Reaching 64% donor retention with the switch to Bloomerang’s Giving Platform

Key Nonprofit Highlights

Since 1952, Camp Young Judaea (CYJ) in Bellaire, TX, has been providing life-changing summers to thousands of children. The camp offers a fun and supportive environment where campers can explore, challenge themselves, and discover their passions. Children of all abilities, backgrounds, and denominations have the opportunity to strengthen their Jewish and Zionist identities while enjoying beautiful facilities and guidance from expert staff.

The camp sought an intuitive donor management system and found the perfect fit with Bloomerang. Its ease of use, modern interface, and powerful integrations like QuickBooks allowed their staff to streamline reporting, donor thanking, and fundraising efforts. Since adopting Bloomerang, CYJ has saved two hours a week on accounting tasks, improved donor retention to 64%, and raised more non-capital gifts than ever before. Bloomerang’s user-friendly, fundraising-focused platform has empowered CYJ to focus on building relationships and achieving growth.

Challenge

Searching for a simpler donor reporting tool for clear donor insights

Camp Young Judaea Texas was looking for an easy-to-use donor management system that wouldn’t require them to contact customer support to pull the reports they needed. “We wanted a solution that could tout ease of use and no need to reach out to the support team to make reports,” said Frank Silberlicht, Executive Director. Bloomerang’s Giving Platform fit that bill.

Solution

Raising more dollars with Bloomerang’s Giving Platform

CYJ was originally drawn to Bloomerang’s ease of use, functionality, and modern, clean interface. “Bloomerang has a beautiful UI, ease of use, and is always getting better and doing that without increasing costs.” Silberlicht appreciates how convenient and essential Bloomerang’s product partner integrations are to their day-to-day operations. In addition to its functionality, Silberlicht recommends Bloomerang’s Giving Platform to fellow nonprofits and Jewish organizations for its intuitiveness, fundraising focus, and integration options. “Bloomerang is beautiful, and a non-techy can work it,” said Silberlicht. “Bloomerang allows you to move from a database to hold donation information to a fundraising database that helps you raise more dollars.”

Results

64% donor retention achieved by transitioning to Bloomerang

Since implementing Bloomerang, CYJ has alleviated several fundraising pain points around their “report generating and donor thanking” efforts through easy-to-use, retention-focused features. Silberlicht and the team have also seen improvements in their ability to write and send timely donor thank-you notes within one week of the gift and getting insights into their donor data by “tracking interactions with every constituent.” The Bloomerang QuickBooks integration has also helped them save two hours a week in accounting tasks, so they can focus on development and building donor relationships.

Not only have they seen an increase in productivity and efficiency in their development and accounting processes, but Silberlicht and the CYJ team have also benefited from more visibility into their donor retention metrics and insights from built-in fundraising features to increase their dollars raised metrics. “Our retention rate has moved up to 64%, and we raised more money last year in non-capital gifts than in our lifetime as a camp,” said Silberlicht. “This software allows us to focus on fundraising instead of managing software.” As Silberlicht shares, Bloomerang’s insightful, intuitive, and fundraising-driven Giving Platform can significantly accelerate the growth and impact of youth organizations like Camp Young Judaea Texas.