Lutheran High Northeast

The faculty and staff of Lutheran High Northeast continue to serve the students of Northeast Nebraska with commitment and enthusiasm, and will strive to educate, develop and prepare Christian servants and leaders for the future.

Challenge

Lutheran High Northeast was looking for an affordable and intuitive donor database as an alternative to eTapestry. They wanted a functional system with good reporting and communication features at no extra cost. “We were working with eTapesty and wanted to find a database that was easy to use AND a partner that would work with us on price” said Fred Aufdembrink, Director of Development at Lutheran High Northeast. With the timing and opportunity for better functionality, Fred was ready to make the switch.

Solution

Fred was originally drawn to Bloomerang’s ease of use, functionality, and “the layout of the system. With only one in the business office and a one person development shop, we needed to find a database that was easy to use.” Bloomerang fit that bill.

Fred has since come to appreciate how easily Bloomerang fits into and improves their existing gift development processes. “First, gift processing is a breeze! I can easily record donations, print letters and get them out quickly. Second, Bloomerang allows me many options for my work from first time donors to reaching out to those who haven’t given a gift in a while!”

Results

Since implementing Bloomerang, Lutheran High Northeast has alleviated several fundraising pain points around tracking their donor retention, segmenting and communicating with various constituent groups, and being more relationship focused. “Bloomerang allows me to treat EACH donor separately! Having family connections within the database is extremely valuable.” Bloomerang’s features and donor segmentation capabilities will also grow with the team at Lutheran High Northeast and make their constituent communications more efficient and effective — saving them time. “Bloomerang allows me to focus on specific donors, i.e., first time donors, Financial Aid donors, multi year donors, etc.”

Not only have they seen an increase in productivity and efficiency in their development process, but Fred and the team at Lutheran High Northeast have also benefited from more visibility into their donor retention metrics and insights from built-in features to improve their percentage. “I believe Bloomerang has helped us (me) increase donor retention percentages.”

All in all, it’s amazing what an insightful, intuitive, and fundraising-focused database can do for the growth of an organization such as Lutheran High Northeast. “You will love Bloomerang! Easy to learn and easy to use.”