Bellarmine Preparatory School

Bellarmine, as a Catholic college preparatory school in the Jesuit tradition, through dedication to academic excellence and development of the whole person, graduates young men and women of competence, compassion, and conscience, who are committed to leadership and service.

Challenge

Bellarmine Preparatory School was looking for flexible donor management software to help them with donor outreach and engagement. “Our primary challenge with our old system was the inflexible nature of producing reports and lack of linkage to our electronic method of engagement and solicitation of many of our donors,” said Dean Hanks Vice President of Development at Bellarmine.

Solution

Setting up a donor database solution with Bloomerang looked appealing to Dean and his team. They were initially drawn to the system’s accessibility and intuitiveness. “From the outset, Bloomerang was a more accessible and intuitive system that our entire team could use more capably. We have been able to produce reports quickly and easily with consistent and accurate data outcomes, and our ability to reach our donors linking Bloomerang to electronic platforms has been seamless. The ability to access all of Bloomerang’s applications on multiple devices was particularly appealing.”

After choosing Bloomerang, the team at Bellarmine hasn’t looked back. “We are very pleased with our switch to Bloomerang, and we even have the President of our school easily and directly adding his donor engagement notes to the donor record immediately after his visit. This is something he did not do when we were with Blackbaud because of how complicated and cumbersome the process was.”

Results

Since implementing Bloomerang, Bellarmine Preparatory School has alleviated several fundraising pain points. They now have a central system to house and easily report on all of their donor data. “The primary remedy that Bloomerang provided for our entire team was the ability to easily and effectively access data for donors and easily create and produce reports for analysis and review.” They have also been able to focus more time and energy on improving the quality of their constituent communications. “The immediate impact has been felt in that each team member can more easily review donor information and engage donors more effectively.”

Bloomerang has also fit nicely into Bellarmine’s donor retention and gift development processes. “With more than 10,000 registered alums, we are constantly striving to enhance our electronic communication with them to keep them informed of what is happening in their school and how they can help us achieve our mission. Bloomerang gives us the tools to seamlessly and effectively stay in contact with our donor base and effectively track their level of support and involvement.”

In a nutshell, the team at Bellarmine is confident in its ability to retain more donors and raise more money through engagement. “We are confident that by better measuring the quality and frequency of how we engage our donors it will most certainly affect our donor retention percentages and our overall dollars raised.”

It’s amazing what a user-friendly, donor engagement-focused tool can do for the growth of an organization such as Bellarmine Preparatory School. “If you desire a database management system that is open, flexible, user friendly and still provides high-quality donor records and provides for more effective interaction, then Bloomerang is what you should consider.”