Bloomerang understands the unique fundraising challenges of performing arts organizations. There’s no reason for technology to get in the way of conveying artistic expression in all its forms. That’s why numerous performing arts organizations nationwide have chosen Bloomerang’s donor database solution.
Below are just a few thoughts and success stories from organizations just like yours.
It is through our educational and outreach programming that students learn not only the technique of dance, but also the value of creativity, discipline, and commitment, emerging as young adults who embrace the reward of a focused passion and creating with their community.
It is through our performances that we enhance the cultural vibrancy of West Texas by engaging with our community, inspiring new levels of imagination, and creating memories for generations.
Ballet Lubbock was looking for an intuitive, easy-to-use donor management system that could help them take their donor engagement efforts a step further by focusing on relationships and retention instead of just data management. They needed a less clunky system that could give them clear access to their constituents’ data. “We were looking for an intuitive, easy-to-use system that would give us a clear picture of a constituent’s important information on one screen while also helping automate a lot of tasks,” said Nicholas Dragga, Executive Director at Ballet Lubbock.
With Bloomerang, Nicholas and his team found a system that could help them practice good donor engagement. “We moved from a database that felt clunky and like it was taking a sledgehammer approach. We were spending more time on data management than actual relationship building. Bloomerang’s focus on relationships and donor retention helped us do exactly that: focus on relationships and donor retention (instead of data management)!”
The team at Ballet Lubbock was drawn to Bloomerang’s “intuitive interface, automated tasks (and online donations), and price point,” but have come to appreciate the knowledgeable customer support team at their disposal. “The customer service is parallel to none. Seriously, Bloomerang’s Customer Service is ‘Zappos Level.’ They know and love their product, and will help you figure out how to accomplish your goals.”
Bloomerang has all the features we want and need for a price point that is doable. Plus, the native dashboard alerts help you focus on donor retention and engagement. You’ll spend less time on data management, and more time getting to know your donors. – Nicholas Dragga
Since implementing Bloomerang, Ballet Lubbock has seen improvements with several fundraising pain points. “Before Bloomerang we couldn’t process donations online, track email opens, or really easily track retention or engagement levels.” Now, Nicholas and his team can benefit from positive changes to their donor retention and dollars raised goals. “Since switching to Bloomerang we’ve doubled our annual fund revenue. Our retention rate is up, and our monthly recurring givers have increased ten-fold.”
In addition, the team at Ballet Lubbock has been impressed with how Bloomerang fits into their donor retention and gift development processes. Processing donations and creating acknowledgement letters has never been easier. “Bloomerang’s native features that track and highlight donor engagement and retention strategies help us focus less on data management and more on building relationships with our donors. Processing donations and acknowledgment letters is a breeze – dare I say fun. (and takes half the time now!)”
Nicholas and his team have also seen improvements in both the quality of their constituent communications and their productivity. “The quality and frequency of constituent communication has increased because Bloomerang makes it easy. What used to take 6-7 clicks, now takes 2, so we can get to the data or important things quicker and easier.”
It’s amazing what an intuitive, retention-focused tool and the passionate people behind it can do for the growth of an organization such as Ballet Lubbock. “Your customer service is stellar!”
Greenville County Youth Orchestra has been educating young musicians for over 40 years. Our mission is to impact the lives of young people through music by providing a quality orchestral program that develops and educates young musicians in the art of performance and enhances their personal musicianship. We strive to make our programs available to any and all qualifying students by offering a robust scholarship program to assist families in need with orchestra fees, summer studies, and private lessons.
After going through a leadership change, Greenville County Youth Orchestra was looking to ditch Excel and find a real donor CRM to track acknowledgements and tax receipts, and find new funding sources. “We are a very small nonprofit youth orchestra program. While in existence since the 70s, little was done in the way of serious fundraising other than an occasional small grant. About five years ago, under new leadership and new, experienced board members, we began seeking funds from outside our parent base. It became more and more difficult to track our contributions in Excel let alone keep track of acknowledgements and tax receipts,” said Holly Caprell, Executive Director at Greenville County Youth Orchestra.
Bloomerang’s ease of use and affordability. “We worked with a consultant who helped us review several options. Bloomerang won for ease of use AND cost.” Holly has since come to appreciate the convenience of Bloomerang’s QuickBooks integration for increasing productivity when it comes to data entry and keeping donation data up-to-date. “Many of our donors still use checks. The QuickBooks integration prevents us from having to enter them into both QuickBooks and Bloomerang.”
In addition to Bloomerang’s functionality, Holly touts its intuitiveness, functionality, and continual product updates as another reason to recommend it as a top donor database option to other performing arts organizations like theirs. “It’s a perfect fit for the smaller nonprofit. The price is right and it’s easy to use. I like the fact that you are always looking for ways to improve your product.”
Since implementing Bloomerang, Greenville County Youth Orchestra has alleviated several fundraising pain points around “acknowledgements and tax statements” thanks to the QuickBooks integration. They’ve also seen improvements in productivity and the quality of their constituent communications. With Bloomerang we’ve benefited from “consistency in acknowledgements, ease in sending email messages with little video thank you messages, and less time recording contributions by check or cash.”
Not only have they seen an increase in productivity and efficiency in their development and accounting processes, but Holly and the team at Greenville County Youth Orchestra have also benefited from more visibility into their donor retention metrics and insights from built-in fundraising features to increase their dollars raised metrics. “Being timely with acknowledgments, the ability to send out little messages and letters to prompt annual givers all have increased our annual giving amounts.”
All in all, it’s amazing what an insightful, intuitive, and fundraising-focused database can do for the growth of a performing arts organization such as Greenville County Youth Orchestra.
Gift of Performing Arts’ mission is to instill Christian values and cultivate excellence using the performing arts.
Gift of Performing Arts was looking for a reliable and affordable donor management system that could help them easily track and use the vital donor data they need to succeed. According to Kimberly Jackson, Executive Director & Chair at Gift of Performing Arts, Inc., the challenges they were dealing with and the solutions they wanted a database to solve consisted of the “ability to track relationship engagement; financial contributions; draft reports and trends; capture multiple forms of communication for each donor; and pricing relative to existing donors.”
After seeing positive reviews online and realizing that a lot of other nonprofit organizations were seeing success by using Bloomerang, Kimberly and her team ultimately decided that it could also be the best solution for their donor record and reporting challenges. Kimberly was originally drawn to Bloomerang because it was “ranked highly in a review among sites she’s used and valued,” but she’s since come to appreciate that the database gives them “the ability to draft reports, view trends, and gauge donor engagement year over year.”
Since implementing Bloomerang, Gift of Performing Arts has alleviated several fundraising pain points by having better insights into their donor data and having a more holistic view of all their donors and touchpoints — making them better able to make informed fundraising decisions. Kimberly and her team love how simple it is to “view donor retention right on the home screen along with progress in giving campaigns,” and they’ve benefited from “management of gift acknowledgement letters.”
Kimberly and the team at Gift of Performing Arts have also benefited from increased productivity through better organized donor data. “[With Bloomerang we’ve seen] greater productivity because of more organized relationship data.”
All in all, it’s amazing what an insightful and donor-focused database can do for the growth of a performing arts organization such as Gift of Performing Arts. “It’s definitely a great relationship management database.”
More Customer Testimonials
“We chose Bloomerang, because it was such an intuitive system, and we also just liked the look of it. We’re a very design-focused nonprofit, and so we really liked how it looked and kind of how it was a little quirky and funny and made it fun to get into the system.
Bloomerang is awesome, because it’s cloud-based so I can have my boss on the system at his home, and we can just all be in there at one time pulling out information. So that’s really useful.”
Claire Bailey, Development Manager – Young Actors Theatre