Case Study: Princeton University achieves faster insights and fewer errors with Tableau Software

Princeton University Office of Development Sees “A Paradigm Shift” with Tableau

Princeton University’s Office of Development, which manages fundraising and donor relationships, struggled with slow, error-prone manual reporting. Staff routinely merged multiple reports in Excel, spent up to two days preparing stale analyses for executives, had limited tools to visualize prospect engagement, and relied on hunches—especially for international alumni outreach.

By adopting Tableau (desktop authors plus Tableau Server for ~150 users) and blending Oracle, Excel and marketing data, the office created interactive dashboards that refresh in seconds and can visualize up to 8 million rows. The change halved time-to-insight, reduced human error, improved communication across teams, and enabled map-based international engagement analysis—allowing staff to answer more questions faster and target prospecting more effectively.

Princeton University

Heather Campbell

Associate Director, Development Research Analytics