Parkinson Association of the Carolinas
The overarching goal for the Parkinson Association of the Carolinas (PAC) is to help support people with Parkinson’s disease throughout North and South Carolina so that they can remain independent and stay active in the community until a cure is found. The organization uses its resources and expertise to support, educate and empower those impacted by the Disease. They give patients the tools needed to better manage the disease and to allow them to maintain the highest quality of life, for as long as possible.
Challenge
Parkinson Association of the Carolinas was looking to ditch Microsoft Access for their first donor database. They wanted a user-friendly donor management system that could do more than just store and report on information.
“We were using Access 2010 as our database and in 2015 started experiencing loss of records after input — sometimes 100 – 200 at a time. That would require entering all the information again. We also wanted a database that could do more than just store information and provide reporting, but mostly was user friendly,” said Ann Marie Obrikat, Executive Director at Parkinson Association of the Carolinas.
Solution
With Bloomerang, Ann Marie and her team has found a donor management system that would simplify their donor acknowledgment efforts. They were originally drawn to “the ability to create their monthly e-newsletter inside Bloomerang, generate thank you letters and generate a better variety of reports and ease in creating them.”
Since implementing Bloomerang, they’ve come to appreciate the time they’ve been able to save on inputting donor data. “It’s less time-consuming to enter a new constituent into Bloomerang than it was in Access – I’d say it’s cut the process in half. Also, we were excited to find out that we could change out our donor credit card processor to Stripe and all the information would go directly to Bloomerang. Instead of us having to get a receipt and then enter everything.”
Results
Since implementing Bloomerang, Parkinson Association of the Carolinas has seen improvements with several fundraising pain points through donor data accessibility and consolidation: “Not losing records, the time it took to enter the constituent information and then donor information for that same person in Access, and pulling constituents into the newsletter instead of manually updating Constant Contact.” Ann Marie and her team have also benefited from improvements to their productivity. “It is taking less time to pull the newsletter together for our Program Director.”
Overall, Bloomerang’s features have benefited the team’s donor retention and gift development processes. “We are still learning all the great ways that Bloomerang can help us with both of these issues.”
It’s amazing what an easy-to-use, donor-centered donor database can do for the growth of an organization such as Parkinson Association of the Carolinas. “It can make a lot of different areas of your database and donor work much easier.”