Key Nonprofit Highlights
Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial serves as the official nonprofit partner to the National Park Service at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They raise the private funds that keep education, environmental stewardship, and visitor engagement projects moving forward when federal dollars fall short. With just two full-time staff members responsible for reaching donors, educators, families, and sponsors across the country, the team needed a way to turn a bare-bones donor list into real, lasting relationships. Since becoming a Bloomerang customer in 2016, they built a segmentation and outreach strategy that grew a $1,000 donor into a $25,000-a-year supporter and helped them renovate a major memorial site by raising $100,000 in just two months.
Challenge
Reaching a growing base of donors, educators, and families with a small team
When Donna Gibson became executive director of Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial, she knew that by investing more time into segmenting their supporter outreach, constituent relationships—and ultimately donations—would improve. “Bloomerang was basically being used just as a database to keep track of donors,” Gibson said. The small nonprofit wasn’t taking full advantage of unique and consistent communication with the many different groups they depended on: families connected to the memorial, educators using its curriculum resources, environmental supporters, and sponsors funding the rehabilitation of the memorial's 40 groves. Gibson knew the organization couldn't grow their mission, or their funding, by treating every supporter the same way.
Solution
Segmenting supporters and personalizing outreach with Bloomerang CRM
Gibson turned Bloomerang CRM into the engine behind every campaign the organization ran—building segmentation lists for educators, environmental supporters, and sponsors, as well as donors who had given $1,000 or more. The team flagged every gift at that level so Gibson could personally call each donor to say thank you, a habit that turned one loyal $1,000-a-year giver into a $5,000, then a $10,000, and eventually a $25,000-a-year supporter. “Once we started communicating more, it seemed like people really started resonating with our mission,” explained Gibson. “Especially with our education and environmental initiatives.’”
The team relied on that same segmentation to launch a calendar campaign to commemorate the 25th observance of 9/11, offering a calendar to anyone who gave $93 or more, then surprising their most consistent recurring donors with a calendar too, even if they hadn't hit that threshold. “Bloomerang really does make it easier for us to identify the constituents that we want to reach and target the message to those people,” Gibson said. When Bloomerang rolled out a more intuitive conversational reporting tool, Gibson used it to pull a full grant report for a board member in minutes, typing in only a few words instead of building a spreadsheet from scratch.
Results
Growing a single donor into a $25,000-a-year supporter
With help from Bloomerang, Friends of Flight 93 maintains a 42% retention rate, with many donors giving consistently since its inception 25 years ago. The $1,000-a-year donor who now gives $25,000 every year has remained engaged and has also encouraged his friends to give to the cause too. Another supporter, who first connected with the organization through a webinar about their resiliency project, called to donate $50,000 to environmental work. He had originally requested to not receive any swag from the team, but when they launched their calendar campaign, Gibson sent him a personal thank-you note with a calendar he ended up loving. “We got another $50,000 this year from him for the resiliency project. So, the love continues to grow,” Gibson said. The calendar campaign itself sold more than 100 calendars in its first two days and ultimately raised over $100,000.
Another campaign to renovate the memorial's Western Overlook, where families first viewed the Flight 93 crash site, raised more than $100,000 in just two months. “That space in particular, I think people resonated with the fact that it was the family's first look,” explained Gibson. “They thought, ‘Yes, it should be nice. It should be a place that's recognized.’” Even a local television interview turned into a $2,500 donation from a viewer who had never given before. With their small team now equipped to identify, segment, and personally connect with every kind of supporter, Friends of Flight 93 is positioned to keep growing their reach for the next 25 years and beyond, honoring the memory of September 11 with every new donor they bring in.
