Key Nonprofit Highlights
The TBRS Community, based in Stanfordville, NY, advances the clinical understanding of Tatton Brown Rahman Syndrome (TBRS), supports research participation, and provides resources to approximately 450 diagnosed individuals and their families worldwide. A grant from the Rare As One Network connected TBRS with Thread Strategies, which helped the organization consolidate its supporter data in Bloomerang CRM and build a stronger fundraising program. After using that foundation to achieve its strongest fundraising results to date, TBRS expanded into Bloomerang’s Intelligent Giving Platform. Today, the TBRS team uses predictive donor insights to spot relationships that may need attention, ProspectAI to research promising supporters, and Data Health Hub to catch data issues before they affect outreach.
Challenge
Knowing where to focus after a breakthrough year
Like many rare disease nonprofits, TBRS was founded by the parent or caregiver of an affected individual rather than by a team of professional fundraisers. Before Bloomerang, the organization stored supporter information across various spreadsheets.
A grant from the Rare As One Network connected TBRS with Thread Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in building fundraising capacity for small nonprofits. Thread Strategies guided TBRS through implementing Bloomerang CRM, consolidating its data, and creating a standard operating procedure manual. The firm also helped TBRS build eight donor segments for a six-week campaign supporting the launch of a pilot TBRS Center of Excellence, preventing redundant asks and moving donors directly into stewardship after they gave.
“In particular, the ability to build a dynamic report and then use a ‘report within a report’ as a suppression and email filter—and to not have to rebuild those every time—is a total game changer and very unique to Bloomerang,” said Loree Lipstein, CEO and founder of Thread Strategies.
In its first year using Bloomerang, TBRS raised $64,673 against a $60,000 end-of-year goal, grew first-time donors by 113%, and delivered an 82% year-over-year increase in revenue. With that strong foundation and momentum, TBRS was ready to get even more from Bloomerang by expanding into the Intelligent Giving Platform.
Solution
Turning centralized donor data into prioritized action
Building on its first-year success, TBRS adopted Bloomerang’s Intelligent Giving Platform. Predictive Donor Insights surfaces daily recommended actions based on which donor relationships may need attention. Instead of beginning with a manual search or building another report, DeBonis receives a prioritized starting point for stewardship and potential major-gift outreach. The recommendations have also helped her identify a supporter TBRS may approach about providing a matching gift.
“Building reports to surface these opportunities can take hours,” DeBonis said. “Recommended actions show me what to focus on first, so I can spend more time stewarding donors instead of searching for them.”
ProspectAI helps DeBonis assess giving capacity and determine which supporters warrant deeper research and cultivation. Information that previously required searching Google, Facebook, and other sources is brought into Bloomerang, helping the team focus on its strongest opportunities.
Used alongside Penny, Bloomerang’s AI fundraising assistant, ProspectAI also helps TBRS prepare for donor meetings by bringing relationship history, prospect research, and giving-capacity information into clearer focus.
“What we're always thinking about is: how do we approximate a one-to-one relationship when we're actually working one to many? That means personalizing things as much as we can—that's the whole point of segmentation,” Lipstein said.
Data Health Hub strengthens the information behind that outreach by helping DeBonis identify possible duplicates and formatting issues, including supporter names written in all capital letters. For a recurring-giving relaunch, she also used Penny and two years of donor history to create four tailored monthly ask levels: $10, $15, $25, and $30.
“Penny and conversational reporting help us make more personal, appropriate asks,” DeBonis said. “And nothing says ‘mass outreach’ like opening an email with a constituent’s name in all caps. Data Health Hub catches those details so we can correct them quickly and make our outreach feel personal from the very first line.”
Together, these capabilities help TBRS move beyond organizing donor information to identifying which relationships need attention, where opportunities may exist, and what action to take next.
Results
Acting on $1,000 in annual giving and prioritizing stronger prospects
Within its first month using the Intelligent Giving Platform, predictive donor insights surfaced two recurring-giving relationships that required attention. Together, the gifts represented $1,000 in annual giving—the equivalent of TBRS’s major-donor threshold.
One donor’s $200 semiannual gift had lapsed because their card was no longer being charged. Another donor’s $50 monthly gift was flagged as at risk. DeBonis immediately contacted the lapsed donor and created a follow-up task to investigate the second relationship.
“I was able to email the donor immediately from the daily recommendation,” DeBonis said. “Without it, the lapse could have slipped through the cracks, and we might have lost a donor who still wanted to support our mission.”
During that same first month, ProspectAI saved the team an estimated 10 hours of research while helping DeBonis evaluate giving capacity and prioritize deeper cultivation around the strongest opportunities.
TBRS Community’s experience shows how an organization can grow with Bloomerang. CRM and Thread Strategies gave the team the centralized data and fundraising structure it needed to exceed its campaign goal. The Intelligent Giving Platform is helping TBRS build on that success by recognizing more opportunities, strengthening donor relationships, and focusing its limited capacity where it can have the greatest impact.
