Volunteers are the lifeblood of so many nonprofits.
 
They can also be some of your most reliable and consistent donors. Research shows that volunteers are 80% more likely to donate and make larger gifts. (And donors who volunteer? Their retention rate is through the roof!)
 
In this session, you’ll see how you can turn your volunteers into loyal and engaged donors. You’ll learn how to pinpoint what motivates your volunteers and donors, tips for segmenting your volunteers (so you tell them the right story!) and how to double down on your storytelling to volunteers.
 
So if you’re one of the many nonprofits who are reluctant to ask their volunteers to become donors and their donors to become volunteers – come to this session and stop leaving money on the table.
 
Learning Objectives:
 
• Why donors and volunteers lapse

• Donor segmentation strategies you can use to reach your target audience and engage them with your mission

• How to use empathy and emotions to connect to your audience

• The importance of segmenting your communications and employing the personal touch
 

The post Transform Relationships at Your Hunger Relief Nonprofit: How to Turn Volunteers and Donors Into Super Supporters appeared first on Bloomerang.

Challenge

Harry Chapin Food Bank spent several years looking for the appropriate, cost-effective donor management system to replace their old volunteer and donor systems.

“We spent several years looking for the appropriate system. They were all too expensive or promised to do much more than what we needed. We heard from one person about Bloomerang, vetted the product, and spoke with the CEO of the company before deciding to use it,” said Miriam Pereira, Development Director at Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida.

Solution

Harry Chapin Food Bank has finally found a user-friendly system to help with reports and email acknowledgments. “Our staff likes using Bloomerang because it’s user-friendly and the unlimited fields help us add more information. We now use the system for credit card donations, email acknowledgments, and daily reports.”

The user-friendliness and functionality of the system are what originally drew Harry Chapin Food Bank to Bloomerang. “It’s user friendly, it offers real-time information, it’s in the cloud, and the costs are reasonable.”

Not only that, but by going with Bloomerang, Harry Chapin Food Bank was able to get rid of multiple software for volunteers, donors, and grant tracking. They now have a system that could consolidate all the data they needed to track, as well as finally be able to record constituent relationships.

Results

Miriam and her team have benefited from simplified reporting and donor communication acknowledgments.

“Electronic acknowledgment is better.”

Harry Chapin Food Bank has seen improvements in electronic acknowledgments, reporting, notations, and interaction features. And they now have insight into their donor retention statistics.

Miriam and her team have also been able to alleviate the pain point of not having custom fields for more robust constituent information and reporting.

“It’s a good product for the cost. It provides real-time information and lets you know who is your most engaged donors.”

The post Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida appeared first on Bloomerang.

Challenge

Community Link was looking for an affordable, intuitive, relationship-management donor database to replace their clunky, complex, and expensive system. They wanted a functional system with good reporting and communication features at no extra cost. “As the first Director of Development, I stepped into an operation with an existing CRM that was not well suited for a one-person development program. I needed to consider ease of use, affordability, and good reports to help be successful. The former CRM was clunky, expensive, and not easy to use. When I would finally figure something out, I was not pleased with the appearance of things like letters, emails, etc.,” said Trey Harper, Director of Development at Community Link. With the timing and opportunity for better functionality, Trey was ready to make the switch.

Solution

After walking through a demo and getting a recommendation for Bloomerang, Trey was excited to see how its feature set could meet his organization’s needs. “I previewed several systems. Some were too expensive or too big for our operations and some were not functional. After walking through the Bloomerang demo, speaking to members of the team, and with other colleagues who use Bloomerang in other organizations, I felt it was the best fit!”

In addition to its innovative features and dependability as a database, Trey is happy to tout Bloomerang’s intuitiveness, knowledgeable customer support team, and ongoing learning opportunities as another reason to recommend it as a top donor management system for food banks like theirs. “Bloomerang is the best choice for the small shop fundraising operation. Many other products are developed with large operations with a large staff in mind. If you are needing something to make your job easier, Bloomerang is the most comprehensive and affordable choice. The customer service and auxiliary opportunities (webinars) are incomparable.

Results

Since implementing Bloomerang, Community Link has alleviated several fundraising pain points around tracking their donor retention, segmenting and communicating with various constituent groups, and being more donor relationship-focused. “The most instant relief was ease of use with reports, letters, and emails. It took our fundraising from looking amateurish to more professional.” Bloomerang’s features and donor retention capabilities will also grow with the team at Community Link and make their development processes more efficient — saving them time. “Bloomerang has been super helpful. Whether it is the running list of first-time donors to contact, the ease of reports, and being able to find what you need quickly; I have been able to focus on relationship building and other aspects of my job rather than data maintenance because Bloomerang takes care of those things for me!”

Not only have they seen an increase in productivity and efficiency in their development process, but Trey and the team at Community Link have also seen an improvement in their donor retention and dollars raised metrics. “Being able to track donor retention has been huge and since switching to Bloomerang, we have been able to stay in a higher range. Also, due to the reporting, we have been able to target lapsed donors and promote donations. Our organization’s income is 95% from individuals and much of the success in our fundraising comes from our ability to maintain the relationships using Bloomerang.”

All in all, it’s amazing what an insightful, intuitive, and fundraising-focused database can do for the growth of food banks such as Community Link.

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