How this nonprofit raised 143% more by switching to Bloomerang Fundraising

Key Nonprofit Highlights

Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas empowers young people with the knowledge and skills they need to own their economic success, plan for their futures, and make smart academic and economic choices. Originally an after-school program, it now offers both in-school and after-school activities in the core content areas of work readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy. Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas relies heavily on their annual bowl-a-thon event for fundraising, but their previous platform limited their efforts. By switching to Bloomerang Fundraising, they significantly improved their results, raising $918,657 in their first year—a 143.4% increase—and $1,170,135 the following year. Bloomerang’s easy-to-use tools, unlimited peer-to-peer donation forms, and centralized tracking simplified data management for the nonprofit and allowed companies to raise more funds. The new platform helped them grow their impact and better support students in their service area.

Challenge

Old nonprofit software held back fundraising

More than half of Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas’ revenue is generated from a single event. Their bowl-a-thon event is a massive fundraiser that makes up most of the organization’s fundraising efforts each year. Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas finds much of their bowl-a-thon fundraising success comes from choosing unique event themes and partnering with area companies. Each company gets its own peer-to-peer event form and recruits participants who fundraise as part of their event participation. With so much riding on this single event, insufficient fundraising results could lead to needing to add fundraisers or potentially scale back their program offering—which would negatively impact the students in their service area.

Before switching to Bloomerang Fundraising, Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas was using an online donation platform called Intelis. It wasn’t producing the results the organization needed to meet the needs of the area they served. They knew their bowl-a-thon event had the capacity to raise a lot of money for their programs, and they weren’t satisfied with their fundraising performance because their old platform was hard for people to use. Recognizing that they were falling short of fundraising goals, Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas sought out a different platform that would help them raise more.

Solution

Switching to Bloomerang Fundraising’s easy-to-use event management software

Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas signed up with Bloomerang Fundraising and got to work creating online donation forms for their bowl-a-thon events. Stephanie Canahuati, the Special Events Manager of Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas, found Bloomerang Fundraising’s tools made it easier for companies participating in the event to raise funds for their programs. “The main purpose we have for Bloomerang Fundraising is the bowl-a-thons,” Canahuati said. “It makes it easy for us to create this unique, personalized website for each company. And it’s easy for them to use it to actually get funds.”

The ease of use for both nonprofits and peer-to-peer fundraising participants made it possible for Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas to grow their event and raise more than they had before. Because Bloomerang Fundraising offers unlimited peer-to-peer donation forms, the JA team can make each company its own form. This makes it easy to track how much each company is raising. When the nonprofit needs to compile their event data, the event coordinators can quickly pull and download different transaction and event reports. With Bloomerang’s Fundraising Hub feature, the results of each company’s peer-to-peer campaign can be reflected in one place, and organizations can add the results of multiple donation forms toward one large fundraising goal.

Results

Raising 143% more for bowl-a-thon with Bloomerang Fundraising

When Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas switched to Bloomerang Fundraising, they saw their donations grow exponentially. They raised $918,657 with Bloomerang Fundraising—a 143.4% increase from what they had previously raised with their old platform. They have continued to see their fundraising success grow year-over-year with Bloomerang Fundraising. They recently raised $1,170,135 in one year with Bloomerang Fundraising, a 27.4% increase over their first year with the platform.

The switch to Bloomerang Fundraising resulted in Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas growing the amount they’ve been able to fundraise with their bowl-a-thon event. Simplifying the giving process made it possible for companies to raise more funds for Junior Achievement. Taking online gifts is important for Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas because, as Canahuati realized, “People don’t always like to donate cash.” A simple donation form made a world of difference when it came to the organization’s ability to raise more funds.