Client presentation: University of Notre Dame
At Nousmedis, we have the privilege of collaborating with exceptional organizations across different industries and countries, but working with the University of Notre Dame on a project focused on the automation of endowment reports has been an especially meaningful experience for our team.
Founded in 1842, the University of Notre Dame is one of the leading academic institutions in the United States. Known for its rigorous scholarship, strong Catholic tradition, and global impact, it consistently ranks among the top 20 U.S. universities. With over 150,000 alumni and an endowment valued at more than $20 billion, Notre Dame’s commitment to excellence, community, and transparency is evident in every aspect of its operations, including efforts towards automating reports.
When we joined forces with Notre Dame’s development team, it was to support a project that falls within the core of what we do: helping organizations automate complex, repetitive, or manual processes involving data and documents. Thus began our journey with endowment report automation that was special in more ways than one.
On the one hand, the nature of the data involved in the project—individualized financial information for endowment donors—required a high level of sensitivity and confidentiality. To protect this data, both teams made a joint effort to simulate real-life testing scenarios using anonymized or “cooked” data. This approach challenged us to program almost blindfolded, an experience that led us to explore new techniques and grow in our own practices. In the end, automating reports of endowments while maintaining security standards helped improve the team’s capabilities.
On the other hand, working with Notre Dame’s development staff was a remarkable experience. The professionalism, clarity, and thoroughness with which they guided us through their internal processes made all the difference, particularly in the automation of their reports. They patiently explained each step of the reporting system until we fully understood the logic behind it, and the way they systematically tested and documented every delivery allowed us to adjust and evolve the solution with unprecedented precision. Their input didn’t just help us meet expectations: it made the journey seamless, structured, and highly collaborative.
With such a strong partnership in place, we were ready to tackle the challenges of automating Notre Dame’s endowment reporting process.
The challenges: What problems needed solving?
Each year, the University of Notre Dame produces thousands of personalized endowment reports for donors. These documents explain how their contributions have been invested, the financial growth over time, and the impact those funds have generated. Multiple types of reports exist depending on the characteristics of each fund, and creating them manually was both time-consuming and resource-intensive, highlighting the need for automating reports.
The solutions: How we automated endowment reports
We developed a single, modular template that could dynamically adapt to the different types of endowment reports by enabling or disabling specific sections depending on the data. This eliminated the need for duplicating templates or managing multiple versions of the same report structure. This solution became the foundation of the automation of endowment reports at Notre Dame.
Our team designed and integrated the automated system with the University’s existing data sources. From there, the document generation process was streamlined: thousands of reports could now be produced in a matter of seconds using a single pagination operation. Additionally, we tackled automating the endowment reports by allowing Notre Dame’s staff the flexibility to make manual adjustments when needed, without disrupting the overall workflow.
Results: A scalable and consistent reporting process
The entire reporting process became standardized and automated, ensuring visual and structural consistency across all documents. Operational time and manual effort were dramatically reduced since only a small fraction of the reports required post-generation edits, even in large batches. The automation of endowment reports brought scalability and consistency.
Notre Dame has seen a significant boost in efficiency, a noticeable improvement in the quality and consistency of its reports, and a future-proof system that can scale without increasing the workload. For us at Nousmedis, it has also meant invaluable growth—technically and humanly—thanks to the opportunity to collaborate with such a qualified and dedicated team. These results clearly demonstrate the impact on automating reports for endowments in complex institutional environments.
It has been such an honor, and we truly hope future projects will allow us to keep discovering more about this extraordinary University.
If this project resonates with your organization’s needs, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can also explore more case studies in the Nousmedis blog to see how we’re helping teams like yours turn document challenges into automated solutions.