Bloomerang understands the importance that the arts has on modern culture and life. Numerous performing arts centers, arts councils, humanities charities and other educational or cultural institutions choose Bloomerang’s donor database solution.
Below are just a few thoughts and success stories from organizations just like yours.
Located in Columbia, SC, EdVenture Children’s Museum boasts nine world-class exhibit galleries, a library, learning laboratories, resource centers and other visitor amenities. Within its total 92,000 square feet, there are more than 350 individual hands-on exhibits.
Louis Fawcett, Senior Vice President of Principal Gifts, was looking to downsize from Blackbaud.“It was too expensive and too complicated. I don’t need a Gulfstream to hauls stuff across town. A pickup truck works great.”
Louis was drawn to our affordable pricing, user-friendly interface, and most importantly the ability to measure donor retention.
In seven months of using Bloomerang, EdVenture has moved from 29% donor retention to 46%!
“We’re going to continue to steward our existing donors through the education, ask and thank process. I would love to see our donor retention climb over 50% as our next goal!”
The German American Heritage Center (GAHC) seeks to preserve the heritage of our German speaking ancestors for present and future generations and to enrich our knowledge of the German immigrant experience.
The Mission is to “preserve and enrich for present and future generations knowledge of the German immigrant experience and its impact on the American Culture.” GAHC’s focus is cultural programs and immigrant contributions. GAHC seeks to reach out to other cultural groups and demonstrate the contributions immigrants from many countries and from varied backgrounds have made to the ethnic palette which is the United States.
German American Heritage Center was ready to ditch Excel for an intuitive donor management system that would be easy to learn and use. “We were using excel spreadsheets for each campaign and had no way of connecting each donation to a donor to see someone’s history. We wanted something easy to use, easy to upload our past data to, and something that would allow us refresher courses or learn new ways to utilize the system,” said Kelly Lao, Executive Director at German American Heritage Center.
After attending an AFP presentation and speaking to a Bloomerang rep, Kelly came to realize that Bloomerang’s features and functionality might just be the best fit for them. “I saw a presentation at my local AFP lunch and learn from Chris at Bloomerang and really enjoyed the features.
Kelly had finally found an easy to use donor management system that could help them get their donor data organized and focus more on building and maintaining strong donor relationships. “We are a small museum, so each donor is very important to us from $25 – $1,000 donors. We are able to place notes in on each person which helps us remember who likes to donate when or even a special note about anniversaries or volunteering.” Kelly and her team are also excited about the idea that they can now use their data from Bloomerang to pursue endowment gifts and other planned giving options.
German American Heritage Center was originally drawn to Bloomerang’s intuitive user interface, but they’ve come to appreciate its custom field functionality and donor-centricity. “I like how clean and crisp the look is with the most important info displayed on each page. We like being able to have our own categories particular to our membership and donor needs.”
Since implementing Bloomerang several pain points have been alleviated for Kelly and her team. They now have access to detailed donor information and can use that data to make informed fundraising decisions, increase donor retention, and send better segmented communications. “We now know who are our top donors, who gives consistently during which campaigns, can easily see if a donor forgot about a campaign where they usually give and call them and remind them how much they gave previously and ask them to match or increase!” They also have visibility into their donor retention rate and have noticed the benefit of improving their communication with first-time donors. “We had no way to find out if we were retaining donors. Now we can make better efforts toward making first time or once past donors into sustaining givers.”
The team at German American Heritage Center has benefited from spending less time pouring over spreadsheets and more time defining and improving their development processes. “Our whole staff now understands the development world better and we all chip in to help on campaigns instead of it being one person’s job to try and pour over spreadsheets.”
Kelly really appreciates how easy it is to use and train volunteers on the system. If she were to talk to another arts and culture organization about making the switch to Bloomerang, she’d cite the dedicated customer support team and intuitive functionality. “I would let them know how easy it is to use (we are training our 78 year old volunteer on it!) and how much support is offered. We find it to be very valuable and enjoy the format better than competing software.”
It’s amazing what an updated, user-friendly tool can do for the growth of an organization such as German American Heritage Center. “We are still finding out more and more that Bloomerang can do for us!
The mission of the Washington State Jewish Historical Society is to promote interest in and knowledge of the life, history, and culture of the Jewish people and communities of the State of Washington.
The Society is dedicated to discovering, preserving, and disseminating the history of the Jews of Washington State. This unique history is shared through publications, exhibits, displays, speakers, and tours.
Washington State Jewish Historical Society was looking for a donor management system at the same time they were looking for a website provider. They wanted something that was easy to use, but could still track the critical data that they needed it to. They were introduced to Bloomerang through Firespring, and realized that their need for a donor management system could finally be met.
Washington State Jewish Historical Society had found a system that could help them easily track their donor retention and constituent data. Bloomerang has been an asset for their donor retention and gift development processes.
Lisa Kranseler, Executive Director at Washington State Jewish Historical Society was originally drawn to Bloomerang’s capabilities, ease of use, and knowledgeable staff. “The ease, the service, the whole system seemed great.”
Lisa and her team simply can’t do without a donor management system in place. They’ve gained insights about their constituents that they never had before. “Love the way we can track people we never had the opportunity to before.”
Since implementing Bloomerang, Washington State Jewish Historical Society has benefited from improvements to several fundraising pain-points that were previously an issue. They no longer have to stress over “tracking on excel spreadsheets, notebooks, or sticky notes even.”
At the end of the day, one of the most important things Bloomerang does for Lisa and her team is help them leverage their donor data to increase donations. They love “being able to look back at the progress and records for each individual.”
It’s amazing what a user-friendly, data-focused tool can do for the long-term growth of an organization such as Washington State Jewish Historical Society.
More Customer Testimonials
“We chose Bloomerang, because it was such an intuitive system, and we also just liked the look of it. We’re a very design-focused nonprofit, and so we really liked how it looked and kind of how it was a little quirky and funny and made it fun to get into the system.
Bloomerang is awesome, because it’s cloud-based so I can have my boss on the system at his home, and we can just all be in there at one time pulling out information. So that’s really useful.”
Claire Bailey, Development Manager – Young Actors Theatre
“Through my one and a half years with Bloomerang, I’ve experienced little difficulty. Bloomerang is intuitive, easy to learn and use, visual, and well-formatted. Make an effort to get lost in the process from the very beginning, so you can find your way out – as best you can – on your own.”
“If this system doesn’t cause nonprofit organizations to really focus on their donor retention, I don’t know what will. I love the way the information you need and want on a daily basis is front and center every time you open Bloomerang. It’s there, looking at you, reminding you to take action. I’ve used many database systems over the years but this one is head and shoulders above the rest.”
Lori L. Jacobwith, Volunteer, ArtsLab