Indiana Forest Alliance

Indiana Forest Alliance (IFA) is a non-profit, statewide organization of individuals dedicated to the long-term health and well-being of Indiana’s native forests. We are volunteers and full-time staff working to protect and restore Indiana’s forests.

IFA serves citizens, organizations, landowners, and communities with a wide range of interests in Indiana’s forests. We provide accurate information to the people of Indiana to involve them in efforts to protect Indiana’s forests and ensure their opportunities for input into decision-making that affects forests. We speak out for the native animals, plants, and other creatures who survive in Indiana’s forests and cannot speak for themselves.

Challenge

Indiana Forest Alliance was looking for a simple and affordable donor management system that could help them manage their donor information. Anne Laker, Director of Communications & Administration, cites simplicity as one of the main reasons they were originally drawn to Bloomerang, and specifically, “the simplicity of it compared to BlackBaud.”

“With Bloomerang, you don’t need a person whose job it is to do nothing but manage data.” Outside of managing their data and communications, it’s also important to Anne, and Paul Bryan, the Development Director, that they take steps to make their organization more sustainable and equip themselves with the data they need to do that.

Solution

Indiana Forest Alliance has found that Bloomerang could help them become more sustainable as they put greater emphasis on larger donors and major gift fundraising — not just grants. Subsequently, they’ve also been able to put more focus on establishing frequent contact with donors through email and social media. They’ve included these communication and fundraising plans in their sustainability strategy.

Results

Since implementing Bloomerang, Indiana Forest Alliance has benefitted from cost savings, which helps them spend more money and energy on efforts that directly influence their fundraising success.

“We stopped using Constant Contact for e-blasts and went exclusively to Bloomerang’s email function. That saved us money and integrates our data.”

At the end of the day, the single most important thing Bloomerang does to help Indiana Forest Alliance increase its impact, raise more money, and ultimately become more sustainable is simple. Bloomerang has helped empower Anne, Paul, and their teams to be better fundraisers and communicators through data. “We need to continue to fill Bloomerang with data that tells us everything we need to know about our constituents, and use that info smartly. Bloomerang lets us house all this info in one place.”

It’s amazing what a user-friendly fundraising tool built for sustainability can do for the long-term growth of environmental organizations like Indiana Forest Alliance.