Continued Education or Certifications Advice

@Bobby Steurer Bobby, you have all the tools that you need, but I think the best thing to do is to focus where you want to be and look at the trends. There's a lot of work being done in automation and using the API and other tools. The Google and Microsoft certificates are fine, but to be honest you have what you need to move up a career level or two.

I have an advanced degree because I felt restricted to the database otherwise. I wanted to have some demonstrated proof of my abilities. Also, because I could do so with limited out of pocket costs (one perk of working in higher ed). But very few people have advanced degrees, and they are not necessary.

If you are interested in data analysis, I'd look more in tools designed for that. Visualization tools like Tableau or other BI reporting tools. I think those tools will allow you to be more marketable in the future.

@Bobby Steurer I did go for the Masters in Analytics (at a discount through the higher ed institution I was working for at the time). I can tell you that not all, but a large part of our curriculum was working through DataCamp and familiarizing ourselves with Git best practices. I would also recommend getting into the fundraising analytics literature (Nandishwar/Divine, Pelletier, Wiley, etc.) if you haven't already. Steve Grimes has wonderfully accessible test datasets as well. Like has been said already, you don't really need a masters degree unless you would like to be Director-level in Higher Education or the maybe the corporate world. However, I have also gone through a few certification series and often find them great on techniques refresh, but lacking in the field grounding needed to use data toward decision making. Who cares about k-means testing if you don't know when to use it toward a solution. As a fundraising intelligence person, I would recommend something more along the lines of the course offerings from the Prospect Research Institute or Staupell Analytics Group that grounds you in the why as well as the how.

Just my two cents for the best use of money toward training. Hope it is helpful.
Jess

@Bobby Steurer
Awesome thread! I'm bookmarking for myself.

@Bobby Steurer I'm a little late to the party here, but throughout my career I've always been a proponent of keeping up with what's trending in our industry and what the future looks like. While some of these trends are just that, I've seen a lot come to fruition (even something as simple as the We v. You in donor communications). There are a number of great podcasts that focus on nonprofit tech that I subscribe to-I listen to a lot from each before deciding if they're a) realistic in general and b) realistic for my organization. I believe right now the biggest trend is the use of AI to customize our donors' journey without costing additional staff and time. Some may cost additional money (if looking at CRMs that how offer this as a native component you will pay more) but a lot can be done by shifting the priorities of your current position(s). Something as simple as automation of a new donor welcome series wasn't even an option 2 years ago with NXT and now it's a major benefit.

so Look at what's trending, what you can realistically implement at your current org, what you can learn to sell yourself to potential new orgs, and try to align that with what you enjoy. If you don't like working with data visualization is it going to be beneficial for you to learn tableau or power BI even though you know you "should"? If your org constantly has projects that run behind schedule and never seem to finish on time or on budget and it drives you mad-Maybe you're better off learning the Agile way of working and become a SCRUM master.

whatever you decide, I would love to hear updates on the path you choose!