Opening new possibilities for donor engagement with Bloomerang
Key Nonprofit Highlights
Open Hearts Art Center, based in Asheville, North Carolina, is a nonprofit dedicated to empowering adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities through the arts. By helping their artists build confidence, community, and creative careers, Open Hearts transforms self-expression into opportunity and impact. They improved fundraising by moving from scattered, manual processes to Bloomerang’s Giving Platform. With better insights, segmentation, and engagement tracking, they unlocked new giving opportunities and strengthened connections with supporters, almost doubling YOY donor retention. They also recently raised $3,000 with their Life’s A Beach Raffle. Bloomerang is giving the Open Hearts team improved clarity and confidence in donor relationships.
Challenge
Disconnected donor data and limited nonprofit tech slowed fundraising growth
At Open Hearts Art Center, creativity was everywhere but streamlined systems were not. As a small nonprofit, the team wore many hats. Darcy Wade, Executive Assistant, described her role simply: “It’s not just you do anything, you do everything.” From donor relations to events, marketing, and operations, Wade and her team were deeply committed—but like many small nonprofits, they were navigating fundraising without the right tools. “We are all a bunch of artists trying to understand technology,” Wade said.
Before adopting a CRM, donor information was scattered and difficult to manage. Reporting was manual, insights were limited, and opportunities to build stronger donor relationships were often hidden in disconnected data. Without a centralized system, the team struggled to fully understand their supporters or confidently grow their fundraising efforts.
Solution
An intuitive, nonprofit CRM and fundraising platform built for purpose
When tasked with finding a solution, Wade discovered Bloomerang and everything changed. “I didn’t even know what the acronym CRM meant,” she said. “But Bloomerang kept coming up in my search.” What stood out wasn’t just functionality—it was accessibility and ease of use: “I always make decisions based on, ‘Is this a scary tech thing or is this a tech thing that I can understand?’”
Bloomerang gave Open Hearts a CRM that felt approachable, yet capable of growing with them. “It’s affordable, gives us everything we need, but is still intuitive enough for people who aren’t very techy to be able to understand,” said Wade. With Bloomerang’s unified giving platform, Open Hearts brought donor data, reporting, email marketing, and fundraising tools into one place to create a clearer picture of every supporter.
Wade quickly began using visual dashboards, donor retention metrics, segmentation and reporting, integrated email marketing, and automated giving statements to guide her work and strengthen outreach. “I love just all the little metrics because I’m a visual person. So the fact that everything automatically shows up as these visuals, I use that feature a lot,” she said. Even more powerful was the human support behind the software: “You’re not just getting the system, you’re also getting networking and courses. You can learn so much by having Bloomerang.”
Results
Stronger donor relationships, smarter outreach, and growing confidence in fundraising
By segmenting donors and tailoring communication, Open Hearts was able to create more meaningful outreach across giving levels. “To be able to really quickly see who are the donors that truly are very active and to be able to cater the language to those specific groups is really, really helpful,” said Wade.
The team gained visibility into trends over time, helping them navigate challenges with better clarity. Explained Wade, “It was really helpful for me to visually see where we were last year, where we were two years ago, where are we right now, and where do we need to improve?” For example, thanks to their strengthened connections with supporters they were able to see an almost doubled YOY donor retention rate.
With integrated email tools, they also began tracking engagement more effectively—seeing who opened messages, who clicked, and how relationships evolved over time—and those insights paid off. “We’ll send invites and I can tell they’ll open them, and then months later, we get a nice, big donation,” Wade shared. Open Hearts recently raised almost $3,000 with their Life’s A Beach Raffle at their annual talent show fundraiser, including several hundred dollars brought in ahead of the event via Bloomerang Fundraising. “It definitely helped to be able to do the pre-sales for the raffle via Bloomerang Fundraising instead of Square because it gave people the choice to choose their raffle package,” explained Wade.
Even beyond fundraising, Bloomerang helped Open Hearts strengthen internal impact. After winning Bloomerang’s GivingTuesday 2025 giveaway, the organization was able to invest in staff appreciation during a challenging financial period. “By that point, we didn’t have anything left over in our budget for any kind of end-of-year staff celebration,” said Wade. “So having that extra money come in to help support our staff was huge because DSPs [direct support professionals] in this field don’t make a lot. It was really a staff retention saver.”
Open Hearts is continuing to grow with confidence and using Bloomerang to better understand supporters, streamline efforts, and fuel their mission. Because when nonprofits have the right tools, insight changes everything so that impact can follow.
