration and thoughtful analysis in a relatively short amount of time. Thank you to everyone contributing their expertise and helping move this work forward.
🔍 NEXT STEPS
As we continue progressing through the Bio/Demo Epic, teams will remain focused on discovery sessions, requirements validation, and decision documentation. Additional collaboration opportunities will continue throughout the upcoming campaign and gift processing phases.
We’re also preparing for future volunteer participation opportunities in key project activities, including:
- Change Network: This helps ensure DEEP communications and enablement are grounded in unit realities by surfacing questions and feedback early, testing messages, and supporting peers as DEEP activities increase. If you’re interested in joining the Change Network, please email Tracy Cary (tlc47@cornell.edu).
- Testing: Testing throughout the project will be vital in ensuring the new systems are working as intended. If you’re interested in helping, you can fill out the form on the CEMI site.
More information on how to participate will be shared in upcoming communications. We encourage staff members interested in supporting training, testing, and change readiness efforts to stay engaged.
⚙️ BIG PICTURE / PROGRAM CONTEXT
A quick reminder: The Cornell Experience Modernization Initiative (CEMI) – Donor and Engagement Experience Project (DEEP) is a multi-year initiative focused on modernizing engagement, fundraising, and operational systems across Cornell.
The future-state platform is expected to provide several long-term benefits, including:
- Use common technologies and processes configured to reflect Cornell’s shared goals across the business units.
- Improving how we understand, engage, and steward our alumni, grateful patients, and friends.
- Prioritizing out-of-the-box features and best-practice models, customizing only when essential to Cornell’s mission or compliance requirements.
- Focus technology, process, and data improvements to provide front-line fundraisers and engagement teams with real-time insights that convert relationships into results.
- Data governance that spans all partners to maintain clarity on data ownership, integration standards, and stewardship roles to provide data that is easy to access and analyze to support evidence-based decisions across the function.
- Partnerships built across Cornell, and with our vendors, through collaboration, open communication, trust, and transparency.
These improvements are designed to support a more connected, efficient, and collaborative experience for staff and stakeholders across the university ecosystem.
🎉 CONCLUSION
Thank you again to everyone contributing time, expertise, and energy to this effort. The strong engagement we’ve already seen during kickoff and the early implementation phases reflects the collaborative spirit driving this initiative forward.
We’ll continue providing regular updates as milestones are achieved and additional opportunities for involvement become available. Thanks for following along—we’re excited for what’s ahead!