Raising $9M+ with Bloomerang to reopen museum building
Key Nonprofit Highlights
America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin preserves Black history and educates communities. Museum founder Dr. James Cameron survived a Marion, Indiana lynching in 1930 at just 16, witnessing two friends’ deaths and propelling him into civil rights activism. At 79, a visit to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem inspired him to create a similar memorial for Black Americans, which opened in 1988. Financial challenges and Dr. Cameron’s passing caused the museum to close in 2008, but transitioned to an online experience, maintaining their mission and reaching a global audience.
ABHM used Bloomerang to manage their supporter data, track grants, and launch their $9M+ capital campaign to reopen the museum in a physical location. Bloomerang’s user-friendly tools enabled ABHM’s small team to effectively engage supporters, improve member relations, and focus on their educational mission while preparing for growth and reopening. Since migrating from DonorSnap to Bloomerang, ABHM estimates that constituents in their database have more than doubled. In 2022, the Milwaukee museum reopened their doors in a physical location, with more community support than ever!
Challenge
Managing donors in DonorSnap was clunky
When the physical America’s Black Holocaust Museum closed their doors in 2008, a passionate group of volunteers kept the mission alive by creating a virtual museum. The ultimate goal was always to reopen a physical space, but their team needed a better way to manage supporters, track grants, and build momentum for their capital campaign. “The way data was originally entered into DonorSnap made things really clunky,” explained Mia Phifer, Senior Education, Collections, & Outreach Coordinator. As the museum prepared to relaunch, ABHM needed a system that could strengthen relationships with their members—the heart of their community—and simplify the operational work that small teams often juggle.
Solution
Streamlining donor & membership management with Bloomerang
With Bloomerang’s intuitive, built-for-purpose platform, ABHM consolidated their donor and membership data, launched new campaigns, and developed the tools needed to grow community support. “The first time I used Bloomerang, I thought the interface was so user-friendly, intuitive, and adaptable—especially compared to DonorSnap,” Phifer said. “We had a great partner at Bloomerang to support our onboarding. Even as someone who’s not trained in donor management systems, I could learn on the fly, which is half the job as a small museum staff person.”
Museum membership was an important part of their Bloomerang partnership as well. “Our members are the heartbeat of our museum. They’re the reason we do what we do,” said Phifer. “Bloomerang’s membership management tools allow us to easily track member renewals, ensuring that we stay connected with our supporters and remind them when it’s time to renew. That membership feature was a major selling point for us.”
Beyond memberships, ABHM also uses Bloomerang to manage grants, acknowledgement letters, and end-of-year campaigns. “The reporting and donor segmentation features make personalization simple—plus, the system allows supporters to select their communication preferences,” Phifer shared. “The platform even allows us to print names and addresses directly on envelopes, streamlining the entire process so we can handle it all in-house. Bloomerang makes my job so much easier.”
She added, “Bloomerang helps us bring our mission to life by making it easy for us to keep in touch with the people who mean the most to us: our members. It also allows us to view a supporter’s timeline, including historical data from before the migration, so we can see people in our database who have been supporters of Dr. Cameron since he was still alive.”
Results
Doubling constituents & raising $9M with Bloomerang for museum reopening
After migrating to Bloomerang, ABHM doubled their number of constituents and raised more than $9 million—fueling the long-awaited reopening of their physical museum in 2022. “We are a very small staff, but we are growing, which is why we now have our fund development team using Bloomerang too,” Phifer said. “Even when it was just me and one coworker, it made our lives so much easier. It automated so many of our tasks, helping us focus on our important educational work and reopening the museum.”
Like many nonprofits, community support was essential to the ABHM’s campaigns. “As we prepared our capital campaign to bring back the physical museum, we wanted to tap into that community potential—the individuals in Milwaukee who wanted to see the museum return,” explained Phifer. “We needed to keep track of all those supporters, thank them properly, and create a sustaining member program. DonorSnap couldn’t do those things for us at that time, but Bloomerang could.”
With Bloomerang’s support, the museum continues to build on Dr. Cameron’s legacy—connecting generations through education, storytelling, and truth-telling. “I think it’s a great tool for small organizations who don’t have as much time to spend on the fund development side of things,” Phifer said. “But it’s also easy for growing teams to learn because it’s so intuitive. I love using Bloomerang!”
Check out the full interview with America’s Black Holocaust Museum here.
