Hillel Fundraising Software Success Case Study

This foundation is affiliated with a university and uses Consistent Recording of Fundraising Activity to Achieve Success with their $14 Million Dollar Capital Campaign

This is a foundation that is connected to many universities. The specific foundation discussed in this post is a center that has facilitated community to over 5,000 Jewish students. They provide programs and activities for the entire campus community and a new building is going up in the heart of the campus to support over 30 independent Jewish student organizations and serve as a center for religious, social, educational, and cultural life.

Business Challenge

Raise funds for a new building and relocation expenses as well as daily activities.

The Executive Director has been with this organization since July 1999 and has seen a lot of changes over the years.

“The current facility, built in 1956 to accommodate 1,200 Jewish students, was no longer able to sustain the current level of activity. We really needed a new building, which required a $14 million capital campaign, $3 million endowment, and relocation funds.”

Solution

DonorPerfect Fundraising Software

This foundation has been using DonorPerfect fundraising software for a long time.

The Executive Director noted, “DonorPerfect is the backbone of all we do to raise funds. It feeds other databases; it interfaces with other programs like DonorSearch wealth screening service; it manages our fundraising activities, and provides the reporting and analysis of these activities.”

Capital Campaign

Before they could even consider building, the team at this organization had to make sure they could raise the construction funds and still support their daily activities.

“For the capital campaign, we developed a list of our top 50 major donor prospects in DonorPerfect, and gave it to our chief solicitors. Once we determined their likelihood of giving was strong, we went ahead with the decision to build and launched the campaign.”

To raise these funds, the nonprofit engaged in a number of solicitation activities, including individual parlor meetings, informational meetings, targeted direct mail, DVD video/web presence, naming opportunities, bar nights and a few new innovative programs.

“We’re always trying new things to raise money. Using DonorPerfect, we targeted new, younger donors ages, 30 – 45, to donate $10,000 over five years, which has been successful. We’re currently sending out a special DVD to a Jewish group we haven’t targeted before. We set them up in DonorPerfect with a specific code and created the solicitation letter. Now we’re testing its effectiveness.”

Annual Campaign

This organization has also been raising funds for their annual campaign to support their daily activities.

“We solicit alumni and parents with telemarketing about 20 weeks a year for renewals and prospective donors. We have DonorPerfect interface with a Microsoft Access program that creates computer-based pledge cards. We segment the lists to target specific groups such as alumni living on the west coast that can be called by student volunteers at night.”

“We also do three major mailings a year. Mailing has become more expensive so, to help control costs, we’ve begun using DonorPerfect to track the volume and associated cost of our mail solicitations.”

Key Results

“No matter what the solicitation, we always enter the results back into DonorPerfect. For example, we set up future contacts if we’re unable to reach them over the phone. And when a pledge or gift is received, the data is entered and DonorPerfect automatically generates the pledge reminders and gift acknowledgments.”

“At first, we weren’t really using all of DonorPerfect’s features – it was just a place to hold our data. But we became more serious about following the fundraising methodology DonorPerfect has developed. Over the years, we created all the flags, mail codes and solicitation codes that are the core of the system. This helps with our targeting of solicitations, follow-up activities and the evaluation of our fundraising efforts.”

“Since then, we have quadrupled our donor database. Last year, we had roughly 2,500 gifts, a record number. We’ve raised the $14 million for the new building thanks to the successful capital campaign, and now we’re completing the final phase, which is the $3 million endowment. This is in addition to raising the funds we need to cover our regular expenses. I can honestly say we would not have had all this success without DonorPerfect.”

• Raised $14 million for a new building and relocation expenses

• Quadrupled their donor database

• Received a record 2,500 gifts in their most recent fiscal year

• Raised funds to cover daily activities during a capital campaign

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The post UW Hillel appeared first on Fundraising Software for NonProfit Donor Management by DonorPerfect.

Senior Healthcare Organization Streamlines Operations with Automated Giving

Note: HCR ManorCare was acquired by ProMedica Health in 2018.

With over 75,000 donor records, most of which are for employees, operational efficiency was an urgent necessity for this leading healthcare provider. They decided to look for a fundraising system to manage their two nonprofits, which receive contributions from over 60,000 employees, as well as family, friends, and others. It was no question that they wanted it to work seamlessly with their human resource system, website, and other systems.

The mission

This organization has multiple funds that serve different missions. One memorial fund enables memorials and honorariums to be made on behalf of patients, and another fund was created as a way for employees to help other employees with financial assistance when faced with an unexpected catastrophic event.

The needs

This nonprofit needed all the normal fundraising capabilities to manage gifts, pledges, thank yous and reporting, but they also wanted to allow employees to manage their own accounts online.

Having employees manage their own contributions eliminates the need for a lot of data entry resources, which saves lots of time and money.

So they turned to DonorPerfect fundraising software, enabling them to manage, analyze, and report on all their donors and fundraising efforts, but also offers the tools to allow them to integrate with a variety of their existing systems.

Contact your DonorPerfect account manager to answer your questions about DonorPerfect.

Workplace giving

Employees needed to log in to make both one-time donations and monthly payroll deduction pledges. This required setting up an automated process to transfer employee data from their Human Resource system to DonorPerfect, as well as an automated process to transfer the preauthorized pledge transactions back to payroll. This was accomplished using import and export utilities and was fully automated with a few simple custom procedures.

Website integration

To integrate with fund-specific websites, the nonprofit worked with our team to use DonorPerfect’s XML interface, which provides an intelligent “back door” to the website. Contributors experience the same look and feel, but the fields of information are tied directly and securely to DonorPerfect, eliminating the need for a separate web database and avoiding possible issues with data redundancy. The integration is completely transparent to their website’s users and takes place behind the scenes – in real time. The DonorPerfect team also created an online payroll calculator so that employees can determine how much they could afford to give over the course of the year.

The Business Systems Specialist noted, “Our website also allows employees and non-employees to make one-time donations by credit card, and DonorPerfect assisted us in using the same XML interface to integrate with our credit card processor.”

The results

“We use DonorPerfect’s acknowledgment tools to send several different types of thank-you letters automatically. For example, if your aunt donates on behalf of your mother who passed away, your aunt receives a thank-you letter, and you receive a letter notifying you of your aunt’s contribution in your mother’s honor. It’s all done automatically, which is a huge time saver when you consider the numbers we’re dealing with.”

“With DonorPerfect, we’re able to automate virtually the entire process. And, the integration of DonorPerfect with our website, HR tool, Microsoft Word®, email, and credit card processing has enabled us to create a web-based system that is nearly flawless, with close to zero defects.”

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The Olivet Boys & Girls Club Improved Reporting & Data Accuracy by Making the Switch to DonorPerfect

About Olivet Boys & Girls Club

Olivet Boys & Girls Club is one of the original Boys & Girls Clubs of America. They are a youth group, ensuring every students’ success by providing education support, afterschool programs, and mentoring all year long, for free or at reduced costs.

Rose Morales

Rose Morales has been with the Olivet Boys & Girls Club for 15 years. She started in the Finance Department, and, in recent years, has taken on the role of Executive Assistant. Fundraising software is crucial to Rose’s role, as it provides key information she needs to provide her major donors and constituents.

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