Many to Many: The Growth of Corporate Engagement at Georgia Tech

Advisory board. At the same time, it might be monetary. And for us. A big example of that is that our football field is now referred to as Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field. Well, that's sports marketing dollars and it really doesn't fit into any of those other areas of engagement. And I'm most often asked we're gifts on this. And I'd like to point out that gifts are a type of an agreement And they are a type of funding. But they are not a form of engagement. And a gift might work to support a student organization A gift might work to support a faculty lab, a gift might uh work. As many of you know, sometimes companies will contribute to a faculty member's research.

But more often than not. These agreements are either contracts and or grants. And I put contracts first, although most of our offices might be called grants and contracts. I put contracts first because more often than not, that's what they are. And a student engagement activity that might require a contract as opposed to a gift would be a capstone project that incorporates an intellectual property provision. Or a consortium membership program that a faculty member may have. That is providing benefits to that partner. That may make it not a gift.

Next, please. Now, nine channels of engagement. My people are measured on seven forms of revenue. And they are gifts. Well, I'll start here. What I want to point out here is that while a hundred 100%. Yeah. Prior to my arrival at georgia tech The corporate relations officers that were here that were part of the development organization were appraised. Only by the gift dollars that they raised. And in fiscal year 23, gifts received at Georgia Tech accounted for 21% of the total corporate investment. In fiscal year 24, that total investment increased, but gifts were at 18%. Now I'll notice that something got cut off on this pie chart.

But in the bottom industry sponsored projects. That is a subawards under federal prime contracts So thank Air Force to Lockheed Martin, Lockheed martin. To Georgia Tech. And on the right side, the upper right, that 29%, That would be a company's own internal research and development funding provided to Georgia Tech. I'd add that in fiscal year 24, the subawards under federal prime contracts accounted for 37% of our total corporate investment. Industry sponsored research from their own funds accounted for 36% of total corporate investment. And professional and executive education. That is where we're direct billing a company rose to 6% of total corporate investment. So seven forms of partnership revenue. Let's go through these.

From the nine channels My people are measured on gifts. We're looking at gifts pledged. We're reporting on gifts received. And we're also processing research gifts that is gifts that are not accepted by the Georgia Tech Foundation Because there is a research element to that gift. The search, both direct and federal subawards. I point out here that what we need to look for in our processing And in a future state, our desire is to be able to see the direct awards funded, the federal pass-through funded Award contract amount so the total potential value of the contract the pass-through contract amount And then expenditure data and invoice data for both of those sides of the research picture. Executive and professional education is something that is distributed across Georgia Tech.

So we're trying to capture information and opportunities from the Georgia Tech Professional Education Organization. The Scheller College of Business Executive Education Program. Through the Georgia Tech Research Institute, which primarily provide services to the federal government but also to businesses as well. And then through any additional awards that may have been made for excuse me for professional through the Georgia Tech Research Corporation. Many partners on campus that we need to be prepared to work with to process an opportunity in executive and professional education. The fourth area is that licensing and licensing of both intellectual property and trademarks. While my office is not doing the licensing. We work to help identify opportunities for our partners in tech transfer, we both report up to the executive Vice President for Research.

And my relationship managers are responsible for promoting our intellectual property portfolio to our corporate partners. I'd add that my strategic initiatives group Also, if they're developing a go-to-market strategy to increase corporate engagement in, say, medical innovation They're going to explore what intellectual property that we have of in our portfolio that is available for licensing that may be of benefit To current partners and prospective partners. In the medical innovation space. Next, Caitlin, leasing so perhaps a strange thing for a relationship manager to be exploring, but we do have partners that do take space and pay for that space on our campus. Next. Fee-based utilization of labs and equipment. I think perhaps one of the untapped areas by many universities But it was really the first work that I did at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In 2001 was selling excess computing capacity to industry. And then finally sponsorships that just don't fit anywhere else. Now, why do we want to keep track of all of these areas of revenue? Well, two reasons. The president, if he were to ask me what is total corporate investment at Georgia Tech. He wants to know the whole picture. He's not asking for just gifts and research. He's looking for the balance of that information as well. And additionally, if the president asked me What is Coca-Cola or Boeing or Amazon's total investments in campus, I have to go beyond gifts and research. Next slide, Caitlin. So for us, that's 22 different places where data reside.

In silos for us to get a complete picture of where our partnerships are generating revenue. Next slide. So unpacking what student engagement is. So for us, student engagement would be these opportunities that are related to perhaps a student organization gift or a capstone. It could be a corporate affiliate program. That's really about recruiting hackathons, makeathons. Student organization investments. Sponsorships of a variety of types, but it also could be non-monetary like recruitment and internships. So nine opportunity types. I have six campus colleges to keep track of. And with this list here, there are three primary agreements.

Faculty engagement could be consortium participation It may be knowledge sharing. For non-monetary purposes. It could be calling industry partners together to provide industry insights. Very often, my team is looking for letters of support for federal funding. And we're also exploring faculty consulting connectivity with companies. Where we would do a better job of making a connection between external partners And faculty who may be interested in consulting. Research, both internal research and development, but those federal subawards And at Georgia Tech, we have at multiple um multiple organizations across campus that are also doing applied research, both on the campus and through our georgia tech Research Institute. In fact, that research and sponsored project Revenue accounted for 73% of total corporate investment. And as of today, there are 2,228 active projects with 554 different corporate entities.

Next slide. Professional and executive education both We are promoting customized curriculum and certification programs But we also want to, for the benefit of our campus partners. Promote those things that are open enrollment where it's not just one company, but where anyone could sign up. And then targeted solutions, again, that fee-based utilization of labs and equipment. Technical testing that doesn't really rise to the level of of research and other specialized services agreements such as the analysis of a company's processes to seek improvements. This fee-based utilization was really driven home for me in a 2021 report by the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities that listed this fee-based utilization of our equipment. Being at the very top of a company's interest in campus.

Licensing our intellectual property and trademarks. By the way, I'd say that what we've discovered exposing our intellectual property portfolio to corporate partners has not been a lot of success in licensing IP. But new relationships that have been developed with companies Because they discover faculty that are doing research that they find to be of value to their business. Next slide. Startup connectivity. We are at Georgia Tech. Very focused on increasing the number of startups that are coming out of Georgia Tech. And we consider it a win when we can help those startups connect to our corporate partners. But we're all also seeing a voracious appetite by many of our corporate partners to know about the startups that are coming out of the university.

Co-location. I cannot express how important it is for us, the benefits that occur from having a company open up facilities nearby. And during my time here at Georgia Tech. Utilizing this nine channels of engagement framework have generated at least two new R&D facilities just off of our campus. And again, these additional value which we measure which again maybe monetary and may not be monetary. So 20 agreement types with various degrees of negotiation and multiple campus partners and organizations that we need to work with with every opportunity type that we have And a CRM needs to be designed for that. So again, a traditional CRM that is designed for individual giving is important. But knowledge still could be shared between one person and another. And I think that the CRM may become less important.

Over time, but it's not possible. With this many to many connectivity. So the CRM is vitally important for information sharing, for collaboration. For productivity and revenue growth. But also contractual requirements. Excuse me, contractual compliance. And broad partnerships are essential for corporate partner retention. As many of you know, many companies have reduced the number of corporate partners excuse me, campuses that they engage with. They have not they've have not increased their funding dramatically. But they've down selected the number of campuses that they'll interact with.

Essentials of getting from one to one to this many-to-many model. First, it has to be mandated by university leadership. These changes at Georgia Tech would not have been made without the request and demand of a new president, Angel Cabrera. It would not have taken place without the partnership between the vice president for development and the executive vice president for research. Then we need to identify who our campus partners are in making this migration. Then there needs to be strategies developed at the company level, how handoffs may be handled if that's needed. Data silos across the enterprise need to be mapped. You'll have to understand what you have that is sellable to industry. So what are your monetizable assets that you have to provide to industry that they can fund.

What are the student populations? What is the intellectual property portfolio? What is the research in a particular domain with specialized equipment that you have? That you have, you need to know. Then dashboards need to be created since you can understand the complex relationships. Metrics need to be expanded. I needed to create 11 new job descriptions when I came here. To Georgia Tech because particularly for the relationship managers Their job description said that the only thing they were evaluated on this philanthropic funding. Well, again, 18 to 21% of the of the revenue generated shouldn't be 100% of their appraisal.

New framework needs to be inculcated, not just with the people on the corporate relations team, but your leadership at the campus needs to understand that when we talk to companies, we really need to do so in a complete picture, talking about every way that a company can engage. Legacy policies and practices need to be overcome I think the inertia that comes with a corporate relations operation that has existed for decades. That's a hard change for some people to make. And some people may need to move on Others realized how much better their job was because they were getting credit for the diversity of funding coming in. But then training needs to take place because you have people working on types of engagements That they may not worked on in the past. And of course, essential, this B2B crm needs to be implemented Because you can't keep track of all of the opportunities otherwise. So what I'm able to do now that I have not been able to do in the past is essentially I am able to assign opportunities to relationship managers When I'm in a conversation with a partner. That they may not have heard, that there may be an opportunity for the company to open up a facility.

Well, let's make that an opportunity that we can pursue in Salesforce. I'm able to view all of the opportunities that all of the relationship managers have. They're responsible for expanding their relationships And… increase in revenue, but expanding the types And ways that we engage with a company. And I can very quickly see both through the entire Salesforce instance how many opportunities that we have. But also at the individual relationship manager level How broad are their opportunities? Is everything student engagement? Is everything just research? We want to see a blend of the types of engagements that a company has. And then I'm using the campaign feature In our instance of Salesforce.

To document the services that we're providing. To our internal clients. So I have a College of Computing campaigns Parents, I have a College of Engineering. Campaign parent. And then every special project that we're doing for these deans would be a child relationship to that parent. Campaign opportunity. What I want to explore in the coming months is how to utilize Salesforce for post-award compliance can we use it We can certainly use it for scheduling our reporting requirements to a partner. Could we also use it? For invoicing purposes. And I also want to explore using Salesforce. For contract negotiations.

I'd be curious as to whether anyone participating today has experience in that domain. I am going to the education summit in Chicago in a few weeks and hope to learn more about that. Wonderful. Thank you very much. That was such a perfect transition into our next slide, Mark. We're going to open it up for questions in just a second. And while I touch on some events that RedPath will also be at. Feel free to pop them in the chat or the Q&A and we will make sure to address them. Before we move to that part, I did just want to plug two upcoming events that REDPAC will be at. The first one is the autumn annual meeting. So that is coming up just in a few days here next week. Chad is actually going to be the red pather that will be in attendance in National Harbor, Maryland, and we will be at booth number 126. So if you're also going to be there, feel free to stop by our booth, say hi to Chad. I'm sure he would love to talk to you about all things tech transfer. And then the second one, similar to Mark, we will also be at the Salesforce Education Summit coming up in two weeks from March 10th through the 12th in Chicago. We will also be doing a presentation there called Scaling Student Success, Improved Support in Two Months. With Middle Georgia State University. So if you're going to attend Education Summit, feel free to head to our session or come find some red pathers.

All right. With that, we will turn it over to questions. I do see that there is one in the chat. Mark, does your office manage or execute contracts and grants with industry or is this done through VCR office? If done through VCR office How do you influence these contracts? That is a great question. Two things. My organization, my boss is the executive vice president for research. And our office of sponsored Projects also reports up to the executive vice president for research through our our research through our Chief Research Operations Officer. The EVPR has asked my office and we're testing this now we're testing this now to to manage the mra and challenging sra process. As a project that we would be project managers to the contract on negotiations.

But not doing the negotiations ourselves. That would be left to our um our corporate and international consulting office. I'm going to give it a minute to see if anyone else has any questions. What they would like to ask. I did put this in the chat at the top of the webinar as well, but just a heads up, this webinar is being recorded and will be sent out. So if you wanted to revisit any of this information or pass it along to someone else who might be interested, that will be available in the next few days. A couple more questions just came in. Who has access to the CRM, Mark? Sure. There are 24 members of this office. The Office of Corporate Engagement, Operations, Strategic Initiatives. And then the relationship management team.

We've just launched, but we are going to expand this out to other campus partners There's a business development person at the Alumni association There is someone that manages the corporate affiliate program in our College of Computing. But I incorporate those people and invite them to participate encourage them to participate in our standing biweekly meetings. So although they are in separate organizations. We treat them like family and want them to have access to the CRM. Ideally, ideally what I'm about to say are the views expressed are Mark Nolan's. And not necessarily those of the leadership of Georgia Tech. Ideally, I would like to see The contracting team. Tech transfer Career services economic development and others utilizing our instance of Salesforce.

All right. Next question. Is it correct to say that corporate engagement is most effectively structured as a function of economic development? Particularly in a university setting. Corporate engagement aligns with economic development when the goal is to build strategic partnerships that drive investment, job creation, workforce development, and industry collaboration. Great question. So in my 15 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Though I was in a corporate relations function, both at a center and then at the campus level, my job title included economic development. At Carnegie Mellon University. Economic development was not part of my title But I was responsible for corporate attraction and working with the economic development authorities to work on corporate attraction. Georgia Tech has a very good office of economic development when my team develops a lead and they report to government relations.

When my team develops a lead, we turn that over to greg king I'm in the Office of Economic Development. And have him follow that through to hopefully a lease with our with our partners. All right. There are no other questions coming in, but we have a little bit more time so we can just wait a few more seconds and let Anyone else type some questions in. While they do that, I do want to just take another moment to thank both Mark and Chad. I know there was a lot of work on the back end put into building this presentation. So I really appreciate all of the work leading up to this and then obviously being here today To share this information with everyone. One more question. How long did it take to set up the CAM slash CRM? How long did it take to set up the CRM slash customize to fit your organization? I'm laughing because i i i i i I said about one year ago. That I think I had had about enough of working at Georgia tech because I hadn't gotten the budget for Salesforce.

I got the budget. Maybe a week later. I think that i think the contracting probably took longer than anything else. The fact that RedPath was already working with public universities In Georgia helped a lot. But we did interview multiple consulting firms and chose red path quite frankly, because they seem to be listening To what I was saying, some contracting companies kept going back to So when you have a conversation about a gift, well, again, that's 20% of my revenue. Let's talk about some of the other things as well. The customization itself After the user interviews let's say 90 days. I could be truncating that a little bit

With contracting, we were ready to go live just around the holidays So that's a six month period of time. But a good portion of that was the contracting effort. I think we actually have hours left. That we're utilizing for training purposes. All right. Any other questions before we go ahead and wrap? Reach out at any time. I'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have. Mark, would you uh mind adding your email to the chat. Otherwise, I can quick as well so that we can um People can reach out if they have further questions.

Do every one. Thanks. There we go. Thanks, Chad. All right. So I'll give everyone a second if you want to just quick copy Mark's email address if you have further questions for him, feel free to reach out and ask about his engagement and what Their plans are moving forward. And with that, we will go ahead and wrap. Thank you all for joining us today. I hope you found this Very insightful. The recording will be sent out in the next couple of days. So keep your eyes open for that. And I hope you have a great day. Thanks.