Adventist Review
In print for more than 150 years, the Adventist Review is the flagship journal of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Founded by James and Ellen White in 1849, the magazine is the one of the oldest religious publications in North America. The Adventist Review is published monthly and has a paid circulation of nearly 30,000.
The Online Edition features selected articles and news from the magazine and also offers some web-only features.
Challenge
Adventist Review was looking for an intuitive donor management system that had greater capabilities to increase their donor base and giving. They decided it was time to make the switch from their homemade database. “We had a homemade database for managing our donors. It was hard to maintain and the designer was retiring and no one else was going to keep it up. We hoped to increase our donor base and giving and needed something with greater capabilities,” said Sharon Tennyson, New Believer Ministry Coordinator at Adventist Review.
After trying out some smaller database options, Sharon attended a Philanthropic Services Institute conference in Baltimore a couple years ago and met some of the Bloomerang team. She was impressed with what she saw and the rest (as they say) is history.
Solution
Adventist Review had found an intuitive system that could meet their needs and help them better focus on and increase their constituency base. Bloomerang could fit nicely into their gift development and donor retention processes, especially on the donor communication side. “I am able to design lovely thank you letters that are very professional and specific for the donation, i.e. if there is a gift subscription involved.” Segmenting and creating unique and custom donor communication pieces is a breeze now.
On top of Bloomerang’s functionality to enhance their fundraising efforts, Sharon and her team have also been impressed with the superb customer service they’ve received through online chat. “Your online ‘chat’ people have consistently been outstanding. I am certain some of my questions are dumb! No one ever makes me feel dumb either. Since we do just one annual appeal, I often forget how to pull up the database to send to the printer, etc and I always get good, pleasant help from support. Thank you.”
Results
Sharon and her team have benefited from improved donor communications — and they still have room to improve even more! “Constituent communication is improved since we switched to Bloomerang since it is easy to see donations, letters sent to donors and access their phone numbers. I bet I am not even using the software to its fullest yet.”
Along with improved donor communications, the team at Adventist Review has loved how easy Bloomerang is to use. Inputting donor data is actually enjoyable. “Bloomerang is so easy to work with I enjoy updating address changes and adding emails and phone numbers to the database, which helps if the address changes and something gets returned.”
At the end of the day, not only have Sharon and her team benefited from implementing Bloomerang, but they’ve encouraged other Adventist organizations to make the switch and see the same results they have. “I have offered positive words to other Adventist entities thinking of switching to Bloomerang. Since I work at the world headquarters of our church, many Adventist visitors come through and I have explained to them why I like using Bloomerang.”
It’s amazing what a user-friendly, donor-centric tool can do for the long-term growth of an organization such as Adventist Review.