Key Nonprofit Highlights
Boston Landmarks Orchestra is a professional orchestra that builds community by making great music more accessible to all. They perform free concerts at public venues and in neighborhood community centers, with American Sign Language interpreters who translate the feeling of the music in addition to spoken word, and haptic suits that turn music into vibrations deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences can feel. As a small team growing their individual giving program, they needed sharper prospect research and wealth insights to support their first capital campaign. They found it in the Bloomerang Giving Platform®, including ProspectAI and Penny. The capacity, affinity, and propensity data from ProspectAI gave them the confidence to ask certain loyal donors for three times their previous gift—with one supporter increasing their gift from $5,000 to $15,000 year-over-year. They’ve also achieved a 57% donor retention rate, which they credit to Bloomerang.
Challenge
Researching major gift prospects with a small team and limited tools
Boston Landmarks Orchestra’s mission depends on fundraising. Every concert is free, so no earned income streams offset the cost. Their previous CRM, Raiser’s Edge, made that work harder. Staff found it unfriendly and struggled to pull the data they needed. Fundraising operations and prospect research improved with the Bloomerang Giving Platform. Director of Development Ben White pulled generosity scores, searched the internet for wealth insights, and created three-year donor reports. “Reporting is one of the things that I really love about Bloomerang because it’s so intuitive,” he said.
As the organization’s individual giving program grew, so did the research. “I wanted to find out what the donors' capacity rating was, where else they gave, and other philanthropic indicators,” White explained. A deep dive on one prospect could take hours, and with only four administrators in the office, time was the limiting factor. “We needed the prospect research,” he said, along with a way to focus outreach on the people who could move the needle furthest.
Solution
Using Bloomerang’s ProspectAI and Penny for smarter major gift outreach
When Bloomerang’s Intelligent Giving Platform launched, White saw it as a fit right away. He used ProspectAI to review the organization’s closest and most loyal donors during their first major capital campaign to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Capacity assessments revealed donors who had given at the same level for years, but could give far more. “There was an opportunity to invite donors to give closer to their full potential,” White said.
ProspectAI also surfaced affinities and board memberships. When White saw a donor served on a board alongside someone he knew, he asked that mutual connection for an introduction: “ProspectAI helped me be able to say, ‘Oh interesting, they’re serving on XYZ board and I know someone else on that board so let me ask if they could get in contact.’”
Throughout, White stayed the decision maker. He used the data to inform his judgment, rather than replace it. “It gave us the confidence to approach our donors with bold asks that were also supported by data,” he explained. Now he clicks the enrich button, keeps working in another tab, and sees the data getting more accurate over time.
White leaned on Penny, which he valued “as a digital thought partner purpose-built for fundraising in comparison to some of the other AI models out there.” He drafted donor emails, drawing on Penny's insight to tailor the messaging to individual donors. Journey Automation in Bloomerang CRM sends first-time donors an impact email seven days after their gift. White also built custom reports for weekly and monthly tracking and used the Data Health Hub to review more than 1,000 flagged records in the last 30 days.
White also managed daily follow-ups by adding Bloomerang’s recommended actions into his routine. “It helps focus me on the five or six people that I may have overlooked if I didn't have the recommendations in front of me,” he said. Built-in tasks kept him on track after those conversations. “I use it frequently to keep myself organized, especially if I'm in the middle of a prospect conversation and I want to make sure that I hit those follow-ups in a timely manner,” White said.
Results
Asking for 3X more and keeping donors giving
The data paid off. White has asked longtime donors to consider donating “three times as much as what they were giving previously” which they were excited to contribute. With the orchestra’s major gift threshold of $5,000, one supporter became a major donor by increasing their gift from $3,000 last year to $10,000 this year, and another increased their gift from $5,000 to $15,000 year-over-year.
Boston Landmarks also keeps supporters coming back. When asked what drove their 57% retention rate, White credited the Bloomerang Giving Platform, from gift processing and Bloomerang Fundraising forms that flow right into the CRM, to constituent timelines and reporting. “It all just makes it very easy to track a constituent's connection to our organization. And from there, it helps with the planning, segmentation, and outreach that goes into sustaining the support we have,” he said. That clarity helps them segment donors and plan outreach.
For a small team, the biggest win is time. “I think Bloomerang saves us so much time,” said White. “It gives our staff what they need without having to struggle through complicated software.” Hours once spent on manual research now go to relationships and the programs that bring music to everyone. With their capital campaign underway and plans to track first-time donor retention next year, Boston Landmarks Orchestra is building a donor base that can sustain free, accessible music for years to come.
