How Bloomerang Fundraising saved fundraisers three months of work a year

Key Nonprofit Highlights

In 1987, California’s Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) began its journey as a small after-school arts program. Over time, it became one of the nation’s premier arts schools, providing specialized curriculum in performing, visual, literary, and culinary arts to students in grades 7 through 12. To streamline operations, OCSA partnered with Bloomerang Fundraising to simplify pledge collection, donor engagement, and event management. By moving forms online, automating receipts, and utilizing peer-to-peer fundraising, the school eliminated inefficiencies like mailing thousands of invoices and saved three months of staff time annually. With 90% of payments now processed online, OCSA’s fundraising efforts became more efficient, impactful, and organized.

Challenge

Raiser’s Edge proved insufficient for pledge forms

As OSCA continued to grow, it faced the challenge of sustainability. As a tuition-free, donation-driven public charter school, OCSA had to generate 20% of its operating budget annually to supplement the 80% funding from the State of California. “We have to fundraise to support the twenty-one conservatories, and if you liken that to a football team, we have twenty-one football teams we have to support!” said John Grainger, Director of User Systems at OCSA.

The school relied on an intensely manual process to collect pledges and donations during their annual parent meeting and throughout the school year. Using paper-based forms, mail merges, and countless hours of data entry, the OCSA team mailed and processed thousands of invoices and checks annually. “It took three months of every school year to process!” shared Grainger. Realizing they had outgrown their methods, Grainger and his team sought a solution to bring their pledge collection and donor engagement processes into the digital age. However, early experiments with other tools proved insufficient and cumbersome for their specific needs.“We tried Google Forms, mail merge documents, text files, even Raiser’s Edge’s version of online forms. None worked well from a pledge perspective,” said Grainger. “We needed to enter the 21st century and decided to look for a vendor that would support online forms and websites.”

Solution

Bloomerang Fundraising streamlined pledges and peer-to-peer fundraising

Ultimately, Bloomerang Fundraising provided the digital innovation that OCSA needed to revolutionize its processes. By adopting Bloomerang, OCSA replaced Raiser’s Edge and embraced an integrated platform that made fundraising efficient, accurate, and impactful.

The first step was moving OCSA’s funding form online. With custom landing pages designed by Bloomerang, donors were routed to forms specific to their designated conservatory. Pledges, payments, and event sponsorships could now be automated and streamlined. “From a technical perspective, you create a widget that points to the specific fund for a specific conservatory and embed that form,” explained Grainger.

The OCSA team found additional value in Bloomerang’s suite of functionality, which included restrictions, hidden fields, and optional mappings that allowed for bulk data uploads and customized form pre-fills. They also leveraged “a cornucopia of receipts” to automate acknowledgments for all types of donor interactions—payments, refunds, thank-yous, and tax receipts. As Grainger put it, “Bloomerang’s global receipts have been a lifesaver,” eliminating the need to manually create and update multiple receipt versions. And Bloomerang’s support has made learning the platform easier than ever. “I’ve been in this industry a long time, and the support is unparalleled to anywhere that I’ve ever seen,” said Grainger.

OCSA further increased its efficiency by using Bloomerang’s peer-to-peer platform for conservatory-hosted events. These events often required parents to contribute toward costs like costumes and set designs. Thanks to the peer-to-peer format, families could now crowdfund these expenses. In addition, Bloomerang’s Fundraising Hub centralized each conservatory’s fundraising activities, simplifying event management while enhancing transparency and organization across the school.

Results

Bloomerang Fundraising saved nonprofit staff three months of work

By implementing electronic invoicing, the team eradicated the need to mail thousands of invoices annually—saving significant costs on supplies, postage, and labor. “It cost us about $1.50 per envelope,” Grainger recalled. Today, invoices are sent via email with the choice of online or mail-in payment options, and 90% of payments are processed online.

Efficiencies extended beyond invoices. With the ability to collect and process pledges online, all manual work surrounding batch processing, invoicing, and reporting for accounting and administration teams was drastically reduced, saving about three months of staff time per year. Reflecting on this transformation, Grainger emphasized, “The whole genesis of moving systems was to find one that allowed us to collect online pledge information from parents. We wouldn’t have moved our systems if we didn’t find a solution to this online processing.”

Bloomerang’s impact extended into engagement as well, particularly with peer-to-peer events. “Our parents have appreciated it because it allows them to spread the wealth and get the word out to family and friends, as well as put it on their Facebook page. We’ve got an 89% success rate so far,” shared Grainger. Parents can now rally sponsors, donors, and their broader networks in a dynamic, digital format, complete with real-time leaderboards and interactive features. “Before, it was like you’re putting money in a jar somewhere to vote for your team,” said Grainger. “Now, it’s more dynamic, where you can get a lot more voting done even before the event itself.” Bloomerang Fundraising has not only streamlined operations but also enhanced community engagement, making OSCA’s fundraising efforts more efficient and impactful than ever before.