Hope’s Closet

Hope’s Closet’s mission is to enrich the lives of families within the foster care system in the greater Cincinnati area by providing access to support groups, training opportunities, community programs, and a thriving clothing boutique. Currently giving away upwards of $700,000 of inventory annually to foster children, Hope’s Closet seeks to support foster families throughout Ohio.

Challenge

Hope’s Closet’s previous donor management platform, DonorPerfect, proved cumbersome and inefficient for their needs. Mark Phair, Executive Director of Hope’s Closet with 20+ years in the nonprofit sector, shared that based on his experience with other relationship management solutions, DonorPerfect felt “incomplete.” He knew that to meet their goals, they would need to switch to another platform.

“Complexity has been my general experience with software. If I wanted to make a report, it was around a 19-step process,” Mark said, “It came down to a user experience that didn’t meet the needs of our average user. Having used other software platforms, it was by far the most complex and challenging one I’ve used.”

Reba Steiniger, the Office Manager at Hope’s Closet, found pulling annual tax summaries for donors to be particularly time-consuming. The process cost her more than 40 hours of the work week annually, and the customer service provided was unresponsive each time she needed assistance, costing them time and money.

As they began searching for a new solution, they identified four key improvement areas: the data-entry process, ease of donation-entry, sending thank-you letters/emails, and understanding the organization’s health and performance.

Solution

Hope’s Closet identified Bloomerang as the solution that would fit their growing nonprofit’s needs, including easier reporting and accessing clean, organized data. “Just being able to tag things so we can track it is a huge thing,” Reba said.

While attending a Bloomerang presentation at AFP Cincinnati, Mark was impressed with the practical functionality and decided to learn more about Bloomerang. Experiencing stellar, responsive customer support and working on a platform designed for fundraisers helped Mark and Reba identify Bloomerang as the CRM for Hope’s Closet.

Goals

Streamlining processes and getting time back are high priorities for the team, allowing them to dedicate more time to building out programs for the people they serve. By more widely sharing the Hope’s Closet story, Mark and Reba strive to alleviate the challenges that foster families face and bring awareness to the community.

Mark’s advice for any organization looking to switch to a new donor management system is to understand and prioritize your organization’s needs, analyze whether the current solution is meeting them, and focus on understanding how the platform they are evaluating can alleviate pain points.