How this revamped nonprofit doubled its donations with Bloomerang Fundraising

Key Nonprofit Highlights

Fresno Mission is a Christ-centered charitable organization based in Fresno, CA. They provide transformative basic essentials, programs, and guidance by meeting the spiritual and physical needs of their community. When Fresno Mission rebranded to focus on supporting families experiencing homelessness, they used Bloomerang Fundraising’s digital tools to revamp their marketing strategy to target new donor demographics. Integrating technology like QR codes and text-to-donate features allowed them to double their one-time donations from $301,690 to $636,880 in a year and gain over 1,000 new donors with a 75% increase in recurring giving through a membership program. This digital transformation, made possible by Bloomerang Fundraising, significantly boosted their nonprofit’s success.

Challenge

Growing donations while rebranding Fresno Mission for a changing homeless population

For over 70 years, the Mission was primarily known as a place that feeds the homeless. They chose to rebrand themselves and pivot from their historical focus in response to the shift in the homeless community. The face of homelessness has changed, and many now find themselves homeless due to situational circumstances. Over 55% of the community they now serve are family units with kids, with the average age of the individual they serve now at 26. Their biggest challenge was to transform a rescue mission to a family-focused organization that offers programs that rescue, restore, and empower those they serve. They needed to communicate their new name, focus, and story to their supporters, as well as build awareness to attract new donors.

Solution

Using Bloomerang Fundraising for online giving and text-to-donate options

Fresno Mission moved away from traditional media and embraced technology and digital solutions to focus on their storytelling. They identified new demographics for their donor base and invested in how they told their story. “When you don’t have a huge marketing budget, you look to technology to leverage the market,” explained Joshua Mendoza, Marketing Manager. “People can bring in technology into their organizations and really dive into those inexpensively, fast, and easy.” With this revamped focus, they reviewed all their marketing messaging and mediums and fundamentally shifted what their donor base looked like.

They worked with Bloomerang Fundraising to ensure all their donation forms contained simple and concise messaging, as well as coding to track their website and donation form usage, optimizing Google Analytics. Additionally, they made sure to use Bloomerang Fundraising’s feature to track their online forms on social media. “Whether it’s in a business or telling the story of the people that we’re helping, Bloomerang allows us to do that with QR codes, interactive posters, live boxes, and static pages on our website,” said Mendoza. They developed numerous donation forms tailored to specific campaigns and began leveraging the platform’s flexible features, enabling them to activate or deactivate specific forms and products as needed.

Results

Doubling one-time donations and gaining 1,000+ new online donors

The Mission did their research to identify their ideal donor and realized that 99% of their donations come from donors giving $5,000 or less. They made sure that every potential donor received additional opportunities to give by utilizing QR codes and text-to-donate messaging in each and every marketing touch point a prospective donor would see. “If nonprofits are going to continue to survive and do fundraising, especially with a younger demographic, they really need to be more dependent on recurring giving in smaller gifts, rather than just relying on major donors,” said Keith Stump, Chief Development Officer.

Through this approach, they more than doubled their one-time donations from $301,690 to $636,880 in just one year. They also shifted their recurring giving focus by enrolling donors in a membership program. This more member-focused approach helped them gain traction with smaller donations and resulted in a 75% increase, to just over 1000 new donors. “We really leaned heavily on Bloomerang with text-to-donate and donation forms and doubled down on our digital advertising,” said Mendoza. “It’s been so convenient, and we’ve seen an uptick in our online presence and saw our giving start going up. It’s been phenomenal working with Bloomerang.”