Cooking up change at Compassion Delivered
In the heart of Northeast Ohio, Compassion Delivered has been a beacon of hope for individuals facing life-threatening illnesses. Co-founder and Executive Director Amanda Anschutz shared, “We provide high-quality meals at no cost to people diagnosed with life-threatening or terminal diseases.” This mission, rooted in compassion and care, faced operational hurdles impacting core activities.
The challenge
Compassion Delivered’s first CRM system created many challenges for the organization, including difficulty managing donor information and maintaining effective communication. They discovered they were too small to get the most out of that system. “We let it sit dormant, and we did a lot of things old school with Excel spreadsheets and Word documents,” Anschutz remarked. She even managed grants on a spreadsheet.
Things were equally grim when it came to managing volunteers. “We would manually enter in the volunteer hours, and there would always be errors because you may forget or don’t have the right data,” recalled Amanda. “We missed opportunities to report the hours people work, which equates to dollars to the organization.”
In 2020, Anschutz realized, “We were missing out on many ways to engage with our donors. And that’s not okay.”
The solution
Compassion Delivered found its solution in Bloomerang, a CRM known for its scalability and user-friendly design. The transition was seamless, and the training was unparalleled. Amanda found the integrated communication and email tools to be a significant upgrade.
Integrating Qgiv for fundraising events enabled Compassion Delivered to streamline their efforts under one umbrella, enhancing efficiencies. Bloomerang also helped the organization revolutionize its volunteer management. “Our volunteers love Bloomerang. We can talk to them in real time. We can text them. They can sign up from their phone—game changer. It has just completely re-energized our volunteers to engage with us,” Anschutz shared.
The results
Bloomerang has helped lead Compassion Delivered to impressive results: a 75% growth in its donor base plus a significant increase in monthly donors from 11 to nearly 40 since adopting Bloomerang.
The organization also experienced a substantial increase in engagement rates using Bloomerang communication tools, achieving an open rate of 55% to 70%—a significant improvement over their open rate with Mailchimp. Beyond that, Anschutz notes much higher engagement from their emails, “We’ve seen a 50% to 65% return—from 20% to 30% in Mailchimp—meaning that they either engaged with us on the website, made a donation, or signed up to volunteer.” This boost underscores the effectiveness of Bloomerang in reaching and resonating with the organization’s constituents—without needing an additional tool.
With the addition of Bloomerang Volunteer, Anschutz has been able to streamline volunteer management activities down to 2 – 3 hours a week—a time savings of 50%—enabling staff to focus on higher-value projects. Further, Bloomerang reporting capabilities have enabled Compassion Delivered to quantify and communicate the value of volunteer work, highlighting the importance and impact of their contributions. “Based on the number of hours we logged, the first month of January would have cost us well over $25,000,” Anschutz noted.
“Our volunteers love Bloomerang. We can talk to them in real time. We can text them. They can sign up from their phone—game changer. It has just completely re-energized our volunteers to engage with us.”
What’s next?
Anschutz is optimistic about the future, crediting the Bloomerang all-in-one giving platform with providing stability to their donor base. Compassion Delivered’s journey with Bloomerang illustrates the critical role of innovation and the right partnerships in fulfilling a mission that truly makes a difference. Anschutz has seen the benefits of a scalable and user-friendly system, and she’s excited to continue using Bloomerang to grow their donor base and impact more lives in Northeast Ohio.
"We’ve seen a 50% to 65% return—from 20% to 30% in Mailchimp—meaning that they either engaged with us on the website, made a donation, or signed up to volunteer."
in donor base
time to manage volunteers
email open rates
monthly donors
