North Shore Elder Services
North Shore Elder Services (NSES) is a team of specialists in social services, making life easier for the elderly and those who care for them. We offer information, support, and solutions.
NSES was founded in 1976 as a private non-profit corporation. As an Aging Service Access Point (ASAP) and an Area Agency on Aging (AAA), we service the communities of Marblehead, Salem, Peabody, Danvers, and Middleton. The agency and its programs work closely with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs, the U.S. Administration on Aging and the Councils on Aging to ensure we meet the social services needs of the elders we mutually serve.
Challenge
North Shore Elder Services was looking for a user-friendly, intuitive, and easy-to-learn donor management system without all the unnecessary bells and whistles. “As someone that has used some very robust database software in the past (Kintera, Raiser’s Edge) I wanted something very user-friendly that would be easy to teach someone the basics (i.e. entering a constituent or a donation). It also had to have a neatly laid out user interface,” said Chris Chirco, Development Director at North Shore Elder Services.
After receiving a recommendation for Bloomerang from a colleague, Chris concluded that it might just be the simple, intuitive solution they were looking for. “Bloomerang was recommended to me by another non-profit professional as a great option for simplicity.”
Solution
Chris and his team had finally found a donor database that could keep track of their donors without a complicated user interface. “I like how it’s not super-complicated to learn to use and that there aren’t a bunch of bells and whistles that nobody is ever going to use that just clutter up the UI.”
North Shore Elder Services has appreciated finding a system that could help them track their constituents’ giving history, and give them better visibility into their donor data.
“In the past, this organization didn’t have any way to keep track of donors. Bloomerang makes it easy to keep track and see people’s giving history.”
Chris and his team also appreciate Bloomerang’s ease of use and how training new employees is now a breeze. “We have a lot of older staff who aren’t totally computer savvy, but Bloomerang is so easy to use that everyone has been able to pick it up very quickly.” They’ve also taken advantage of Bloomerang’s free resources, articles, and knowledgeable support team. “I have to say that I’ve really enjoyed the simplicity of Bloomerang and your customer service. Keep up the great work!”
Results
Chris and his team have benefited from better visibility into their donor data, which helps them make informed fundraising decisions for segmenting communications. “Keeping track of donors giving history is so easy to view now. Also, being able to export specific lists of people to target for different giving campaigns.”
The team at North Shore Elder Services has seen improvements in key fundraising metrics since implementing Bloomerang. “We’re noticing more repeat donors. It’s hard to gauge exactly how many as there wasn’t a good software in place before, but based on old excel files, the donor retention seems to be better.” Bloomerang’s reporting functionality has also made it easy for them to find, segment, and re-engage lapsed donors. “Bloomerang makes it very easy to run reports on different constituent metrics, that we’ve been able to target lapsed donors much more easily and stay in contact with them.”
It’s amazing what a user-friendly, data-focused tool can do for the long-term growth of an organization such as North Shore Elder Services.
“If you are looking for an easy-to-use donor software that does all the basic stuff really well, you can’t do better than Bloomerang.”