Wonderful News Radio

90.7 Hope FM is a local media ministry that encourages families through today’s worship, contemporary music, and relevant programs.

Challenge

Wonderful News Radio was looking for easy-to-use donor management software that could replace their basic spreadsheet-based platform and be more than just a financial receipt system. They needed a solution that was more robust for donor communications, keeping track of donor information, and generating custom reports and receipts. “We wanted to be able to keep track of all communication with a donor, we wanted the system to be customizable to gather the information that we wanted about our listeners and give us the ability to know how best to meet their needs. We wanted to be able to track giving trends and generate reports based not only standard information but our custom information as well. We wanted to be able to make custom receipts for multiple projects and be able to include graphics when applicable. Email integration was also an important feature for us to have better communication with our donors. And finally being able to have multiple staff members have access to the database to get the information they need for their specific job applications,” said Lori McNaughton, Finance Director at Wonderful News Media.

Solution

After getting a recommendation from another nonprofit ministry and Bloomerang user, Lori and the team were excited to dive in to see how the donor database could address their needs — and they haven’t been disappointed. The email and segmentation capabilities have been a game-changer for them. “We love the email interface. It makes it easy to segment custom emails to donors, people who have attended events, volunteers, etc. We are able to customize the email with our own content and graphics to put together a very professional-looking email. We have been able to integrate our credit card POS with Bloomerang making online giving seamless for us.”

The team at Wonderful News Radio was happy to turn their eyes to Bloomerang as the customizable donor database solution that could enhance their donor and constituent experience and improve their communication with listeners. “Bloomerang is easy to use, very customizable for your specific needs. It will put in the information that you need accessible to you wherever you are. It can help your communication with listeners and up your game in professional-looking communication. When you are talking to a listener, you can pull up their account in Bloomerang and have all their pertinent information, and hopefully any past communication that you’ve had with them right in front of you.”

Results

Since implementing Bloomerang, Wonderful News Radio has alleviated several fundraising pain points in regards to stewardship tracking, reporting, and on-the-go meetings. “Having all the information, giving history, personal information about a donor and their family, being able to track our contact with the donor… having all that information in one place that is easily accessible to key members of the staff is so important. Also being able to designate how and when gifts were given… during on-air fundraisers, during events or just as general gifts.”

The team at Wonderful News Radio has also seen improvements with their gift development processes through custom fields, which has improved the quality of their constituent communications. “As a non-commercial nonprofit that runs two radio stations with two different groups of listeners, using Bloomerang’s custom fields we are able to keep track of donors to each station, how and when they give… whether they give during one of our on-air fundraising events or if they give at a different time in the year. I am able to assign tasks to people based on certain criteria, to make contact with donors. For example, when we get a first-time donation from someone, I can assign one of the on-air hosts to make a call and thank the donor for their gift. We set up a schedule of how and when donors are contacted and then make a note in their file when that contact is completed.”

In that same vein, the ability to easily add personal touches, segment their donors and have peace of mind that their donor data is correct and continually updated has increased their team’s productivity and the results of their communication efforts. “Being able to edit and customize communications whether through mail or email have made our communication look more professional and easy to produce. The ease of generating reports to personal interaction in the form of phone calls, emails, texts or personal visits helps us put in an extra personal touch with donors.” In addition to Bloomerang’s communication functionality, the homepage provides an easy and convenient way for Lori to stay on top of key metrics and donor information. “The Bloomerang Home Page is an easy way to get a quick glimpse of key metrics about your donors. I also use the individual donor summary page to get a quick look at that donor’s history of giving.”

All in all, it’s amazing what an easy-to-use, continually updated, and customizable database can do for the growth of an organization such as Wonderful News Radio. “We have been very pleased with the product and any of the staff that we have worked with have been great.”