How Brother Wolf Animal Rescue Raised $1.1M+ to Rebuild After Hurricane Helene
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Key fundraising highlights
Brother Wolf Animal Rescue, serving Western North Carolina, focuses on saving at-risk animals and building strong donor relationships. After leadership changes, they cleaned up their donor database using Bloomerang, leading to better engagement and more accurate reporting. During Hurricane Helene in 2024, they used Bloomerang to raise over $1.1M for relief efforts, gaining 5,500+ new donors and launching a volunteer thank-you program. With data-driven insights from Bloomerang, they improved donor retention to 61%, personalized outreach, and updated donation forms to boost revenue.
About Brother Wolf Animal Rescue
Brother Wolf Animal Rescue serves dogs and cats in need across Western North Carolina, focusing on saving animals at risk due to medical issues, lack of space, or special care requirements. They work across county lines to provide safe places, foster homes, and a path to adoption, with strong support from donors who share their mission.
Facing the challenges of a messy donor database
When Brother Wolf experienced a leadership shift several years ago, they realized their donor database needed to be cleaned up to improve supporter engagements and relationships. Their strategy focused on ensuring high-quality data input into Bloomerang to generate accurate reports, enabling informed decisions to strengthen the organization.
In addition, when Hurricane Helene struck in the fall of 2024, Brother Wolf lost their shelter and all physical assets, but thankfully all 150 animals in the shelter were evacuated. Once their team could access power and the internet, Brother Wolf launched a campaign using a Bloomerang giving form, reaching donors around the world.
Using Bloomerang for emergency response fundraising
As a result of their hurricane relief campaign, Brother Wolf raised over $1,100,000 and gained 5,500+ new donors. To thank these first-time donors, they also launched a volunteer program to help make thank-you calls to supporters all over the country. With remarkable fundraising efforts, effective use of technology, and relentless work from staff, they are making tremendous progress toward rebuilding. For their innovative rebuild campaign, Brother Wolf was honored with the Game-Changing Campaign Givie Award at GiveCon 2025.
Solving donor data hygiene problems and improving engagement
Beyond hurricane relief efforts, Brother Wolf improved its use of the Bloomerang database by creating clear data entry rules and running custom reports. This allowed them to clean up their data and identify donors who might otherwise go unnoticed, such as those they don’t interact with face-to-face. Bloomerang’s customizable and detailed reporting features have been invaluable in strengthening the organization and maximizing their data’s potential. By leveraging these insights, Brother Wolf built stronger relationships with supporters through actions like personalized calls, handwritten notes, and tailored outreach, ensuring no donor falls through the cracks.
Bloomerang also helps Brother Wolf build meaningful donor relationships by providing data-driven insights to improve messaging and engagement. It allows their team to identify what’s working, address challenges, and ensure donors feel connected to their mission and are educated on how contributions make an impact.
Fundraising results with better campaign branding and suggested donation amounts
The Brother Wolf team recognizes that branding is essential for creating a consistent, meaningful connection with donors across different platforms and campaigns. Whether through events, a GivingTuesday campaign, or emergency disaster relief, Bloomerang’s customization tools for forms, imagery, videos, and thermometers help tailor the experience to match the campaign’s theme. This ensures donors recognize and connect with Brother Wolf’s branding while enhancing engagement and impact, resulting in a 61% donor retention rate.
By analyzing online giving data through Bloomerang, the organization noticed their average donation had increased over time, yet their suggested donation amounts remained outdated. They adjusted their donation form, raising the lowest suggested amount from $25 to $50 to align with the average gift size. This change significantly boosted online donations, increasing revenue for their programs.
The Brother Wolf team appreciates Bloomerang’s ease of use, customizability, and excellent customer support and has consistently had positive experiences with knowledgeable Bloomerang experts who guide them effectively, helping them achieve their goals.
“Bloomerang is wonderful because we can do all those really customized reports. We really appreciate that it’s not only very detailed data you’re getting out of it, but it’s very customizable. I've worked in databases before that are hard to navigate, and we find Bloomerang very intuitive to give us what we're looking for in an easy-to-digest way.”
donor retention rate
raised to rebuild after Hurricane Helene
new donors gained from the rebuild campaign
