Challenge

Girls Inc. of Jacksonville was looking for a user-friendly donor database that they could easily pull the necessary information from. They needed something without a steep learning curve.

“We needed to switch to a CRM that was user-friendly while still robust enough to run dashboards and reports. We were currently in a system that was too complicated to learn and get information quickly,” said Amanda Padgett, Director of Development at Girls Inc. of Jacksonville.

Solution

Girls Inc. of Jacksonville had finally found a user-friendly, easy-to-learn system that could help them focus their efforts on retaining donors. Donor stewardship was a breeze with Bloomerang, and Amanda and her team had no trouble staying on top of their goals. “The dashboards are very helpful to see at-a-glance how we are doing on our goals. The timeline and involvement meter are great tools to help us target donors who we can steward up. The ability to log our interactions is valuable as well.”

On top of that, Girls Inc. of Jacksonville has been really happy with Bloomerang’s donor retention-focused functionality and its affordability. “We loved the way it looked and it was easy to see our goals and retention rate. It was nice to be able to send customized letters for our donations and to pull reports easily. It was also very affordable for our small nonprofit.”

Results

Girls Inc. of Jacksonville has seen several fundraising pain points be alleviated since implementing Bloomerang and ditching Excel. One such benefit is that they’ve been able to clean up their data and easily pull each donor’s giving history. They had all the information they needed right at their fingertips. “We were able to go from multiple excel spreadsheets to the database where we could clean up our data and have a history of giving at our fingertips. We could also track our grants, log our interactions leading up to a donor and give soft credits to our board members who help us fundraise.”

Thanks to Bloomerang, everything about Amanda’s development process has changed since they now have the information they need to empower it. Not only that, but donor communication has improved as well, and making changes on the fly has never been easier. “Communication has improved and getting our thank you letters out the door quickly and being able to change them as needed has been a huge help.”

It’s amazing what an uncomplicated, user-friendly tool can do for the growth of an organization such as Girls Inc. of Jacksonville. “This has helped us a lot!”

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Challenge

Girls Inc. of Central Alabama was looking for a database that would be easy to use, easy to pull reports from, and that would help them get organized.

“Our previous database was cumbersome, time-consuming to manage, and the reports were impossible to run. Also, there was literally no customer support platform. Other CRMs I’ve used were obviously created by software developers, not fundraisers, and they were reluctant to adapt to our needs,” said Karen Griner, CFRE, Development Director at Girls Inc. of Central Alabama. Enter Bloomerang. “Bloomerang’s team, however, is constantly taking user feedback and using it to improve the system so that it fits the needs of actual real-life fundraisers.”

Bloomerang is built for the modern fundraiser and Karen recognized that immediately after hearing Bloomerang’s co-founder and CRO, Jay Love, talk about his passion for the industry and the importance of donor retention. “He genuinely cares about fundraisers doing good by their donors, and so he came up with a system to help them. The end result was an awesome CRM.”

Solution

Girls Inc. of Central Alabama had finally found a dependable system that was built for fundraising and retaining donors. And Karen had found a system that could save her time and make her job easier. “I feel like I spend less time inputting data and more time using the data to do my job by interacting with donors and volunteers.” Being able to streamline their development processes was also a bonus. “I love how donor profiles are easy to read – even for busy board members – and how it streamlines all of our development operations.”

They’d also found a solution that they could customize to their specific needs, without it being complicated. They needed a balance. “Bloomerang is simple to use yet complex enough that you can customize it to your affiliate’s specific needs.”

On top of that, Girls Inc. of Central Alabama has been really happy with Bloomerang’s donor-centric functionality and its affordability. “It works great both with small and large development staffs, both in usage as well as cost. We use the donor engagement rating – as opposed to just gift amounts – to assess the level of stewardship to give each individual supporter.”

Results

Girls Inc. of Central Alabama has seen several fundraising pain points be alleviated since implementing Bloomerang. One such benefit is that they’ve been able to save time entering donations, increase productivity and decrease cost by ditching their mass email provider, and run the reports they need to empower their development team.

Thanks to Bloomerang, Karen knows their donors better and can send personalized communications with ease. “We know our donors better – Bloomerang allows you to track interactions you have with them, such as their volunteer time, attendance at Vision Meetings, email conversations, or just run-ins at the grocery store. We also can spend more time meeting and stewarding donors and less time with data entry because Bloomerang makes it simple or automated.”

At the end of the day, all of this has allowed Girls Inc. of Central Alabama to meet their goals and benefit from an increase in revenue year-over-year. “Our revenue has steadily increased in the two years since we switched to Bloomerang. We had seen a 9% growth in income between 2013-2014 and 2014-2015; when we switched to Bloomerang in 2015-2016, we saw a 19% increase in revenue. Last year, we saw an 18% increase, and to date for the current fiscal year (which ends in April 2018) we are already 70% to our budgeted goal for the year.

It’s amazing what a fundraiser-focused, donor-centric tool can do for the growth of an organization such as Girls Inc. of Central Alabama.

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