Increasing donor retention from 43% with Kindful to 56% with Bloomerang
Key Nonprofit Highlights
Leadership Mission International (LMI) develops women from rural Honduras into civic-minded, servant-hearted leaders. In a two-year program, students learn English, entrepreneurship, and community development. They then return home to break cycles of poverty and reinvest in their communities. When LMI outgrew the limited reporting, basic forms, and separate email tool it used with Kindful, they chose to transition to the Bloomerang Giving Platform®, where their donor retention rose from 43% to 56%. A memorial fund raised $20,000 in one week. And Penny, Bloomerang’s AI fundraising partner, now handles routine data tasks that once took at least 20 minutes each.
Challenge
Overcoming limited reporting and disconnected tools as a solo fundraiser
Katrina Debrah joined LMI as its first full-time fundraiser and inherited the Kindful CRM, but it couldn’t keep pace with her ambitions for the international-focused nonprofit. Reporting fell short, fundraising forms were too basic, and peer-to-peer fundraising never delivered. Email lived in Mailchimp, so every campaign meant exporting data from one system to feed another. “It was functional,” said Debrah. “I became proficient at Kindful, but I really saw the need for something that was a lot more streamlined, a lot more integrated.”
For a one-person development operation, every workaround cost precious time. “I don’t have someone who’s doing data management. I’m doing data management,” Debrah said. She needed fast answers from her data and the freedom to build more sophisticated forms. Segmented, personal outreach to donors sat out of reach.
Solution
Streamlining fundraising, email, and relationships with Bloomerang CRM
Reporting and fundraising forms drove Debrah’s decision to move LMI to Bloomerang. The team adopted Bloomerang CRM and Bloomerang Fundraising, and the change reached every part of her day. She now builds donor groups, sends segmented emails, tracks open and click rates without leaving the system, and was able to drop Mailchimp entirely. “It’s like going from a very, very simple thing to a very magical system that has all kinds of features that you can learn and turn on.”
Relationships have always been at the heart of LMI’s fundraising strategy, and tracking them has become a cornerstone of their Bloomerang usage. Debrah logs how constituents know each other, and Penny takes the tedious work off her plate. Instead of adding a new constituent to five groups and linking them to 10 people by hand, she gives Penny the instruction. “I just tell Penny to do that, and it can,” she said. Debrah estimated the savings at “usually at least twenty minutes” per task. She also asks Penny to build specific reports, such as event attendees who opened a particular email.
Journey Automation can handle many of the communication tasks she used to have to do manually. New contacts enter a nurture sequence automatically, and Bloomerang assigns Debrah a call task at the end. She also built a year-end fundraising hub in Bloomerang Fundraising, featuring upcoming events and a gallery of art by LMI students.
Results
Raising donor retention from 43% to 56%
LMI’s donor retention climbed from 43% under Kindful to 56% with Bloomerang, a 30% increase. Debrah credited part of that to LMI finally having a dedicated fundraising staff member and part to her relationship-based fundraising. “I know the names of all of my donors. I know what they care about,” she said. “Being able to have that specialized communication with people just means the world to them.”
When a major LMI donor recently passed away, the relationships Debrah had nurtured became a source of comfort as well as connection. Four days before the funeral, his family asked Debrah to set up a memorial fund. She was able to quickly build a form in Bloomerang Fundraising with a tribute box, so donors could leave messages for the family. Because she’d already tracked who knew whom, she pulled a report of the donor’s connections and emailed them through Bloomerang. The family shared a video at the funeral that linked to the form.
The memorial campaign raised $20,000 within a week. “That’s just the ability to be responsive like that in the moment and not have to struggle with forms,” Debrah said. “Getting to work with families during the most intense time of their life, but also bring beauty to it and have a tool that allows me to react fast to those types of situations is really valuable.” She’s now turning the tribute messages submitted on the giving form into an artistic gift for the family.
Debrah is already looking ahead. She’s building reports and strategies to move first-time donors to a second gift, and every hour Bloomerang saves goes back to LMI’s mission. “Moving from data to true human interaction is what it’s all about,” said Debrah. With Bloomerang handling the data work, LMI can keep turning donor relationships into support for the next generation of Honduran leaders.
