How Capital Humane Society Uses Bloomerang to Sustain its 52% Donor Retention Rate
Key highlights
The Capital Humane Society (CHS) in Lincoln, Nebraska, has used Bloomerang for over a decade to streamline event ticketing, donor management, and reporting. Bloomerang makes it easy for CHS to build detailed reports, segment donors, and send regular eNewsletters. This donor engagement contributes to their impressive 52% donor retention rate.
With all their data in one place, CHS has tighter operations and more accurate records. That’s freed up more time for focused outreach—and more time to connect displaced animals with loving families through adoption.
About Capital Humane Society
The Capital Humane Society, originally established in 1902 as the Lancaster County Humane Society, began with a mission to prevent cruelty to children and horses. Over time, the mission expanded to include a wide variety of animals. Today, CHS advocates for animals both inside and outside the shelter, connecting people and pets through community support. They care for displaced animals, promote responsible care by providing resources and support for pet owners, and connect homeless pets with families through adoption.
Why we chose Bloomerang
My name is Shana Perry, and I’m the Director of Development at Capital Humane Society in Lincoln, Nebraska. I lead a team of marketers and fundraisers who build campaigns and plan events that raise both awareness and funds for the pets and programs we support.
Bloomerang’s Giving Platform helps us streamline our event ticketing and reconciliation process. It’s intuitive and makes it easy to generate custom reports fast, which is a big win. Other platforms make it difficult to create and run reports. But with Bloomerang, I can create the reports I need quickly and easily.
Segmentation is also a big part of our strategy. Bloomerang makes it simple to segment donors so we can tailor our outreach and prioritize stewardship. I also use Bloomerang to manage my donor portfolio. I can easily filter donation amounts by year and geographic area as needed.
Bloomerang stands out against its competitors because of its accessibility and ease of use. Before Bloomerang, we used two separate products—one for events and one for donor records. We spent a lot of time going back and forth to cross-check that all of our information was entered correctly. Now that everything’s integrated and in one place, we know that our data’s accurate. That saves us hours of time!
How Bloomerang helps us succeed
We attribute our 52% donor retention rate to our consistent donor stewardship and effective data management. We use Constant Contact, which integrates with Bloomerang, to send regular emails to many of our loyal donors. We can easily subscribe new donors and engage our digital community at least twice a week. This consistency keeps us top of mind.
We record each donation and generate thank-you letters in Bloomerang. Our incredible Stewardship Coordinator updates our data weekly—address changes, deceased donors, and other important changes.
We also created a major giving society using Bloomerang reports. We track annual giving, contact preferences, and other details that help streamline stewardship and build stronger relationships. On top of that, we built our Donor Model—developed with RKD Marketing—using data from Bloomerang. It helps us identify which donors are best suited for planned giving, monthly giving, or major gifts.
Using Bloomerang for fundraising and events
We recently hosted a new event—Meowmaste, a cat yoga event—and used Qgiv by Bloomerang to register the participants. It let us cap attendance, collect contact info, and sync everything back to our CRM—something we weren’t able to do with our previous hosting site. We also added attendees to our eNewsletter and flagged them as potential major donors.
We also appreciate how easy it is to thank our sponsors and offer them real visibility by adding them to our fundraising event pages. That kind of exposure is a huge help when we’re securing sponsorships of every level.
As a mid-sized nonprofit, we host four major events and eight small ones each year. And anytime we need support, our Bloomerang rep, Hal, is right there—quick to respond and incredibly helpful!
If your nonprofit manages a donor base of 20,000 or more donors and runs both large and small events, I highly recommend Bloomerang!
“Bloomerang’s Giving Platform helps us streamline our event ticketing and reconciliation process. It’s intuitive and makes it easy to generate custom reports fast, which is a big win. Other platforms make it difficult to create and run reports. But with Bloomerang, I can create the reports I need quickly and easily.”
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