Upgrade to Bloomerang: Amplify your fundraising and so much more!

Katie Gaston: Welcome, everyone. We’re so glad that you’re here, and we’re excited to chat with you today a little bit about upgrading to the Bloomerang Giving platform.

To get us started, we’re going to jump right into the housekeeping for today’s presentation. So you’re probably wondering in advance — yes, we are recording this webinar. We will go ahead and send you a copy of the recording afterward, along with a copy of the slides. And feel free at the end of this to ask questions. As always with webinars, you can use the Q&A option, and then the chat option for general discussion.

A little bit about us: my name is Katie Gaston. I am the director of product marketing here at Bloomerang. I’ve been with Bloomerang for about three years now, surprisingly, but I’ve been involved in nonprofits in my community pretty much my entire life. I live in Boise, Idaho, with my husband and four lovely animals, and I volunteer with a lot of our local nonprofits as well. Margie, do you want to give yourself an introduction?

Margie Worrell: Yeah, thank you so much, Katie. I’m Margie Worrell. I’m the curriculum manager here at Bloomerang, and I’ve been here a little over three years as well. And I, like Katie, have been involved in the nonprofit space as an employee and as a volunteer for many, many years, and have worked with many nonprofits that I’ve really enjoyed. I live in Indianapolis with my little dog Annabelle, who I hope will be quiet during our webinar today.

Katie Gaston: Ditto on that with the puppies and the kittens being quiet — but we’ll see, hopefully it goes smoothly.

Well, let’s jump right in. We’ve got a lot to cover today, and we’re really talking about why you, as a Kindful customer, should consider upgrading to the Bloomerang Giving platform. We’re going to walk through what customers see when they upgrade to Bloomerang, and we’ll talk about some of the differences in functionality you can expect from Kindful to the upgrade to Bloomerang. Margie is going to take that a step further — we’re going to give you a peek behind the green curtain and actually show you what the Bloomerang Giving platform is all about, live in a demo. And then we’ll wrap up today’s presentation by talking about what the upgrade process actually looks like, and how easy and seamless it is for you as a Kindful customer to consider.

So let’s start with really why you’re thinking about upgrading — what’s the opportunity here? To kick that off, I’d love to share with you some of the stats our Bloomerang customers really see by using the Bloomerang Giving platform.

We looked at all of the data from our entire customer base to see what results they can really expect to see over a period of time, and that first one you see — forty-seven percent more raised — is really reflective of customers who use the Bloomerang Giving platform for over five years. We see, cumulatively, that customers who use the Bloomerang Giving platform over an extended period of time ultimately see forty-seven percent more dollars raised. In addition, compared to industry donor retention rates, we see an increase of a hundred and fifty-four percent — that’s the donor retention rate for our best customers using the Bloomerang Giving platform, versus those using a different or alternative system that’s not Bloomerang. We see even more supporters annually, in fact more volunteer engagement — thirty-five percent more engagement from your volunteers. And all of that comes from our nonprofit community, which is about twenty-four thousand nonprofits domestically. So a lot of nonprofits trust Bloomerang, and a lot of nonprofits really see transformational results by using the Bloomerang Giving platform.

Some of the features that lead to that — I’d say the first thing you can really expect in your upgrade is the opportunity to raise more funds. Now, your fundraising ultimately comes down to relationships — if you build stronger relationships, you’re going to raise more funds. And with Bloomerang, we know that, which is why we’ve built the platform — CRM, fundraising, and volunteer management — together in one unified, cohesive system, as a way to help you build stronger relationships no matter where one of your supporters is in their life cycle with you.

Some of the ways the CRM and fundraising tools in particular help you do that: you can see the whole household story. I know in Kindful, sometimes householding can be a little more challenging, but with the Bloomerang Giving platform, you really understand and get a comprehensive view of the entire household, so you have a better understanding of who’s involved, and how to build relationships again with that whole household.

Margie — I’m super excited — is going to demo one of our newest features, our journey automation, which helps you send beautiful, timely, automated, personalized messages to cultivate your donors from stage to stage, as well as assign tasks for yourself, so you can, for example, schedule a coffee date, reach out through text message, or give them a call. All of that can be automated end to end.

You can also stay connected on the go with our Bloomerang mobile app. So let’s say you’re just about to head out the door for a coffee date with one of your most loyal donors, and you want to remember what happened in the last meeting so you can, for example, wish her son a happy birthday. All of that’s available for you — take your CRM on the go with the Bloomerang mobile app. And recently, we also released mobile video acknowledgments — so as soon as your donor gives, right after that meeting, you can record a video thanking them directly from your mobile app, to again build and cultivate that stronger relationship.

Never miss a donor again with automatic tasks. As soon as you get a first-time donor gift, a task will go to you saying, hey, remember to call them, because research shows that if you call a donor within forty-eight hours, they’re four times more likely to give again. We’ve built all of that into the Bloomerang CRM.

And then, ultimately, with advanced wealth insights built into the application for free, you can spot donors who are more likely to give by looking at both their engagement history and their likelihood to give. You can use that to prioritize donors who are more likely to give, and reach out to those individuals as well. So a lot of really exciting ways that Bloomerang will help you raise more funds.

In addition to that, Bloomerang helps you save time. We don’t believe your job should be managing spreadsheets, fixing data, or literally trying to figure out how to build a report just to see what isn’t working. All of that is available really easily and streamlined within the Bloomerang Giving platform — action-ready reporting that immediately tells you where to focus. Accurate data, so without having to work any harder, you automatically know that when you send a letter or an email, that individual’s information, address, and status are correct.

Training that also meets you where you are. We know one of the most challenging things with a new system is getting up to speed, but Margie, who’s on the call, leads our learning, education, and curriculum, and she’s done an amazing job building such an extensive, robust set of content — whether that’s live webinars on a weekly basis or e-learning modules, so you can learn as you go, all included for free with your subscription, so we can make sure you’re as successful as possible.

And one more thing — I don’t think we’ll demo this today, but I’ll give you a little peek behind the green curtain — is a new tool coming very, very soon: a smart, intelligent fundraising strategist. If you have a question like, how do I do this, or who gave last year but didn’t give this year, or who’s most likely to upgrade in the next three months, you can ask your personal fundraising strategist in Bloomerang all of those questions directly. Penny, the personal fundraising strategist, will say, this is who’s most likely to upgrade, this is what I’d recommend you consider, and this is a strategy for you to take your fundraising to the next level — not only saving you time building reports, but giving you all the know-how based on literally thousands of consulting engagements from Bloomerang, so you can be as successful as possible in your next chapter of raising funds.

So all of that’s built into the upgrade. With that in mind, let’s see it in action, and then we’ll talk about how easy it is to actually do the upgrade itself. Margie, I’m going to toss it over to you as the next step, and I’ll stop sharing my screen.

Margie Worrell: Absolutely, thank you so much, I really appreciate it, Katie. I’m going to share with you my demo database, and hopefully what you’re seeing looks a little bit like a Bloomerang database. Now, keep in mind, this is a demo database, so it’s going to have some interesting pieces and components to it. But the most important thing I want to talk about today is all of the rich insights you can gain from utilizing just this very first piece of your Bloomerang CRM dashboard. There are a lot of different types of insights we can gain here, and we can dive deeper inside each one of these widgets to find out more.

Let’s start by talking about our financial widgets. The first one is our totals by level — you can look at revenue, or you can look at raised. I’m going to keep it on revenue today, and I can see how much was donated this week, the number of transactions, and the average, this month and this fiscal year. So automatically, I’m able to assess how well I’m doing. You might notice that this is hyperlinked — when I click on it, I’m able to bring up a report, and this shows me everyone who has given this week. I didn’t have to build this report, it was just there for me. So I can look and see who gave, how much they gave, and what type of payment it was.

Another feature of Bloomerang reports that I love is that if there’s a piece of information that isn’t here that you need, you can always click “add a column” and add on any column you want to see even more information. So you can drill down as deeply as you need to within each one of these reports.

Let’s go back to our home page, to our dashboard again, and talk about some more of the financial details you can see. One of the other features we’ve recently added is the ability for your organization to determine who’s a general donor, who’s a mid donor, and who’s a major donor. And because you have that information automatically inside your system — I’m going to talk about this in several aspects as we go — you’re able to see how much your major donors have given you over this last year, how much your mid donors and your general donors have given as well. So you’re able to really break these out. If I click here, I’m able to go in and find some reports. So this is extremely robust, extremely hearty, and it’s at your fingertips, prebuilt.

Another aspect is looking at trends over time — giving trends. You can see here, our month-over-month revenue widget shows you the last three years of giving, and I can go back and look and see what the trends were in giving. One of the things I noticed from my organization is that I have a lot of really great engagement during September and October, year over year — I might want to consider what it is we’re doing during that time period that seems to really engage our donors. So this is a great way to gain those insights quickly.

I can also look at my campaigns — if you have any campaign you’re running that you’re really trying to keep a close eye on and see how it’s performing, I can hover over this bar, and it’ll show me exactly how much I’ve raised financially. I can also see the percentage. If I click here, I can view a detailed report that’s prebuilt for me and shows all of the details about who’s given to this campaign so far.

Another aspect of the financial-giving piece is our donor retention. We all know donor retention is so important — we want to be able to keep our donors coming back. You might notice here that I’m able to hover and see that I have twenty-one donors retained out of two hundred sixty-eight. If I click on this part of the wheel, a report comes up that shows me those retained donors, and maybe more importantly, I can click here to see my lapsed donors as well.

Now, we also have some time-saving features. Katie was talking earlier about wanting to help save time for you, and we want to make this as efficient as possible. One of those features is our first-time donor calls list. Anyone who has given within the last seven days — I have five donors that have given within the last seven days — is going to show up here, and I’m able to see their name, their donation amount, and the date. But if I click in, I can see even more detail, like the fund and campaign they gave to as well. The great thing about this is if I were to bring this up on my mobile device using my mobile app, I’d be able to make a phone call to this constituent immediately out of my phone. That’s a really handy feature as well.

Now I can either convert this to a task and assign it to someone within my organization, or I can create an interaction if I want to take this on right now. But I’m actually going to demonstrate how to convert this to a task. So, Roland Macey gave to us, and we want to make sure we thank Roland. I’m going to assign this to myself, set a due date, and click save task.

And that actually brings me to the next section I was going to talk about, which is our task section. This is a really great feature, because you’re able to see all the tasks assigned to any user inside your system. You’re also able to filter down and just see your own tasks, and you can run a report which shows all of your tasks and export it to Excel to work with there. You might notice these get highlighted according to due dates — I have one that’s overdue that I need to address now, one that’s coming up soon, and then a couple that are due later. So one of the great features, as we were talking about before, is that I’m able to take anything from my donor calls list and put it over here. It’s a great way to make sure nothing falls through the cracks as you’re working together as an organization.

There are some convenience features on here as well — one of those is being able to see your recent reports. If you’re working in a report and suddenly realize you need to go back to it, you’re able to see your last five visited reports inside this section. And another feature is our recent constituents — over here, I’m able to see my last five constituents, and I’m also able to add a new constituent from here as well.

Now, I wanted to show you some of the features we can look at inside a constituent’s profile. Katie was talking earlier about building relationships, and part of building relationships is being able to know those donors, volunteers, and anyone who’s a stakeholder in your organization really well. So I’m going to go ahead and click on George Bailey Sr. and show you some of the features that are really useful — let me make that screen a little bigger for you so you can see it.

Now, George Bailey is a donor. I can see here, by these tags, several things about him already — I can see that he’s a major donor, so he’s someone who’s given at that higher level. He’s also a current donor, and he’s been retained, meaning he lapsed and came back at some point in his journey with us. I can also look at a summary of his giving right here — his lifetime total, his average, his latest transaction so I know when he gave last, his first transaction so I can see when he started with us, and his largest transaction. These are all pieces that can be vitally important.

We have a timeline that goes deeper, but we also have our recent-activity timeline down here, which shows you the top ten events that have happened in the most recent past. But I can go to his full timeline and see even more. When I go there, I’m able to see highlights and features that call out any major events I may need to know about. I can see that he’s downgraded two years in a row — so while he is a major donor, he’s decreasing his giving over the last two years. That’s interesting to know, and something to really consider. I can search by year, and I can also search by the different types of things that show up on the timeline — I could look at just his transactions, or just his interactions, tasks, or notes. So all of this is really useful information.

I’m also able to build out his profile — when I click on it, I’m able to come in and add all kinds of pieces of information about him. We’re able to create groups, and I can put him into different types of groups. I can see here that he cares about community and educational causes. So this is a space where you can come in and add to the profile and summary of your donor.

I’m going to go back to the summary page, and the final piece I want to call out around the summary page is our engagement level and generosity score. This is a really great way to prospect who might be ready, willing, and able to give to your organization, and at what level. What I noticed about George is that he’s really engaged with our organization — he is on fire, he really does a lot with us. That means he’s been involved in events, he may be a board member, he’s been opening and answering our emails. Any way he engages, that’s what pumps this score up every time.

The generosity score is slightly different, but also very important. If a donor has a U.S. address, we’re able to look and see, using donor search, a little bit of information about how able they are to give — their wealth factors, which determine whether they’re able to give at a high level, or perhaps at a lower one. I can see for George, he’s got a lot of children, and doesn’t have as much propensity because he just doesn’t have as large of those wealth factors — but he is highly, highly engaged. So that’s something I want to keep in mind as I approach him and talk to him about giving.

Another feature I really love about our platform is that you’re able to see relationships very quickly. Katie mentioned households, and I can see right now that George is part of a household — he’s part of the Bailey family household. Another member of that household is right here — that’s Mary Bailey, his wife. If I click here, I’m able to immediately go into her giving area and look at her as well — I can see her engagement level, her giving. So we’re able to keep that separate, but if I click on the Bailey family, I’m able to go in and see their giving, their engagement, their generosity as a whole. I can see the members of the household here, and all of their interactions as a whole component. So it’s a really great way to look at your donors individually, but also consider them as a whole. This is also a really good feature come tax time, because sometimes we want to be able to treat people as a household for tax purposes too.

One of the things I did want to show you, talking about building and keeping those relationships established, is journey automation. Let’s say I want to include one of those first-time donors that just gave — Mr. Potter — in a journey so he’s recognized for what he’s donated to our organization. I have the ability here to create any type of automation I want, and it’s not just for emails, it can also be for tasks. So we’re going to do a first-time-donor automation. With this automation, I’m going to choose an entry source, and I want this to be for their first-ever donation. So what’s going to happen is they’ll be welcomed and acknowledged the first time they donate. I can set an amount and filter it so it only recognizes people for certain amounts, funds, campaigns, or appeals — this way I’m able to differentiate if somebody’s giving to a certain campaign or appeal or fund, or gave at a different level, I can set a different journey for them. I’m not going to set a different journey, I’m going to keep mine open to everyone.

So whenever someone gives their first donation, they’re going to move into the next action. For this first action, when they give their first donation, I want to set a time delay — I just want to wait one day. So I’ll set this so I’m waiting one day, and then I’d like to send an email. You can see how this is creating a journey, kind of a flowchart. So I’m going to send an email, and I can select an email template — I’m going to select this one, and name it “First Time.”

Now, if you wanted to, you can go in and edit all of this, set it up for different purposes, and adjust it, because our email feature is amazing and robust — we have all the ability to design a beautiful email. We also have an AI feature where you can go in and have AI help you in case you get a mental block and you’re really struggling to complete your email. So I’m going to check off some of these, my subject — and I’m just doing this to make the computer happy.

Okay, now we’ve made the computer happy, and I’m going to go back to my journey automation. Oh, I did forget my purpose — impact and cultivation. I love how it reminds you if you forget anything, it’s always there for you, and it kind of reminds you that you need to take care of something.

Alright, so now you can see that when somebody gives their first-ever donation, we’re going to wait one day, and then we’re going to send the “First Time Donor” email. Now, I don’t want my first-time donors to just get an email — I want them to actually get a call as well. So I’m going to create a task, and this is going to be “Phone First Time Donor.” It’s a phone call for cultivation, and I’m going to assign it to myself. I can assign a relationship manager if I want, and I can put notes here, because maybe I’m giving it to someone else to do, and I have to have the task completed before someone moves forward — that’s something you can decide to do if you want, it’s up to you. I need to complete this within one day.

So now we have our journey: first-ever donation, wait one day, they get their email, we have a task assigned to make the phone call, and we can continue this on. You can set up all kinds of automations that are able to interact without you having to lift a finger.

Another feature I want to call out: if you get stuck — let’s say you’re working on this and you suddenly can’t remember what you want to do or how to do something inside your system — one of the things that’s really great that we’ve added is our new Fin feature. Let’s say I’m having a little trouble remembering how to do a journey automation. It comes up, and if I click on it, it asks me what my question is. You need to know how to do a journey automation, and you can see, automatically, with this assistance of AI, we’re able to bring up every step on how to do a journey automation. This is a really great feature we’ve added — it even asks you, is this what you were looking for? So you’re able to interact and get help immediately inside the system, which is really vital.

Another feature I wanted to call out before I turn it back over to Katie is our mobile app. Our mobile app is extremely useful for a busy fundraiser on the go. I do have a video here I want to share with you, and I apologize that it has to be a video, but that’s how it is for today. I’m going to let you watch this, and then we’ll talk a little more about mobile acknowledgments.

Our Bloomerang mobile app is free to download, and it’s available on both Apple and Android devices. As you can see here, I’m just logging in, and this is the exact same login I use to log into Bloomerang on the web app that I’ll use on the mobile app — so it’s not a separate login at all, I just need to download the app for free and start using it.

What I really love about this is it’s exactly the same — it’s the same dashboard we saw earlier, so I have the same picture of Bloomerang as someone who may be back in the office, even though I’m not there. I can easily keep track of my tasks if I’m on the go, or maybe I don’t log into Bloomerang on my computer all that often, but I love having those task notifications on my phone to make sure I stay on top of them.

One of my favorite features is something we call favorites, and that’s exclusive to mobile. Maybe Steven is a constituent I often run into at Chamber of Commerce meetings, or just out and about in the community, and I frequently speak with him. I can favorite him and easily access his profile, so if I know I’m going to meet with Steven, or I’m going to a community event and Steven’s going to be there, I can quickly catch up on any relevant, important details that might come up during our conversation. I can see exactly the last time he gave, what emails he opened — I have access to the exact same profile I would if I logged in through the computer. And while I’m with him already in person and talking to him, if he’s so moved to give to my organization, I can easily use tap-to-pay on my phone, and he can tap his credit card or his phone onto my phone, and immediately process that donation.

The great thing about all of that is, since it’s the same Bloomerang database, it syncs right back to Bloomerang. Someone back in the office can instantly see that donation, see any notes I put in, or initiate any follow-up that needs to happen, because they have instant access to that data as soon as I put it into my mobile app.

Awesome. So the mobile app is amazing, and one of the features we’ve recently added is the ability to acknowledge people through video content — you can go in on your phone, record a video inside your mobile app, and it automatically gets put on the person’s timeline and sent to them, very easily and seamlessly. Now, I’m not going to show you a video of that, because I wanted to show you some of the features for support that we offer as well. This is our help center, and it’s very, very robust — this is the article that walks you through how to do video acknowledgments. You can see how detailed this information is — it’s just exactly what you need to know, not too much and not too little, which is one of the great features of Bloomerang. Of course, I’m a little partial to anything that has to do with training and support.

I also wanted to show you our Bloomerang Learning platform — this is another really wonderful feature. You’re able to engage with just the product lines you need, but you can investigate the others as well. You’re also able to attend live trainings if you’re within this system, and you can view previously recorded sessions on demand. So at any time, whatever kind of assistance you need, there are courses, live trainings, and learning paths, which are designed to take you step by step through whatever part of the journey you’re on with your product, so you’re able to learn about it quickly and easily. I love those features, of course, but it’s really important, because in order to be able to utilize your system and raise funds, you have to understand how to use it.

I wish I could spend more time telling you about all the great features we have, but I think I’m going to turn it back over to Katie to talk to you a little more about how this process works when you decide to upgrade.

Katie Gaston: Thanks so much, Margie. It’s so fun to see how this all plays out in the software, and it’s so exciting to show off some of the newest enhancements we have in the tool as well. Give me just one second, I’m going to get my sharing set up again — this might take me just a minute or so. Can you see my screen okay? ... That looks great.

Perfect, okay, so let’s talk a little bit about the upgrade process itself. Our goal with this upgrade is to make it literally as seamless for you as possible. We know upgrading from one system to another can sometimes feel like a big decision, and our goal is to really make this as simple and straightforward for you, so you can upgrade with confidence, knowing you can simply use a new tool and drive better results without all the stress that typically comes with an upgrade.

So what does that look like for you? Well, first, for your first contract year, your price will stay exactly the same as you’re paying today. That’s right — it’s the exact same as what you’re paying today. So if you’re paying, let’s say, a hundred dollars a year — I know that’s not it, but if you were — you’d pay that for the next contract year. After that, it’ll go to the current Bloomerang contract price, and we’ll talk a little about that. You can figure out exactly what that looks like for you when you meet with your customer success manager, so you have full transparency. But again, this simplifies it for that first year for you.

In addition, the upgrade process literally takes less than a week. We’ve built a tool that moves all of your Kindful data to Bloomerang seamlessly, without you having to go through a full migration or complicated data process — it’s literally just a click, and it moves it from one to the other. We walk through that with you up front, so you know exactly what that process looks like, from when you start it to when you finish that week-long upgrade.

The other element of upgrading, of course, is that you have to learn a new system. As Margie talked about, we have a lot of really polished, dedicated resources to help you do just that — Bloomerang Learning, as well as dedicated webinars every single week and group trainings, to help you understand how to take advantage of and get the most out of your Bloomerang subscription.

Now, your role in this upgrade process is very simple. The first step is you’ll meet with a customer success manager, talk through your specific questions, and then they’ll send you a proposal. You’ll sign that proposal, which again just walks through everything discussed in that meeting, so you have full transparency into what the process will look like. The next action you’d take is setting up your payment gateway through Bloomerang Payments — a very simple action that should take no more than five minutes. Then, once everything’s set, you’ll attend a meeting with your customer success manager to review things and make sure you’re good to go. If you’d like additional training, you can still do that through Bloomerang Learning or group trainings, but for the actual upgrade process itself, that’s literally all you need to do — again, very simple.

You might be asking yourself a few questions, so let’s go through some of those now. You might be saying, hey, this is great, but it’s just not a good time for us — can I upgrade in a few months? We can save your spot. We have a limited number of spaces for upgrades every month, but if you want to get on the list, I’d recommend kicking off that conversation now — we can look at your specific circumstance and make sure we save your spot as soon as possible, so you can get to the best tools to help you raise funds.

We also talked about this, but will your price change? Yes — eventually, it likely will, but not for the first contract year. So let’s say you just renewed your Kindful subscription and you have a full contract term with Kindful — you’d keep the same price for your current full contract term, plus an additional full contract term, and then after that, you’d move to the new Bloomerang price. That definitely makes it easier for you to make that decision.

And finally, does it only take a week? Yes, it actually only takes a week — it’s literally less than seven days to get the upgrade totally, formally finalized, with all your data and forms moved over from Kindful to the new tool. It makes it very easy for you to do.

So, to wrap us up today, what we’d like you to do is fill out a form to express your interest in upgrading. If, after watching this, you think this is something you’d like to explore, fill out that form, and we’ll be in touch with you very shortly after that, and make sure you have all the details you need for the upgrade process.

Thank you so much for your time today — I really appreciate you spending the last, say, forty-five minutes or so with us. If you have any questions, reach out to your customer success manager. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much, Margie, as well.

Margie Worrell: Yeah, thank you, Katie. Really appreciate it. Everyone, have a great day. Thanks.