Raising $6.3M in one year by standardizing national events with Bloomerang Fundraising

Key Nonprofit Highlights

Canine Companions, based in Santa Rosa, CA, is a national community of volunteers who provide trained service dogs to adults, children, and veterans with disabilities, free of charge, for the life of the partnership. Faced with a patchwork of regional tools that left staff recreating the wheel before every event, Canine Companions turned to Bloomerang Fundraising to standardize its national events program. The result: a scalable, data-driven model that raised $6,327,165 in one year across galas, peer-to-peer campaigns, and golf tournaments, plus a culture of stewardship that can turn a $5 gift into a five-figure relationship.

Challenge

Regional inconsistency slowing event impact nationwide

Canine Companions operates six regional training centers spread from coast to coast, each running events that carry the organization's name and mission. But before Bloomerang, those regions were also running their own software and building their own websites and campaign pages from scratch. Every event launch meant starting over, which cost teams not just time, but focus. "The cost of inconsistency for individuals in the regions who have to recreate the wheel is immense," said Meredith Harrison, senior event manager at Canine Companions headquarters. 

Staff were spending energy on the mechanics of building events rather than on the relationships that fuel fundraising. Brand standards were harder to protect. And headquarters had no reliable way to ensure a gala in the Northeast looked, felt, and performed like one in the Southwest. For an organization where each service dog costs $50,000 to train and place at no cost to recipients, inconsistency wasn't just inefficient. It was a missed opportunity to maximize mission impact.

Solution

Building a scalable national events engine with Bloomerang Fundraising

Canine Companions partnered with Bloomerang Fundraising to bring its entire event infrastructure under one roof. The shift let headquarters build event templates once and clone them across every region: the same forms, thermometers, peer-to-peer fundraising tools, and branding, deployed with minimal effort at scale. "We're able to take our signature event and build a template and then duplicate it so that we can host scalable events in each region," Harrison said. "For large nonprofits, being able to use that duplicate feature—do the work upfront and scale it multiple times with little to no effort—has been a game changer."

The partnership went beyond software. Bloomerang Fundraising's events team put staff on-site the night of key galas and peer-to-peer events, giving regional teams an extra layer of support and letting them focus on donor relationships instead of logistics. Automated tax receipts and customizable giving forms made stewardship easier post-event. They even captured a phone number on every donation form in order to follow up within 24 hours.

That follow-up capability quietly became one of the program's most powerful assets. Canine Companions also used Bloomerang's reporting features to make a counterintuitive strategic call: shrink the gala guest list. By analyzing who was actually participating in fund-a-need, live auctions, ticket purchases, and sponsorships year over year, Harrison's team identified the guests most likely to engage and stopped filling seats just for the sake of a bigger room. “We are strategic right down to where donors are sitting and with which staff member,” shared Harrison. “And for us, we have the blessing of having dogs. So, who gets to sit next to the puppy? Those are the people we know are going to raise the paddle.”

Results

$6.3M raised with fundraising events—and a $5 gift that became a five-figure relationship

In just one year, Canine Companions raised $6,327,165 through galas, peer-to-peer campaigns, and golf tournaments powered by Bloomerang Fundraising. Harrison's team now runs 10 peer-to-peer events and seven galas annually, all built from the same scalable template. The data-driven approach to the gala guest list paid off. A smaller, more engaged room consistently outperformed the bigger one. “We aren't just hosting an event to host an event or to have a fundraiser for fun,” she explained. “We really treat it as part of the donor cycle.” And in recognition of Harrison’s exceptional skill in event management in the nonprofit sector, she was honored with the Fundraiser of the Year Givie Award at GiveCon 2026. 

The organization's commitment to treating every guest as a potential major supporter proved its worth in one of Harrison’s favorite donor stories: a 20-year-old guest arrived casually dressed at one of Canine Companions' events and made a $5 gift that night. “Just like any guest of any of our events, we did our stewardship follow-up. We called and said thank you so much for coming,” and the woman revealed she'd like to make another, larger gift. "She was this inconspicuous twenty-something, just fresh out of college, who ended up being a five-figure gift for us," said Harrison, "and it was because we were able to do those touch points post-event."

That philosophy compounds over time. One first-time gala guest was later invited for a campus tour and never stopped coming back. Today, she's raised 34 dogs, joined Canine Companions' heritage society as a planned giving member, and is an active major donor. For Canine Companions, where every trained dog changes a life, that kind of relationship isn't just a fundraising win. It's making a direct impact on their mission.