Cutting their workload in half by switching from camp software to Bloomerang

Key Nonprofit Highlights

Cromwell Valley Park Council advocates for, protects, and maintains Cromwell Valley Park, a 460-acre nature park in Baltimore County, Maryland, with six ecosystems and historic structures dating back to the 1700s. With limited county recreation funding, they rely on donors and volunteers to keep trails open, preserve landmarks, and expand accessible programming. 

Their team of three had stretched software built for summer camps to manage fundraising, then needed a new home when the county moved camp finances in-house. The Bloomerang Giving Platform® gave them a unified system for donor management, memberships, communications, and event registration. Auto-renewing memberships cut their workload roughly in half, they achieved a 41% donor retention rate, and their emails now earn open rates between 50% and 65%.

Challenge

Outgrowing camp software for donor management

Before Bloomerang, the council used the Camp Brain platform to run camp activities, then adapted it for smaller events and donor management because they had nothing else. Communications lived in a finite Camp Brain feature set and in Constant Contact, and donation management was limited. The team could track funds but not individual supporters. Seeing who gave how much meant exporting a spreadsheet and sorting by hand.

Mia Walsh, the council’s president, said the old setup never fit. “I always felt like we were trying to adapt the software to do what we needed it to do,” she said. Memberships created even more manual work. Every membership expired on one date, April 1, so summer joiners missed months of benefits, and the team wound up giving them additional months of membership benefits at the nonprofit's expense.

When the county moved camp finances to its own platform, the council saw a chance to start fresh. Walsh noticed that steady, soft communication kept donations climbing, so she wanted a platform focused on fundraising overall instead of just event management.

Solution

Unifying donors, memberships, and volunteers in Bloomerang CRM

The council moved to Bloomerang in September 2025. Bloomerang’s transition team cleaned their data and imported historical transactions from Camp Brain, so Walsh could still target anyone who had given $50 or more. The council also trimmed their database to active, invested supporters and prioritized quality over quantity. 

“Bloomerang knows what we should be doing and has already built that into their systems,” said Walsh. Website forms now feed straight into Bloomerang CRM, which saves time and prevents transcription errors. “Every single person that touches it loves it,” Walsh said, from finance to communications to events. “I also like the interface because it makes me happy when I log in.” Segmentation also sharpened their outreach. Working with a new volunteer coordinator, Walsh split one broad volunteer group into trails, fences, large events, and gardens, so the team stopped overwhelming volunteers with emails and kept people from unsubscribing. 

The council also launched Bloomerang’s membership tools, which had Walsh raving: “The rolling expiration and the auto renew for memberships has cut our workload probably in half.” Journey Automations also handle membership messages, as well as donor receipts. Bloomerang’s generosity and engagement levels let them email donors at a chosen giving tier with one click. Reporting showed donors loved a weed-eating goat rental, so the council added a donation dropdown and brought the goats back to clear invasive kudzu. 

And when a beloved park attendee whose nature photos resonated in the community passed away, Walsh used Bloomerang Fundraising to build a tribute page and donation link within an hour. “We posted some of his photos on Facebook to remember him,” shared Walsh. “When I saw that people were making donations in his name, I was able to create a special link for his donations.” There was so much community support, they decided to plan an art show and fundraiser in his honor for any artist who has painted or photographed nature in the park, with many artists contributing 100% of the proceeds from art sales to be donated to the council. 

Results

Earning 50% to 65% email open rates and cutting workload in half

The council’s communications consistently outperformed expectations. Delivery rates ran between 96% and 100%, with zero bounces. Open rates ranged from 50% to 65% across newsletters, volunteer messages, and accessible birding announcements and reached 74% during the membership launch. “I don’t think we’ve ever had less than a 50% open rate,” Walsh said. The council also saw their donor retention rate, at 41%, on screen for the first time.

Targeted outreach delivered fast. After Walsh emailed past fence painters about a November painting day, the first registration arrived about two minutes later. Open board meetings grew from about three outside guests to 20 to 30 attendees. The goat fundraiser returned again and again, and the photographer’s tribute grew into an art show fundraiser projected to raise $3,500 or more. For Walsh, the ultimate payoff is time. “It’s letting us do our job that we really really want to do,” she said. “To invest in that has made all of our workload so much lighter.”