Reading the signals: how intelligence is changing fundraising

Ky Jones: Hello, and welcome. Welcome, everyone, as you’re jumping in. Welcome, everybody. Great to be with y’all virtually today.

While we’re letting everyone join, if you want to get started, use the chat — let us know where you’re coming in from. Me, myself, my name is Ky Jones. I’m going to be the host of today’s session, and I live in Northampton, Massachusetts.

We got Beatrice — awesome. Boise, Carmel, oh, Palmer, Mass — hey, we’re not too far away from each other. Hello, everybody. Malden, Massachusetts, Jessica — awesome. I promise I’m not only looking for the Massachusetts people, but — West Hartford, Scott, I grew up in South Windsor, Connecticut, so not too far away from you either.

We’re going to get started in just about one minute, everyone — just letting people file in. The numbers are going up rapidly, so I don’t want to start while we’re waiting for people. Oh, we got someone from Hawaii, NYC — amazing. I know someone said there was an echo — did that help? I hope there’s no echo now. Seeing some “okay” — perfect, people aren’t seeing an echo anymore. A couple from Denver, LA, Birmingham, Indianapolis, Washington — amazing. Okay, I’ll give people, like, thirty more seconds, and then we’ll kick things off.

Oh, we got someone from Alberta. Anyone from Asheville, North Carolina? I’m visiting Asheville later this month — it’ll be my first time there, and I hear it’s absolutely lovely, can’t wait. Rhode Island. Oh, Uganda, Africa — amazing. Thank you, Rachel — I hope to have fun in Nashville. Amazing, Hailey. Yes, I can’t wait, Lisa. Okay, we’ll take fifteen more seconds, then I’ll officially get started — the attendees joining us have started to slow down.

Well, okay — I will officially get us started, everyone. So welcome, everybody. Like I mentioned earlier, my name is Ky Jones, and I’m one of our enablement program managers here at Bloomerang, and I’m thrilled to be hosting this webinar about reading the signals.

Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us today. We’re really excited to spend the next forty-five minutes introducing something that we believe will genuinely change how fundraisers work. Now, before we get started, I know many of you have already done a great job letting us know where you’re coming from. I’ve got one more thing I want you to put in the chat right now, and that’s: in one word, how does fundraising feel for you right now?

Let’s get those in the chat. Difficult, tense, hopeless, stressful, overwhelming, stressful, hard, hopeful, slow — fabulous answers, guys, I hear you entirely. Thank you so much for sharing. Keep those answers coming in.

While those are coming in, I do have some quick housekeeping to go over. Number one, you can probably see it at the top, but this is being recorded — so if for whatever reason you can’t stay the whole time, don’t worry, we’ll send you the recording. In addition to the chat, there’s a Q&A feature if you want to ask questions throughout the presentation as well. Also, don’t stray too far from your keyboard — I have some polls I’m going to send you, so I’d love if you could participate in those too.

And the last housekeeping item I want to add: I know there might be some existing Bloomerang customers on this call, and I first want to say a big welcome to you all. Secondly, I want to be transparent that we’re not going to do specific training on the Bloomerang platform today — how to do specific things in it. However, if that’s what you’re looking for, we have some incredible resources that do just that. That includes things like Bloomerang Learning, where — if you didn’t know — we have daily group training sessions you can attend every single day. We’ve got a whole bunch coming out, multiple every day, for the entire month of September. We also, of course, have our absolutely wonderful support team that you can contact easily from within the platform. And GiveCon tickets are now live — it’s coming up May 3–6, 2027, in Atlanta. I’m planning to be there, so if you go, I’d love to meet you and see you there.

But on that note, that finishes welcomes, that finishes housekeeping. I’m going to introduce our lovely panelists for today. So you can see them now: we have Katie Gaston, our director of product marketing, and we have Windy Keene, one of our solution consultants here. Katie, Windy, thank you for joining me. To introduce yourselves — could you tell us a little about yourself, and then I’d love to know your favorite nonprofit cause? Katie, you can go first.

Katie Gaston: You bet. First of all, so excited to be here with you all today — we’re going to have a ton of fun in the next hour, and it’s going to be a conversation, that’s our goal, not a presentation. With that in mind, I’d say I’ve been in the nonprofit space as a volunteer, honestly, since I can remember. When I was a teenager, I started taking my dogs to nursing homes with my mom and did animal-assisted therapy. So I’m really big and passionate about helping nonprofits raise more, and just giving back in my own community, which is Boise, Idaho — I saw one other person from Idaho, so thanks for being here. And then my personal passion, speaking of taking my dog to do animal-assisted therapy, is animals — I’m a big animal lover, cats, dogs, you name it, I’m there. So I’d say that’s my cause. But I’ll popcorn to Windy.

Windy Keene: Thank you, Katie. I’m Windy. I’ve been with the team here around eight years. Like Ky said, I’m a solution consultant, so I get to work with lots of different nonprofits every day. I feel like she just asked me to name my favorite child — a little unfair, Ky, but I’ll do my best. I’ll say I have a strong affinity for all arts organizations, especially those creating public art projects — that’s a big thing for me. But I have a real passion for literacy organizations. I know literacy opens so many doors that can otherwise remain closed. And a fun fact — I actually give out books for Halloween every year along with candy, because I’m not a monster. So I absolutely love it.

Ky Jones: Well, Katie, Windy, thank you so much. We’ll be hearing from both of them soon, but I do want to get us started — I promised there’d be some polls, and here comes the first one right about now. The first question of the day: how do you usually decide which supporters to reach out to first? Take a couple of seconds, think about it — we’ll close the poll in about ten seconds, so get your answers in.

Okay, I think we’ve given you enough time. Can we see those results, please? Let’s see — okay, so it looks like details like giving level, last gift date, and gift size was the most common answer. “No consistent way” was the second most common. Some people are working with assigned donor portfolios. Okay, awesome — thank you for your participation.

Now, I want to encourage you to hold that thought for a moment. We’re going to take a quick tangent, but I promise you’ll like where this ends up. Katie, my question for you first: what’s the worst commute you’ve ever had in your life?

Katie Gaston: Well, I’ve had a few, but let me start — we’re going to go back in the way-back machine. If anyone knows that reference, put it in the chat. We’re going back to 2011. I was living in Los Angeles, and I remember getting on the freeway — I was driving from Pasadena to Long Beach, so if you know where those are, let us know. I was driving that every single day, and literally, some days it would turn into hours sitting on the freeway, not moving. The traffic info back then was really just “traffic’s gonna be bad at five o’clock” — and, yes, we know traffic is indeed bad at five o’clock. So I remember finding this app, if anyone uses it, called Waze. This was way back in the day, and it was so cool because Waze at that time told me more than just “traffic is usually bad right now.” It said, “hey, there’s an accident two miles ahead, you can avoid forty more minutes in your car if you take this exit right now” — and get on it. The first time it rerouted me around something I didn’t have my own way of knowing, I genuinely felt like I had a superpower.

Ky Jones: Thanks for sharing, Katie. Now, here’s my follow-up: isn’t Waze just watching average traffic patterns?

Katie Gaston: That’s a good question, because you’d assume that’s what they do. But it’s actually a lot more sophisticated than that. Waze was pulling in live accident reports, how fast other drivers were moving, historical patterns, road closures, weather — all of it — into a single system. Then it used that to give specific instructions right in the moment I needed them: “take this exit.” But the really neat thing, as I started using it more, is it wasn’t just about avoiding things like getting stuck in a traffic jam. It was also things like finding an off-freeway route no one else knew about that saved me an extra fifteen minutes a day — which, honestly, adds up significantly in a month. It helped me reroute to gas stations and make sure I never had an emergency. All of that led to me feeling in control and confident about the commute I was taking at that time.

Ky Jones: Okay, I like it. So I’m now going to ask the question I’m sure all of you out there are wondering: what does this have to do with fundraising, Katie?

Katie Gaston: Yes, that is the question — we’re not going to take you on a tangent for the next hour. Most donor data today is kind of the equivalent of sitting in rush hour. This is usually bad. Every gift, every email, it’s recorded, it’s sitting there — but no other system is actually combining it all together and telling you, “this is what you need to do right now, this is the exit you need to take on the freeway.” So what that means is — I saw you couldn’t see me on screen, but my face was frowning when you told me how fundraising feels for you right now. Overwhelming, exhausting — one person said “motivating,” so whoever that is, let’s talk to them after. But a lot of you said this is really overwhelming. Well, part of why it feels that way is every Monday morning starts with a guess of who to call. Maybe you look through a report of who gave last — like you said, a lot of you prioritize — but ultimately, it’s not combining all of those sophisticated signals and telling you, “today’s the right day to call this person,” or “this person you can save from lapsing,” or “this person is ready for an upgrade conversation.”

So we call all of the things your data and your system already know, but aren’t surfacing for you, silent signals. They’re signals that exist, but they’re just not being given to you in a way you can act on in the moment. The system knows someone’s four months from lapsing, or someone else is ready to upgrade, or someone else is ready for a major gift conversation — it’s just not surfacing that up for you. There’s a structure to how this plays out: a signal is detected, then you see why that signal matters in the moment — the system should tell you exactly why it matters — and then you see what action to take. What exit do I need to get off on, or how do I get to that gas station next? But it’s not forcing you to take that action. I could have chosen not to take the exit. As an individual, you still have the ability to decide what to do, and in which direction to head, or not.

Ky Jones: Amazing. So, to close that circle on Waze, Katie — what you’re saying is, it’s not based on a feeling, there’s real data backing this up?

Katie Gaston: A hundred percent. We survey our community every other month, and in July we ran one of these surveys to understand: is this feeling universal, or how does it actually show up in the community? What was super surprising to us is that almost every fundraiser we surveyed said they’re struggling to have a clear, consistent way to decide what to do next. In fact, teams are split roughly in half — some of you might be pulling lists, and it’s funny, because the poll literally said fifty percent of you are pulling lists using the data to inform it. Another twenty-five percent don’t have a priority order or a consistent way to know who to speak to next, and the rest filtered through other options. But, ultimately, six out of ten fundraisers in that survey said the breakdown isn’t having the data — it’s actually knowing the usable next step: who to call, and what to say in that conversation.

Ky Jones: Thank you, Katie. So here’s my question for the chat, guys — answer this: do you feel that? Do you wish you had more usable next steps, more direction on what to do next with your current fundraising efforts? We’re seeing that come in — I’m seeing a lot of “hundred percent” in the chat.

So I’ve got one last thing to say about Waze, Katie — Waze is never grabbing the wheel and driving the car for you. What’s the equivalent in fundraising?

Katie Gaston: Totally — you’re still in the driver’s seat. Data can surface up and say, “our intelligence is saying this is the person to call today,” but ultimately, the data should be telling you not just who’s ready — who gave last year, who’s wealthy, which sounds like a lot of what’s informing some of the lists you’re building or the campaign and appeal routes you’re taking — but who is ready, in this moment, right now, to be saved, to become a monthly donor, or to have that major gift conversation you didn’t think about, that they’re actually ready for.

Ky Jones: So, Katie, why does catching it in the moment matter so much?

Katie Gaston: That’s a really good question, because you’d assume, “well, if someone lapses, or if I don’t have that conversation, there’s always next year, there’s always next month.” What’s super interesting is that “later” — particularly with lapsing donors — doesn’t always happen. It’s just like when you miss your exit on the highway, which we’ve all done at some point, and you’re like, “oh my gosh, I’m now going to be thirty minutes late,” or “I’m stuck in this traffic jam for the next hour.” It’s never a five-minute setback. And what the data shows is that only one in twenty-five donors who leave your organization — who were a sustaining giver and choose to stop giving — ever come back to give again. So if you can catch that risk before it happens, or have the conversation at the right moment with the confidence to know it’s going to land, you’re not just avoiding losing that one donor — it’s actually more than that. It’s five relationships you never got the opportunity to grow.

Ky Jones: Yeah. Thank you, Katie.

Let’s take a bit of a pivot, guys — let’s talk about a day that’s coming up fast and furious, that you’re all planning for right now: GivingTuesday. Here comes another poll. What’s weighing on you most as GivingTuesday approaches? Get those answers in — we’ll give you about ten seconds.

Okay, I think we’re ready — reveal those answers. Okay, so standing out was the number one answer, with so many other nonprofits asking at the same time. A couple of people don’t participate in GivingTuesday at all. A lot of people are worried about the hours it takes to pull off. Totally hear you.

So, Katie — what do the days before GivingTuesday actually look like?

Katie Gaston: Well, I think y’all can put this in the chat, because I’m sure it’s late nights, a lot of coffee, and maybe a glass of wine or two after it’s over, if that’s your thing. In terms of prepping for the GivingTuesday plan, what we hear from a lot of nonprofits is: “look, we’ve got a database of five thousand, or whatever yours looks like, we have a supporter community of this size, we need to get the word out and get people to give” — which at times means sending an appeal to everyone in the community saying, “now is a great opportunity.” While that’s a strategy, and it does get the word out, it takes quite a bit of time, because you have to speak with all of those individuals. Depending on your strategy — say you’re using letters — all of that begins to add up. Every new appeal you write adds up, every letter you send adds up, every phone call you make adds up.

So imagine if we took a bit of a different approach. I thought it was really interesting that a lot of your concerns were, “how do we stand out, how do we make our message stand out when everyone’s asking for fundraising dollars on the exact same day?” Well, the way to stand out is to follow the signal of who’s actually most likely to respond, and think about how to personalize a message to those individuals — so you’re spending less time and less money, but potentially getting a stronger result. The outreach you do send is going to the people who are actually ready to absorb it and act on it.

Ky Jones: Now, Katie, quick question — I like what you’re saying, but isn’t the widest net still the safest bet, to reach as many people as possible on GivingTuesday?

Katie Gaston: I completely understand how there might be that perception, but wider isn’t always the same as better. Wider might mean casting the net wide and seeing what happens. But think about the last time — even those of us working in the nonprofit space, we all give too, whether it’s our time or a donation — when we were asked to give in a way that was more resonant with where we were as a donor, that made us pay attention, because a lot of the appeals we get don’t do that. So following the signal actually means spending less time and money on outreach, not more, and sending a message that actually engages with your givers at the point they’re at in their journey with you. Imagine you have donors, like we talked about, who are ready to lapse — they might be almost ready to pull back. If you’re asking for another gift in that moment, you risk them pulling back even further. Instead, maybe you use GivingTuesday as an opportunity to thank them for what they’ve given, and change that pattern — take the exit before the accident, so you can really save it.

Ky Jones: With that in mind, I think we have a bit of a preview of what this looks like in Bloomerang from Windy. Windy, welcome back — you’ve got some demos in store for us today, right?

Windy Keene: I sure do, and I can’t wait to talk about this one, especially with what I’m seeing in the chat. I think you’re going to like what you see here, so let’s dive right in.

Katie’s talked a bit about following the signal — let’s see what that looks like in Bloomerang. This is where you start each day: right on your dashboard, it ranks the valuable actions your team can take today. It prioritizes retention risk, major giving opportunities, and upgrade readiness. It refreshes daily, and every user sees the same list — no more starting the day by opening records one at a time.

But for this GivingTuesday example, let’s drill down a bit more. I’m going to go to one of my donors here. Some things you’ll notice right off the bat: we’re showing scores right here — propensity to give, which is how likely they are to give again, plus a calculated ask amount. No custom-built report — it lives on every record with at least one gift, and refreshes weekly.

So I wanted us to understand donor intelligence and what populates on every profile, because now we’re going to take a look at our friend Penny. Penny is our built-in AI assistant, built on fundraising best practices. I’ve prompted Penny here, based on donor history and donor intelligence scores: “Who should I include in my GivingTuesday campaign?” And Penny went right to work — it didn’t just pull together data, it told us why that data was pulled together. It comes up with different tiers. The first is the highest priority: the major giving score and recent donors. We’ll see all those details, and we’ll talk strategy in a bit too — these are selected for significant upgrade potential.

Penny also gives us another tier, so we can speak to these groups differently — segment the communication. I have all the information I need right here. But one of my favorite things is the strategic notes at the bottom: engagement is cold across the board, so make sure you’re warming them up before GivingTuesday — an interaction, an email, a call before the campaign will actually improve conversion. Then, take the opportunity to convert those who are ready to become recurring donors — several donors in this tier are ready to make that monthly gift, and GivingTuesday is the perfect time to make that ask. It also suggests considering a match or a goal — some donors respond very well to a public match or goal, which adds to conversion opportunities.

But the conversation isn’t over — Penny asks, “would you like me to create a group in Bloomerang with these prospects? Maybe look up any individual in more detail, or help draft outreach messaging?” This is where I say, go ahead and create a group for each level, because I’m going to talk to them differently — and give me some verbiage for a couple of different emails. Both groups have now been created for segmented outreach, along with my emails. The emails give me a jumping-off point — I’d take this, put it in my own words, and be ready to start my email campaign. Because we know blasting the whole list is expensive and imprecise. Following the signal reaches people who are actually ready — this is the more personal version of GivingTuesday.

Ky Jones: Awesome, thank you, Windy. Quick call-out — I know a couple of people mentioned some sound issues; it was prerecorded, so our team is working to fix it. Two people did have a good tip I want to call out: if you want to turn on closed captions in Zoom, at the bottom there should be a button that says “more,” and then a “show captions” option — would recommend that.

But back to the topic at hand — Katie, my question for you: with the power of what Windy just showed, what’s one thing a team could do differently this GivingTuesday?

Katie Gaston: Definitely. It’s about, instead of one core appeal — “let’s send our GivingTuesday ask to everyone” — meeting your givers where they are and creating a few key groups based on that. It could be who’s ready for a bigger gift conversation, and having a different conversation with them, versus which of your one-time givers who gave in the last six months could use GivingTuesday to upgrade to a monthly giving path, or which of your givers just needs a thank-you, to know how much the dollars they’ve given are really impacting your mission over the last several months. So instead of thinking of it as a single giving day, think about how you can use this day to build a stronger relationship with your donors over a period of time.

Ky Jones: I love it, thank you, Katie. I’ve got one question for the chat, and then we’ll move on to a second use case — to wrap up the GivingTuesday segment, put in the chat: what’s one thing you want to try differently this year for GivingTuesday? Anyone trying something new?

I’m excited to see what comes in. Jeanette asked if there’s a webinar just about GivingTuesday — we will actually have a ton of things coming up on GivingTuesday, so stay tuned; we’ve got a lot of good tips, tricks, and playbooks you can use, and this approach is one of them. While responses are pouring in, I also want to say a lot of people mentioned earlier in the chat that a matching gift campaign for GivingTuesday has had a lot of success for them — definitely worth calling out too.

Let’s keep moving, though — thank you for those chat responses. Next, let’s talk about one of the most challenging things to get ahead of in fundraising: when someone’s about to lapse. Here comes another poll: when a donor starts to slip away, how do you usually find out? We’ll give you about ten seconds.

Okay, let’s see those results. Okay — a big mix here: a lot of people don’t have a reliable way to know. The second most common option is finding out retroactively while reviewing reports. I do see some people saying “not until year-end” as well.

So, Katie — what does it actually feel like when a donor starts to slip away?

Katie Gaston: I think the hardest part, which you all just said, is sometimes it doesn’t feel like anything — like something’s faded before you’ve even noticed where it was going. It’s like a friendship that went quiet even though you didn’t have a single fight. It’s not dramatic. And that’s what’s really challenging — how do you know how to stop it, unless every single day you’re looking at a retention report? But typically, by that time, like we talked about — one in twenty-five donors who choose to leave and not give again — it’s really hard to get them back to give, for the same reason you can’t go back and save the time once you’ve missed your exit on the highway. It’s actually a lot harder to do so. So the power of a system surfacing up, “hey, you should talk to Joanne, she might be on her way out,” can massively impact not just this year’s dollar, but ultimately what we know in retention — next year’s and the following year’s dollar as well.

Ky Jones: With that in mind, I’d love if we could see what this looks like in Bloomerang.

Windy Keene: I’m so excited to talk about saving those donors at risk of lapsing, but also talking about how we can do that at scale and not just as one-offs. Of course, we can see right on a donor profile if they have a high risk of lapsing. We’ll also call out daily recommended actions right here on our dashboard — they’ll come up from time to time, and you can schedule tasks. But how do we do this at scale, and make sure no one ever falls through the cracks? Let’s use our friend Penny again — I’m going to come over here and say, “which of my recurring donors is at risk of lapsing?” And Penny surfaces thirteen recurring donors with high scores for lapse risk.

So what do we do with those thirteen donors? Exactly what Penny recommends here: put the at-risk donors into a group called “recurring donor lapse risk.” Now I’ve created a segmented list of just those donors — I can see I have my thirteen members. I could go in and work those individually, but we’re talking at scale, so what we’ve found works really well is automating that journey. I’m going to come over to journey automations. There are many different ways to enter a journey automation, but for our use case, we’re using our recurring donor lapse risk group.

So all I do is come here and say this journey is going to be for this group, and I want it to start on this date and time — easy enough. You’ll see there are other ways to enter journeys, but for our use case, we’re talking about this group. Then I can add steps to the journey — you’ll notice this isn’t just a series of emails. Instead, when I see they have a high score for lapsing, I can schedule a phone call and have it immediately assigned to me — I know exactly what it is from my dashboard, and I can make that first outreach. Then I’ll wait a couple of days, because I don’t want to bombard them, and maybe that’s when I start adding an email or a series of emails, because these steps can be whatever you need them to be. This is how we identify those donors at risk and also do the outreach and cultivation so they can see the true impact of their recurring gift.

Ky Jones: Awesome, thank you, Windy. So, Katie — what could this mean for an organization, not just catching one donor, but more broadly?

Katie Gaston: Ultimately, each time you catch a donor you’re about to lose, that means you don’t have to spend the time finding another supporter to fill their shoes, to replace them. It’s about building a whole donor base, a whole giving strategy, that lasts over time and continues to grow.

Ky Jones: I love it. Now, one question, Katie — a couple of people have been asking in the chat, and maybe you can give a succinct answer: how does Bloomerang know who’s at risk of lapsing?

Katie Gaston: That’s such a good question, because we don’t want this to be a black box that doesn’t tell you how things arrive. So, a little more peeking behind the curtain: we’ve built a model that’s looking at anonymized, entirely safe, entirely secure signals from givers. Say, Joanne — I think I used that name earlier — we believe Joanne has a higher risk of lapsing than some of the other donors in your database. That model is looking at signals based on a lot of other data points from anonymized donors, where we’ve seen, “when this happened with this donor, they ended up not giving within a period of time.” Then it finds a similar profile to Joanne and flags that her current behavior matches that pattern, so we can surface it and act on it quickly.

The other nice thing is it’s not just a yes-or-no, at-risk-or-not-at-risk — there’s actually a tiering to it. When we get to the Q&A, we’ll have Windy back, and she can talk through this in more depth if you need more information. But that tiering model says, are they at, like, a five — emergency, take the exit right now — or is it more like a one, maybe start watching it and see what happens. So you can use your best judgment to decide whether you need to act now, or have a little time to wait before taking action.

Ky Jones: I appreciate you peeling back the curtain on that one, Katie. Okay, next up, guys, we’re going to my personal favorite category when we talk about fundraising: major gift cultivation. Here comes another poll — what’s the hardest thing about making a major gift or capital campaign ask? Get those answers in — we’ll give you about ten seconds.

Okay, that’s been about ten — let’s see those results. Oh, a lot of split between these. A lot of people said knowing how much to ask for. People also said knowing if it’s the right time, and the other one that got a ton of votes is knowing who to ask. So: how much to ask for, the timing, and who to ask. Katie, I guess my question is — is knowing your best major donors actually the hardest part?

Katie Gaston: I think the poll is a really good example of what the hardest part is, because it honestly changes depending on where you are in your journey — whether that’s a capital campaign or a major gift strategy. Some of you might be just getting started, saying, “I’ve got this many people in my community, I have no idea who I should have a conversation with.” Or maybe you have some idea, but you’re not a hundred percent confident that’s the right person. Maybe you’re already having those conversations, but as you’re driving to a meeting for one of those strategic discussions, you might not know you’re asking for the exact right amount, or feel fully confident that now is the right time to make that ask. All of those factors combined can make having a really successful capital campaign, particularly at higher levels of asks, a really big challenge.

Ky Jones: So, Katie, what does the day-to-day look like for the person running that campaign, deciding how and when to make the ask?

Katie Gaston: I’d love to hear what everyone thinks in the chat as you’re thinking through this — what does this look like for you? But what we see is a lot of fundraisers looking through reports, taking an hour before a meeting to read someone’s profile, or going out to a third-party tool outside their database to try to get more information — say, on wealth holdings, or a variety of other things — and then taking the time to piece all of that together to have what they need for a really clear understanding of who to ask, how much to ask, and whether now is the right time. Ultimately — and, Ky, I know you talk with a lot of fundraisers — what we hear time and again is that fundraisers aren’t always fully confident it’s the exact right moment. With that in mind, maybe we can look at how this looks in Bloomerang.

Windy Keene: So we’ve talked about how we can help with pulling a list to segment for GivingTuesday, who to reach out to, and how we can identify donors at risk of lapsing. But now we have our capital campaign, or we’re looking for major donors — where do we start? We’re going to go back to those daily recommended actions, because you’ll notice one of the things surfaced here is a potential major donor for $25,000. I can take a couple of different paths — I can begin researching Eleanor, or just click her name to go directly to her profile. Here I see those donor intelligence scores again: likely to give again, low lapse risk, a high-capacity prospect, estimated $25,000 gift potential. If I scroll down, I can see Eleanor has actually given us a $5,000 donation in the past, so it looks like we may be able to improve on that.

What are we going to do next? I want to learn more about Eleanor and why we have this $25,000 amount, so I’m going to come over to Prospect.ai, and from here select to enrich Eleanor’s profile. This gives us a full research dossier on Eleanor, but it’s all publicly available data, which is really key here — an executive summary, her capacity assessment, professional background, charitable giving history, volunteering and advocacy, events she’s been part of, what types of organizations she normally likes to support. You’ll notice every single point here is cited, so you’re not having to guess where the information comes from.

Even better — right from here, since I know I’m going to want to spend some time with Eleanor, I can create a task that goes right to my dashboard, reminding me to either do more research or reach out to her. Or I can say, “go ahead and draft an email based on these results,” and since Eleanor was named philanthropist of the year, that’s easy — we have an email set up here, ready to go out to Eleanor. Remember, we’re surfacing this, but we’re not taking action on your behalf — nothing happens until you actually choose to send that email. That way, if you’d rather have a more personal touchpoint from the beginning, like a phone call, you can create that task and make that happen.

Ky Jones: Awesome. So, Katie — what changes once time isn’t split across every familiar name, and you’re digging deeper into the people most likely to give those major gifts?

Katie Gaston: I think the two things we’ve seen change so far for fundraisers are confidence — knowing the time you’re investing every day is going to the right person, the right initiative that’s going to drive the fundraising goal you want to hit — and clarity, that all of that comes together in focus for you, and control, so you have control over the priorities you’re investing in, rather than feeling buried under them on a regular basis, like we heard at the start.

Ky Jones: I love it, thank you, Katie. I’ve got a question for the chat, because people were asking things before we saw that from Windy — I forget who said it, but someone said, “I wish I could know if they tend to give to other organizations like mine,” and Windy called out that affinity is there. What’s an element of what Windy just showed us that you wish you had at your fingertips today?

Katie Gaston: I’ll add something, Ky — I saw a few other folks in the chat kind of following along and talking a lot about GivingTuesday while we’ve been going through some of these videos. I think it’s super important to know the benefit of tools like this is that you can build relationships year-round. It could be for a one-day giving appeal, it could be for a capital campaign that stretches three years, or whatever your organization needs from a fundraising strategy — just having the insight and clarity to know where to focus is going to make your relationships stronger, no matter what day of the year it is.

Ky Jones: I love it. Katie, here’s my next question: what happens if the underlying data isn’t clean? Does that affect the quality of the signals shown? We’ve been talking about some awesome signals — what happens if you’ve got messy data, though? I know that’s a big problem in the industry.

Katie Gaston: I actually just saw someone put that in the chat — “what happens if my data isn’t at the place we need it to be?” Thank you for that softball — yes, it is a problem. Because if you have two duplicate constituents, both of them are surfacing up signals, and you’re like, “well, who do I focus on?” Or the other problem we see a lot is messy data in terms of capitalization — if you don’t want to yell someone’s name in a letter you send them, that’s obviously not good for relationship building. So we actually added a new tool that focuses on this specifically, which gets your data to a really strong place, one that’s clean enough that you have the visibility and confidence to know that when one of these signals surfaces, you can act on it. Let’s take a look at what that looks like.

Windy Keene: I love this topic, because clean data is everything. With our Data Health Hub, you have one place to work from — instead of hunting across separate cleanup screens, everything’s in one place. Bloomerang runs an initial scan, then keeps scanning — high-confidence matches happen in real time, while lower-confidence matches run weekly. Let’s take a look here — I have potential duplicates, a lot in my demo account, so I’m going to review my issues. Let’s take a look at this first pair, Kelly Kapoor. From here, I can see they’re similar records — they have the same address, a lot of things in common. So one of the things I’d look at is: are these the same person? Do they belong in a household — maybe it’s a mother and daughter with the same name — or is it not a duplicate at all?

Well, let’s see — we’ve already said they have the same address. One has a phone number, one doesn’t. One has giving history, one doesn’t. Now that we’re pretty sure we’re talking about the same person, we need to merge these into one record. If I come over here and select “merge,” it tells me what’s being combined — but have I made sure I want to keep the right one? No, I haven’t, so let’s cancel this. Instead, I want to keep this record — I’m still in control of my data — so I can go ahead and merge my records, and Kelly’s all set.

Here’s why that matters: a duplicate record can split a donor’s giving history, which buries the signals we’ve talked about in the other demos. This is the maintenance work that keeps every score and recommendation trustworthy, and you can see how fast it is. Now let me show you one more thing, because I think this comes up as a universal pet peeve — name-formatting issues. Someone’s moving quickly on their phone, types in all caps or all lowercase, or transposes letters in a name — I’ve done it, I’ve seen it happen — and suddenly every email that goes out says, “hello, WENDY,” instead of “hello, Wendy.” So instead of manually clicking into each profile, the Data Health Hub surfaces those for you. Here’s a donor who made a gift, but their name wasn’t capitalized properly — we’ll show a confidence level and ask if you want us to just fix it, or if you have something to add, maybe a middle name. For this one, we’re just going to accept it. This may be a small thing, but it’s what keeps communication from looking sloppy — donors don’t remember all the correct correspondence we send them, but they do remember if we get their name wrong.

Ky Jones: Well, first thing I’ve got to comment on — who out there also has hundreds of duplicates in their existing tool? Because I’ll tell you, I’ve been there before, for sure. And this looks like a pretty good way to handle the messy-data problem. But, Katie, I’ve got to ask, because people have been asking in the chat — how do I get this? What does it cost? What’s the ROI I can expect back? Please share what you can.

Katie Gaston: Totally — well, cost for something like this is really based on the number of supporters or donors you have. The best thing, if you want to understand what that looks like for your organization, is — and I think, Ky, in just a couple of minutes we’re going to set up one last poll where you can say, “yep, I’d love to have a conversation, learn a little more about what this looks like for me.” We also have a resources section with a demo tour link, as well as the ability to request a live demo.

But to your ROI question — what type of results do we see from organizations using this type of intelligence? Well, over the last several years, we’ve seen, honestly, next-level results — in some cases, up to a 160% jump in appeal revenue, 5x returns on individual campaigns. Let me walk through a real example of how this breaks down, so you can understand how the math works on your side. Imagine you have 7,500 donors in your community today. What our research shows is that typically, at that mid-level upgrade point — individuals who might be monthly givers but could be ready for a stronger, more meaningful conversation — there’s likely between three and five percent of those already in your community today. For a hyper-conservative estimate, let’s say just one percent of your entire donor community, 7,500 donors, gets ready to have that conversation. Our research shows that roughly 20% of those you have a conversation with actually make the choice to move to give — because you have some of this intelligence built in, giving you the confidence and control for that conversation. So if you’re able to take even fifteen of those and have that upgrade conversation, and let’s say they give $1,000 in that next year, moving up a giving level, that compounds over time — it could be $15,000 the first year, and continues to grow year over year as you add more donors into the system.

One example, a case study of a customer working through something like this, specifically on major gifts — they looked through their entire database and found one loyal monthly $50 donor who’d been giving for years, but they’d never thought of that person as someone they could have a strategic conversation with, because no wealth screen they’d done in the past had ever flagged them. In reality, what they found with all the information Windy showed in that report was that this donor was a successful entrepreneur with a lot of corporate connections. Because of that real-time, built-in insight, it allowed them to have a much more meaningful conversation with that donor and open up pathways for more strategic partnerships. Within a very short period, that organization was raising 15% more in major gift income than before they’d explored a tool like this. It’s really the clarity and confidence to know which direction to head, but ultimately it gives you the ability to build a sustainable growth plan for your organization.

Ky Jones: Absolutely incredible — I love it, Katie, thank you so much for sharing. So, guys, as Katie alluded to, I do have one final poll for you all — that’ll pop up in a moment: are you interested in a follow-up conversation? Would you like more help acting on your supporters’ signals? Get those answers in.

So, a lot of great engagement in the chat as well — we’ll give people about five more seconds to get those polls in. Again, do you want help acting on your supporters’ signals? Okay, we can reveal those results.

Maybe, Ky, we can just go to the Q&A now — I know you absolutely love it, Katie. So many questions have come through. Let’s bring Windy back on, and let’s see which ones we can get into. Windy, I know you were watching throughout — are there any you feel like we should tackle first?

Windy Keene: Yes, because I feel like Shannon really summed up a lot of what people are asking. Shannon’s question, which was already answered in chat, but I’ll take it again: do you have the ability to load your company’s corporate voice into your AI database to help craft messages, meaningful touchpoints, and emails to donors who are at risk of lapsing? Great question. A lot of people also asked, “who’s Penny?” — especially folks who might have been jumping in and out of the call. Penny is your AI fundraising assistant, built right into Bloomerang, but built on best practices. Penny has access to your data for you, so if you have that conversation just like you would with ChatGPT or Claude, Penny is going to learn your voice — it’s going to see everything in that constituent profile and be able to help with all of that. I wanted to touch on that, because it’s kind of the beauty of a platform like this — everything is in one place. We’re not having to take it somewhere else and ask Claude or Gemini to draft us an email, because those are going to be very general. Instead, again, Penny is built on best practices for fundraisers.

I know there was another one here too — Katie touched on this as well, but I’ll throw it out — I don’t have a specific name for who asked it, but a lot of people wanted to know, how do you know someone’s at risk of lapsing? It has a score there, but where does that really come from? To summarize very short and sweet: it really is all about a decade’s worth of pattern analysis. Donors like this donor, in this particular situation and scenario — how likely are they to lapse? We followed those patterns, and then put that right into Bloomerang, so you don’t have to look for it. Imagine how many reports you’d have to pull to figure out whether they’re still reading your emails — I don’t even know how you’d get in front of it otherwise. So, just wanted to share that.

Ky Jones: I love it, thank you, Windy. As we’re wrapping up our Q&A, Katie, I have one final question for you in particular: we’ve covered so much over the last, what, fifty-six minutes now — if there’s just one thing you’d want someone to remember today, what would that be?

Katie Gaston: I think the most important thing to remember is that concept that you don’t have to live in chaos — there’s a better way. I wish someone had told me that when I was driving on the freeway in 2010, stuck in a traffic jam for two hours. There is a better way. By using a tool that surfaces the kind of information you can’t just know as soon as you log in on a Monday morning — who to focus on, but also what to do next, and how to immediately take action — that’s the future of fundraising, and it’s going to be a game-changer, giving you the clarity and the calm that I think, honestly, so many of us deserve. So thanks for listening, and thanks for taking the last hour with us.

Ky Jones: Thank you so much, Katie. And thank you to everyone who’s been listening — I just want to give one more huge thank you to Katie and Windy, thank you for sharing all of your expertise on this call. To all of you listening, I hope you found this webinar really beneficial. I know many of you want to be followed up with, so you’ll be followed up with promptly — you’ll all be getting an email with the recording and some other resources as well, if you want to go back and watch everything. Other than that, it’s been so wonderful hosting you all today, and happy fundraising, everyone. Thank you all.