Building better relationships to retain 56% of donors with the Bloomerang Giving Platform

Key Nonprofit Highlights

Opportunity Partners serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, helping them live their best lives. Before fully using Bloomerang's segmentation tools, every donor received the same mailed pieces no matter their gift size, and the advancement team spent hours reconciling donor and event data across disconnected platforms. After switching to Bloomerang’s Giving Platform, Opportunity Partners unified its donor data, personalized outreach, and built stronger relationships with supporters. The organization now retains 56% of its donors, increased gala revenue by 51% from $365K to $550K, and has grown event attendance so much that they have moved venues twice to fit everyone who wants to support the people that Opportunity Partners serves.

Challenge

Limited donor communications across disconnected systems

The goal of Opportunity Partners' Advancement team is to raise the $1.2 million of the organization's $35 million annual budget that isn't covered by other revenue sources. This flexible, diversified philanthropic support allows Opportunity Partners to innovate, strengthen existing services, invest in new opportunities, respond to emerging needs, and create the moments of connection, purpose, and joy that help people with disabilities thrive.

But what didn’t support their mission was the team’s old process for acknowledging donations and managing supporter relationships. Before Opportunity Partners fully tapped into Bloomerang's segmentation tools, every donor got the same experience no matter their gift size. Whether someone gave $25 or $25,000, they received four mailed newsletters, four appeal letters, four impact postcards, and one acknowledgement letter a year—none of it electronic, and all of it carrying the same generic message. 

"Not only was there an opportunity to save on printing and postage, but also to personalize communication, segment audiences, and help people feel seen,” as Development Manager Jennifer Cameron put it. “Without strong data management, I wouldn't be able to reference conversations from past events or capture personal details that make communications more meaningful and relationships stronger. There was some infrastructure that had to be built with our donor database specialist in Bloomerang that now allows us to thoughtfully segment those audiences.”

And the disconnect ran even deeper than just the mailbox. Opportunity Partners' event and auction tools didn't talk to its CRM, so the advancement team had to constantly export spreadsheet reports, reformat them, and manually reconcile figures before any of it landed in the donor database. Their old processes ate up hours the team could have spent building relationships as well as leaving room for error.

Solution

Segmenting donors and unifying data with the Bloomerang Giving Platform

Opportunity Partners got started with Bloomerang CRM in 2021, later adding Volunteer in 2024 and Fundraising in 2025, giving the advancement team one unified and intelligent Giving Platform for every supporter interaction. Auction bids, event registrations, and landing page sign-ups now flow straight into the CRM for a “seamless integration of data,” according to Cameron. With Bloomerang, the development budget, rather than the finance department’s, now serves as the organization's “north star” to reconcile financial data against. 

That centralized data also freed Cameron's team to build the segmented, personalized outreach they had wanted for years. Instead of one mailing for every donor, the team crafts distinct appeals for the families they serve versus the broader community, and acknowledgement letters can reference the specific reason someone gave. Cameron pointed to Journey Automation, which allows organizations to automate multi-touch outreach to constituents based on where they are in the donor lifecycle, as a favorite feature: “I have been talking about donor journeys incessantly for two years, and then, like magic, I found out that Bloomerang was going to do donor journeys. The fact that it lives there now is amazing.”

Customizable dashboards also give Opportunity Partners' leadership a real-time view of their own donor portfolios. “Whether it's my VP or our CEOs, who each manage different relationships, they can quickly see what's happening across the organization or drill into the activity within their own portfolio,” Cameron explained. “I really love that it gives our leaders a clear snapshot of how they're engaging with donors, where relationships are growing, and where we have opportunities to connect more intentionally.”

Results

Retaining 56% of donors and growing gala revenue through corporate sponsorships

With cleaner, more complete data behind every decision, Opportunity Partners now retains 56% of its donors, well above the industry average. They have increased gala revenue by 51% from $365K in 2021 to $550K in 2026, growing attendance so much that they’ve had to move venues twice to fit everyone in the room. Plus, Bloomerang Fundraising's a la carte structure lets the team turn on auction features for their annual gala, then turn them off again the rest of the year.

Cameron credited much of Opportunity Partners' recent growth to a more personalized approach to corporate partnerships, supported by Bloomerang Fundraising. "One of our biggest areas of growth has been corporate partnerships, and Bloomerang Fundraising has been an important part of that. It allows us to create a dedicated partnership page that highlights each company's commitment to our mission, showcases their impact, and provides a seamless way to complete their investment. It becomes more than a payment page. It's another opportunity to celebrate and strengthen those partnerships."

For nonprofits considering a new fundraising platform, Cameron offers straightforward advice: "Stop looking. Don't waste any more time without Bloomerang." 

For Opportunity Partners, the real value extends far beyond better data. It has created a more thoughtful, personalized approach to donor engagement, strengthening the relationships that sustain the organization's mission. Those relationships, in turn, provide flexible philanthropic support that allows Opportunity Partners to continue growing, innovating, and creating more opportunities for adults with disabilities to experience purpose, belonging, and joy.