The donor cultivation playbook: smarter touches, stronger results

Shannon Gendreau: Hello, everybody. Welcome. Thank you all for joining. Looks like we have some steady numbers coming in. We have a fun little icebreaker as we’re waiting for people to join. Instead of talking about weather, we’re curious: what is your go-to coffee or tea or soda order, depending on what you prefer? Feel free to drop it in the chat if you’d like. For me, I’m a brown sugar shaken espresso, as tall as it can be, as strong as it can be. I love my caffeine.

Iced mocha, Americano, chai latte. Jacob, what is yours?

Jacob Houser: I’m just a black coffee drinker. No milk. No cream. No anything. Just black coffee.

Lacey Jackson: I knew you were gonna say that. It’s giving black coffee. I think I’m with you. Caitlin, black coffee as well. Thank you.

Lacey Jackson: I’m with you, Diana. I’m on the chai tea train for sure.

Shannon Gendreau: Love that. Cold brew all day. Yes, I love cold brew. Black coffee with real cream. I saw a London fog. I’ve been really into those lately. Matcha. Matcha’s good. I’m originally from New England, so I am kind of ride or die with a good Dunkin’ iced coffee as well.

Gotcha. Oh, perfect. I love seeing all the answers come in. If you are just joining, we’re asking a nice bigger question: what is your go-to coffee, tea, soda, or just a fun drink that you like to order when you want to treat yourself to something?

Lacey Jackson: We’ve got a vote for herbal tea. Chris is bringing the calming vibes to the chat today.

Shannon Gendreau: Oh my god, a Bostonian. Yes. I’m from Connecticut, so we are also just big on Dunkin’. Coffee frappe. Hojicha.

Diana Otero: Oh my gosh, Caitlin. I love Hojicha. Have that every day. It’s a roasted green tea from Japan. It’s delicious.

Shannon Gendreau: Oh, perfect. That sounds really good. We are at the one-minute mark, I think. Team, how are we feeling? Should we get started? Okay, let’s do it.

Welcome to today’s webinar. We’re gonna be talking about how nonprofits can move beyond one-size-fits-all outreach and really build relationships that actually last. This session is all about smarter cultivation: creating consistent, meaningful touchpoints that help donors feel seen, valued, and connected to your mission.

Before we get started, just a few housekeeping items. We are recording this webinar. We get a lot of comments throughout the webinar asking whether we’re going to send out the recording and the deck, and yes, we are. You’ll receive a recording of this video and the slides later today. We really encourage questions. The best way to ask questions is with the Q&A option here in Zoom. You should see it at the bottom of your screen, and you can use the chat for general discussion. We’ll also have checkpoints throughout this presentation where we encourage general discussion in the chat. If you have questions throughout, you’re welcome to ask. We have a great team here that’s welcome to jump in at any point to answer your questions.

Before we start, I just wanted to give a shout-out to GiveCon. This year it is May seventeenth to May twentieth in Saint Louis, which is really fun. For those who joined us last year, we just want to say thank you. We hope we can see you again. GiveCon is our user conference, but it’s not just limited to customers. A lot of people like to come for the best practice content that we provide. We have some wonderful industry experts lined up to speak, and we do have our agenda posted on the GiveCon website if you’re curious to see what topics are going to be presented. I think we have a couple of people here who might be speaking at GiveCon. It’s just a great time to connect with your fellow fundraisers, learn about what’s new in the nonprofit space, and learn how we can help you help each other as well. If you haven’t checked that out, feel free to scan the QR code. You can also just Google GiveCon, and it will bring you to our web page.

For today, here’s a quick look at the agenda. We are gonna be talking about the donor cultivation playbook. Before we get into that, we want to understand the challenge and what that looks like right now. We’ll also talk about the new donor story and what that journey looks like today, but also how we can make it better. Then we’ll take a step back, talk about the solution, and share some customer stories. As I mentioned before, we’ll have time for Q&A at the end.

Before we get into the content, I want you to meet the speakers. As you can tell, my name is Shannon Gendreau. I am a product marketing associate here at Bloomerang. I’ve been with the company for about six years, and I’m located in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’ll pass it over to Lacey.

Lacey Jackson: Hello, all. My name is Lacey Jackson. I’m a senior product marketing manager here at Bloomerang. I manage part of our portfolio, so I’m on our volunteer product, but of course, talking always about how everything integrates together. I’m also on our integrations and our services products, so if questions about those come up, you’re definitely gonna hear from me later today. Today, I’ll be doing the middle portion of our webinar, and I’ll pass to Jacob.

Jacob Houser: Hi, everyone. I’m Jacob Houser. I’m on our solution consulting team here at Bloomerang. I’ve been with Bloomerang for about two years. Before that, just like probably many of you, I managed a database and CRM and all that good stuff for an actual nonprofit. I’ll be doing the demo. Over to you, Diana.

Diana Otero: Thanks, Jacob. Hi, everyone. My name is Diana. I’m with our product marketing team. I’ve been with Bloomerang almost eleven years now. Prior to that, I was a board member of a nonprofit, and I’m still an active volunteer for nonprofits in the Indy area. I’ll be on the back end helping answer some questions for you all today. If you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the Q&A. Thanks for being here. Back to you, Shannon.

Shannon Gendreau: Thank you. Great lineup. If you have any questions, these are the best people you can ask, so don’t hesitate to ask. Getting into the content and why you all are here with us today, we really want to understand the challenge. Let’s start with a simple question. How many of you feel like you’re doing more and more every year, but not necessarily seeing that effort translate into growth and payoff? You can just say yes or no in the chat. This is open discussion. Let’s see. Yes. Got a couple of no’s rolling in. I love that. Feel free to drop it. Yes. Okay.

So, obviously, you can tell the tension is incredibly common among all nonprofits. Nonprofit teams like you are really stretched thin, juggling communication channels, campaigns, events, stewardship, and, yes, maybe sometimes something still feels stuck. Today, we’re going to explore why that happens and, more importantly, how to shift into a smarter, more intentional cultivation approach that actually deepens connections and drives sustainable giving.

When we take a step back and look at the bigger picture, we know donor retention really isn’t a generosity problem. We know that donors care really deeply about the nonprofits they’re giving to. It’s more of a relevancy problem. When your data is fragmented, it becomes almost impossible to personalize consistently. When your outreach feels generic, donors don’t feel known or connected to their impact. You have to keep in mind that they’re supporting maybe more than one nonprofit. If they’re getting the same outreach all the time, it can get a little dry for them, and they don’t feel connected with the nonprofits they do want to support. So growth stalls not because you’re not working hard, but because every donor is getting the same experience no matter who they are or where they are in their relationship with you.

You really want to focus on improving donor cultivation, and that starts with understanding why donors stay, but also why they drift away.

To make cultivation smarter, the first step is clarity. You want to understand where your donors truly are in their relationship with you. Whether it be first-time, repeat, recurring, mid-level, or major donors, they all need something different from you. Most nonprofits don’t have the visibility into which stage deserves attention right now. So let’s take a moment to diagnose your reality. There’s a question on the screen. Feel free to drop which one feels most relevant to you: which donor group feels most challenging to engage right now? It can be first time donors who never give again, recurring donors who have dropped off, mid-level donors you’d like to upgrade, or maybe major donors who’ve gone quiet. It can also be more than one. We’re seeing a lot of A’s, B’s as well. That is such a common problem. As you can see, you’re not alone in these areas.

What’s interesting is that the stage that feels the most challenging in the moment often has the highest potential to move the needle. That’s why knowing where you stand is so important. It helps you decide where to focus your energy for the greatest impact, so you’re not spread thin, but you’re also seeing the most value from the work you’re doing.

Let me bring this to life with a simple example. A new donor gives their first gift, let’s say fifty dollars, and that moment is full of potential, but it’s just the beginning. What happens next determines whether it becomes a second gift or the last one. You might want to consider a timely thank-you or a short update that reflects the donor’s interest, a personal touch that shows you truly see them. Over time, that consistency builds trust, and trust is what turns generosity into loyalty. The beauty is that with the right tools, every touchpoint can feel personal even when it’s automated.

Now that we’ve talked about why donor cultivation often stalls and what a more meaningful relationship looks like, let’s shift into the how. There are some practical strategies that consistently help nonprofits deepen engagement and accelerate giving. These aren’t complex, and they don’t require a huge team. They’re simple, repeatable practices that make every donor feel connected, recognized, and appreciated.

The first thing you can consider is personalization, not in a superficial way, but in a way that truly reflects who your donors are and what they care about. Data-based personalization is scalable and genuinely human. When donors see that your outreach reflects their history, their interests, or their impact, you can see that relationship strengthen. Automation doesn’t make communication impersonal; the lack of context does. Context is what makes it meaningful and continues to strengthen that relationship. So think about how you personalize today. Is it by name, by giving level, by interest area, or maybe a combination, or something else? Feel free to share in the chat. I’d love to hear what’s working for you.

Oh, excuse me. I just lost my tabs. Awesome. Written notes, past engagement. Art pieces from students, name and past engagement. These are really great examples, and everything you are doing is working. These are just great ideas.

The next thing you can consider is using predictive giving insights to stay ahead of donor behavior. Imagine knowing which donors are most likely to increase their giving or which ones are quietly slipping away. That clarity helps you invest your time where it makes the biggest difference. Instead of reacting to lapsed donors or casting a wide net, consider using predictive giving to focus your energy with confidence. This shift from guessing to anticipating is what helps teams grow without adding more manual work.

The next thing to consider is automation. When it’s done well, automation doesn’t replace connection. It strengthens it. It helps ensure that every donor gets timely, meaningful touchpoints without requiring manual follow-up. Are any of you using automation in your day-to-day that helps you alleviate some of the manual work? You can consider things like Journey Automation or dynamic segmentation to let you deliver exactly the right message at the right moment. Oh, yes. We’re using Journey Automation. I love to hear that.

Another thing to consider is AI content tools, which can help you create on-brand, mission-centered messaging in minutes. Struggling with Journey Automation? We’re definitely here to help if you have any questions related to it.

Another thing to consider is personalized video acknowledgments. This helps show your gratitude toward your donors with warm and genuine videos. It really helps personalize that connection with your donors. AI helps with the efficiency. Yeah, there are such great conversations going on. When you look back and reflect, automation really helps you acknowledge what your donors have done. It helps them feel personalized. Everything is not programmatic. You’re really connecting with your donors even though you’re saving time with automation.

The final mindset shift is recognizing that cultivation isn’t a one-time campaign. It’s going to be a continuous relationship. Donors move in and out of stages based on their engagement, maybe their interests and behaviors, what’s going on in the climate, the political sphere, maybe their giving is based on the time of year. When your cultivation efforts are intentional and consistent, every interaction continues to build momentum for the next step.

So think about your donors. What is one small change you can make this month that would strengthen their experience with your organization? Feel free to drop in the chat some ideas of things you want to try in the next month. Oh, we’d love to use Journey Automation, text to donate, Gratavid. Yes. Bloomerang also has journey, ah, video acknowledgments within the mobile app. Awesome. Great discussion. Video acknowledgments.

Okay. Well, I’m gonna pass it over to my colleague Lacey, who is going to walk us through what a broken journey looks like and then what a good journey can look like.

Lacey Jackson: Thank you, Shannon. If you want to let me screen share. While I do that, again, thanks, everyone. The chat has been so great. It’s such a great opportunity to learn from each other as we’re going through this and seeing what people are doing and sharing tips. Please keep that engagement up in the chat here. I’m just gonna share my screen, and I think we should be looking good there. I want to make sure I can pull the chat up over here in case any questions come up. We’ll obviously have time at the end for Q&A. I think there are already some questions coming into the Q&A section, so if you haven’t had a chance to drop them in, please go ahead and do that.

Shannon has walked through a lot of practical tips and tactics, things folks should be thinking about and some things you can start using right away to start cultivating donors and build better relationships. Again, I love seeing where everyone is at right now and what you’re focused on in the chat. Some of you are thinking about new donor cultivation. It seemed pretty evenly spread as we were asking for your answers. Recurring givers was a big one, as well as, obviously, moving folks from mid-level into major gifts. All of those pieces are so important. You all have a lot of things to be worrying about.

What I want to dig into next, and Jacob’s definitely gonna help me with this with our demo, is what this can actually look like in real life. Not just the tips and techniques, but when you’re able to actually layer in technology, what does an ideal scenario look like? And, honestly, why does it feel so hard to get someone from that very first gift into becoming a major donor, and why does it take so long? Before we get into that, I do want to level set on a couple of principles, some key things that I think we can all agree on.

Donors who feel connected to your mission are the ones who are gonna stick around. They’re the ones who are going to give and give again, and oftentimes they’re going to give more over time. If you can clearly connect someone not just to your mission statement, but also to the impact their gift is making, you’re gonna dramatically increase the chances that they stay engaged. Of course, as I’m just standing up here, that’s easy for me to say. It’s easy to put on a slide, but in practice, I know it’s a lot harder, and that’s what we want to get into: ways we can simplify.

Today, donors really expect the same seamless, personalized experiences that they get everywhere else. Think about the last time you bought something on Amazon. Amazon knows exactly who you are. They remember what you buy. They know what you’ve previously bought. They remember when you bought it. You can buy those things in one click. You can ask your smart home device, which I won’t name out loud so that nobody gets a message over the smart home device right now, to reorder things for you. It’s super quick and easy. Whether you like it or not, that expectation does carry over into the nonprofit space, and it impacts the folks on the call today. Donors are comparing every experience, even subconsciously, and that’s impacting us.

Now, if we layer on top of that the reality that fewer people are giving, or there’s a change in the way people give, and the overall donor pool shrinks, you have donors with higher expectations and fewer of them. You’re trying to meet those expectations, you’re juggling a million other things, and you don’t have enough hours in the day as it is. The tension is really building. I don’t mean to bring tons of anxiety here, so let’s talk about how we can make improvements.

If we take a step back and ask how we can actually solve this, our research does show some pretty interesting things. The average nonprofit today is using anywhere between ten and fifteen different tools every day to communicate with, track, and thank their donors. Even today, this is super helpful and engaging content in the chat. I’m seeing lots of people saying different tools that they’re using for different things, the tools they use to send thank-you notes and videos. You’re logging into multiple different tools every day. I would love to hear in the chat if you have a number off the top of your head: how many times do you log in to a different platform every day? It takes time, and it takes a lot of brainpower. When you look at it, it adds up very fast. You might have a system for your auctions or for grants, and you might have a separate marketing automation platform. You might have something different for managing your volunteers or another tool for your events, and your CRM is somewhere in there. Even if you as an individual are logging in, we’re seeing a lot of fours and fives in here. Across your organization, even somewhere that’s pretty small, it adds up so quickly to what the whole organization is logging into.

Individually, those tools are all great, but here’s the challenge: every time one of your donors moves from one system into another, we have an opportunity for something to fall through the cracks. Every new login is potential for a manual error or a disconnection point. When that happens, delivering the seamless, personalized experience that we all want to give donors, and that we’re finding donors really expect, gets very difficult. What we’re gonna walk through is what a donor journey can look like when you are juggling all of those different systems and why it becomes so complex. Then we’re gonna compare that to what a more connected, seamless journey can actually look like.

So we’re gonna make it real. We’ve got a story and a character. We have David here, and David is a first-time giver. He’s heard about your organization from a friend, and he’s checking things out. He loves what he sees, and he’s the exact kind of donor you would really like to cultivate. You look at him and think, we’ve really got potential here. This could be a future major donor. But getting him from that first gift, and I mentioned this at the top, to the transformational gift, a lot of folks are talking about how they want to get people from mid-level into major. That’s where the right systems and, at present, a lot of time come into play.

If we start at the beginning, we see David makes his first gift. Amazing. Huge win. But now things get a little more complicated as we continue on our journey. We’re in the messy bits of the data. Your fundraising platform isn’t connected to your CRM. So what happens? You’ve gotta go to whatever tool processed the gift David gave. Maybe it’s PayPal. It’s another online form. You’re gonna export that data, clean things up, and then manually import it into your CRM. Of course, for the individual in your organization who’s doing that, it’s gonna take a lot of time and attention. It’s another thing to add to that to-do list.

But okay, David’s gift is in your CRM. Next up, you want to thank him. You want it to feel personal. We talked about how important that is, and a lot of people talked about the ways they’re doing that and ways of making things personal. But he’s not the only person who gave on this particular day. You’ve got a whole batch of new donors that you want to make sure you’re personally acknowledging. So you sit down, and you’re manually sending out all of those thank-yous. Maybe that takes three hours. Maybe it takes more, depending on what you’re doing to thank folks.

Now you’re looking at David, and you’re thinking long-term. You want to deepen that relationship, so you’re gonna invite David to volunteer. That’s a great idea. Volunteers are much more likely to donate to your organization and maintain their donations. So volunteering is a great way to build up your constituents and make sure they feel part of your organization. You’re gonna invite David, and you’re gonna invite all those new donors as well. Again, more manual outreach, more time. But David says yes. He shows up to volunteer, and of course he has an amazing experience with your organization. He is engaged. He’s excited. He’s thinking, I really want to invest not only my time, but my money in this organization and their mission. Of course, that’s exactly what you want and what you thought at the beginning of his journey. He’s a great donor for you to be cultivating.

Unfortunately, now we hit another data moment, because those volunteer hours are tracked in a separate management system. If you want that full picture of his engagement in your CRM and the way he’s interacting with your organization, you’re gonna have to export that data and import it again. More time, more room for error. But of course, you’re gonna do it because you care about building that relationship and having a strong 360-degree picture of David.

After volunteering, David, amazing, decides to become a monthly donor, which is incredible. He’s building momentum with your organization, but a monthly donor comes with more admin, more setup, more follow-up, more tracking to make sure the recurring gift David gives continues smoothly and on the right schedule.

You’re looking at his record and thinking, you know what? Based on David’s engagement and his giving, and maybe with some of the wealth insights in your CRM, David could be a strong prospect for major gifts. So you’re gonna add him to a cultivation campaign, and you might take him out for a coffee meeting. You do some personal outreach and invite him to events. You’re sending him thank-yous, of course, and handwritten notes. Those are all things that need to be added into your CRM manually, and you need to be updating statuses and coordinating across the team. There are a lot of people who might be looking at David’s profile here. Let’s say that’s another twenty-five hours across your team invested in cultivating David, and he is just one donor.

But it was all worth the time and effort. David makes a transformational major gift. Mission accomplished. Amazing. Yay. In this theoretical story, we can all have a pat on the back. But if we zoom out and look at reality, what I just walked through took a couple of minutes, but in real life, that’s a journey that might take two years. That’s, of course, a significant amount of your staff’s time. The hard truth is that even with your best intentions and your best effort across your entire team, David might not ultimately make it to that point.

At every step of David’s journey, and I try to call these things out, but I’m sure you’re seeing them because you’re living this every day, there’s the potential for a disconnect. Maybe David is never flagged in your system as a major gift prospect because the engagement picture for him is incomplete. He may not ever become a recurring donor or a major donor, for that matter, because no one had time to stop and spot the signals on his account. He may not give a second gift if the follow-up took longer than a week. He may not see how his gift ultimately was impacting your mission. He may never have become a volunteer because he never heard or learned what your organization offered or needed or how it was impacted by the gift he gave. So he may never move at all from that first spot. He may never find out that you even knew he had made a donation. None of that would be happening because your organization wasn’t interested in David or didn’t care about his donation or wasn’t invested in cultivating him as a donor. Your team is devoting time and energy to achieving your organization’s mission, and it really shouldn’t be this hard to build relationships that last. There’s got to be a better way.

And, of course, we wouldn’t be here unless, at this point, I could say, TL;DR: there is a better way we could be doing this. What if David’s journey didn’t require so many hurdles? What if every step was connected and automated, seamless, and every donor story looked like David’s but without the inefficiencies? Your organization, your mission, and your team deserve that.

Imagine all of our tools are connected into one system: no exporting, no importing, no duplicate data entry. Every gift and volunteer hour and event registration and interaction is automatically recorded and connected. Wealth insights are flowing through, engagement data updates in real time, and donor groupings are automatically adjusted. Imagine being able to trigger campaigns like the one we talked about for David at exactly the right moments. Shannon talked about this a little bit earlier: when David gives, or he volunteers, or upgrades to monthly and makes a recurring donation, that next step happens automatically. It’s seamless, so David’s never lost, and the experience can feel personalized and connected the entire way. He can feel closer to your mission because he understands what his individual impact does.

Remember, at the beginning I mentioned that the donors who feel connected to your organization, who understand your mission, are the ones who give and give often. Ultimately, with a smoother path for donors like David, we can see that happen more and more, and we can move folks from first gift to lasting and transformational impact.

That’s what leads us into the Giving Platform, which I’m about to pass the mic to Jacob to walk through in more depth, with actual product. Imagine if every event and interaction made your fundraising as a whole smarter. Instead of having your fundraising data in a silo and your volunteer data somewhere else and your CRM data just not connected, this can all live together so you get a 360-degree view of David: who he is, how he’s engaging, what he’s given, where he’s headed. A tool like Bloomerang is built for teams like yours. It is built for nonprofits.

You don’t have to throw out your entire process. Folks have been engaging in the chat and sharing the different things they’re trying right now, especially for personalization. You can keep doing what’s working with Bloomerang, with that kind of technology layered on top, or you can build a new process if you’re just getting started. We had some folks in the chat say that. It can be supported by a system that strengthens the connection instead of complicating it.

With Bloomerang, you’re able to bring your CRM, volunteer management, and fundraising together so you can unlock things you simply couldn’t do before, and you can personalize your campaigns more effectively. You can engage volunteers. Just had a comment about volunteers that’s got my ears burning. You can engage with those volunteers more strategically. That’s a great opportunity to unlock a donor in your system who maybe is not currently getting that engagement. You can see them connected to your donor data, and you can uncover new fundraising opportunities that were hidden in a disconnected system. With that in mind, passing the mic over to Jacob. I’ll stop sharing here. I did see a comment about volunteers. If you have questions, please drop them into the Q&A. As long as we have time, we will answer them either here or we will follow up with you. Take it away, Jacob.

Jacob Houser: Awesome. Thank you. Let me get my screen shared here. Perfect. Like Lacey said, we’re now going to take a look inside the actual Bloomerang platform to see how we can create that unified, streamlined, and seamless donor journey.

First and foremost, we’re just gonna take a look at the door that a lot of these donors walk in through. Scrolling down here, we’re gonna take a look again at a donation form. These are great for one-time donations and for signing up for recurring donations. We really want to make sure your donors have a smooth and easy giving experience, whether they’re returning to your organization, making another gift, or brand new.

One thing I love about these donation forms is this reminder right here. Oftentimes you all have a lot of great stuff on your website, a lot of great impact stories, information about your mission, all the great work that you do. It can be easy for donors or potential donors to get a little bit distracted reading through all of that great content. With those reminders there, we’re helping the donor remember to actually complete that gift.

Now, these suggested donation amounts are what we call Smart Amounts. Bloomerang is actually going to take a look at, as somebody who’s on your website, my IP address, what type of device I’m on, and even my location. This is really about meeting donors and potential donors where they’re at. These amounts are going to be different depending on all of that criteria, because we want to suggest donation amounts that someone is actually capable and likely to give. Speaking of meeting donors where they’re at, we do have some express pay options down here, such as PayPal and Venmo. We want to make sure it’s really quick and easy for donors to complete their gift so they’re not spending forever on a donation form and, again, maybe getting distracted and leaving the form.

Beyond our donation forms, events: I’m sure many of you do events throughout the year. Those are really great for stewarding and cultivating your current donors, but also for attracting new donors. They’re also great for making sure your donors feel connected to your organization and your mission, and inspiring them to give in different and creative ways. Events can look like galas. Maybe some of you do auctions with either online bidding or in-person bidding. Events could also look like a golf scramble or anything from a free event RSVP, maybe a little dinner night, up to something bigger like this one here. Like I said, events are really great for stewarding your current donors, but the guests they bring are all really excellent prospects for you. Those guests could become new donors. With Bloomerang, we make sure that even guest information ends up in your CRM, so you can properly thank these people and open your doors to them next year, inviting them again.

We are now going to hop over into our CRM. We’re gonna take a look at Harold. Harold here is new to my organization. He doesn’t have a lot of information here, not a lot of donations we can see down here, or even touchpoints. So, again, we don’t know a ton about Harold. But with Bloomerang, we do have predictive giving insights that are going to help you understand your potential donors a little bit better and make really smart fundraising strategy choices. Taking a look over here on the right side of my screen, first we’re gonna look at the engagement level. The engagement level measures how engaged Harold is with my organization. We’re taking a look at everything on this timeline here. How often is Harold donating? How much is he donating? How often is he volunteering, if at all? How often is he receiving our emails, clicking on those emails, opening those emails? That’s all wrapped up in the engagement level. So, how engaged is Harold with my nonprofit?

Below this is the generosity score. This is with our partner in wealth prospecting, DonorSearch. The generosity score tells us how likely and able Harold is to give us a major gift. It looks at how often he’s giving to other nonprofits, how much he’s giving to other nonprofits, political campaigns, and other wealth indicators to tell us how likely he is to give us a major gift. When we take a look at these two insights together, we can tell Harold’s new, but right away we can tell that he is highly generous. He could be a great major donor, giving us that transformational gift. But Harold’s not really engaged, so he’s somebody we should strategically cultivate, to really bring into the fold of our organization and warm up to that major gift ask.

We’re going to pop over into another portion of Bloomerang. This tool is called Journey Automation, and we previewed it a little bit earlier. Journey Automation is more than your typical email campaign. This could be a full sequence of emails and tasks. It’s going to make sure the right people are getting cultivated at the right time, and it does a lot of segmentation for you. What we’re looking at right here is a first-time donor welcome series. We know that first-time donors, if they are properly thanked within the first forty-eight hours of that first gift, are four times more likely to give again. I can’t tell you how many times I hear that people fall through the cracks because we can’t properly identify who these first-time donors are, or we don’t have the time to get those thank-yous out the door. With this automation, we’re ensuring that Harold, as a first-time donor, as well as the rest of my first-time donors, get that proper thank-you, and we’re really increasing the likelihood that they’re going to become a repeat donor. With this one, we have a task that’s going to be created to call the donor and thank them, and an email that’s going to get sent out to them. Maybe that has some impact information acknowledging their gift again and telling them what their gift can do for us.

Speaking of emails, we want to make sure your emails really look and feel like they’re coming from your organization. You all have your own branding, your colors, your fonts. With our email tool, you’re able to fully design and personalize these emails to really look and feel like you. Down here in the content of the email, we want to make sure these emails still feel personal to our donors. We can address them by their first name. We can include transaction information, thanking them for their gift to a particular campaign, really adding that personal touch to our emails without having to do all of this one by one. If you’re like me and you have writer’s block often, or you know, I don’t write all the time, we do have, over here on the right-hand side, an AI writing assistant, and this can really help with drafting ideas and getting our content created. Bloomerang also helps you segment your donors, your prospects, everyone in your database, to make sure the right people are receiving your emails.

Speaking of the donor journey, one thing we can do with our email here is invite our donors to become volunteers. With Bloomerang, we can have our volunteers sign up right off of our website and collect all of the information we need. You can even ask them, you know, what T-shirt size they have. Waivers signed right away. I know that’s not the most exciting feature, but I can’t tell you how often I talk with organizations who have to chase people down to get waivers signed and accepted. When our volunteers sign up through our forms in here and log their hours, that data is going to flow into our CRM, and we’re going to, again, segment them for you.

Right here, we’re in the groups portion of our CRM, and our volunteers are all synced into this nice group. We can easily segment them, communicate with them super easily, and even cultivate them into being donors themselves. Lacey mentioned it earlier, but volunteers are way more likely to become donors than non-volunteers. Speaking of groups, Bloomerang does have quite a few groups that we’re going to manage for you. We’ll help group your current donors together. We’ll help group your lapsed donors together. Again, we’re doing a lot of this work, a lot of this segmenting for you, so you can spend your time doing more important things, like cultivating these donors and improving those relationships.

All right. We’ll head back into Journey Automation for just a second. We looked at that volunteer group. One thing we can do with that volunteer group, or any of those groups, is send them on a very specific automation, whether that be a volunteer welcome series or, like I mentioned, cultivating our volunteers into becoming donors themselves. One thing I see used very effectively with a cultivation automation like this, especially with our volunteers, is that our volunteers might not always be able to give to us financially. They care about our organization a lot. They’re connected with our mission. But one thing we can do with this is send them a link to sign up for a peer to peer page so they can open up their own communities to donate to your organization and bring even more new donors into the fold.

We’re gonna head back over to Harold. He donated that first time. He was properly thanked. Harold volunteered for us. Now we’re taking a look at Harold again, and we can see he’s got a lot more activity going on. He’s highly engaged. Over here, that engagement level went up because of all of those touchpoints, all of that great work that we did. Harold is still highly generous, so we know Harold is now a really great candidate for that transformational gift. All right, and with that, I am going to pass it back over to Shannon.

Shannon Gendreau: Fantastic. Thank you, Jacob. I will take over screen sharing. Apologies, so many tabs open. Jacob did such a good job showing what Bloomerang is capable of and putting everything Lacey walked through in the journey into best practices and how Bloomerang and the Giving Platform can help with that.

With the Giving Platform, you can attract new supporters. We saw that with high-converting forms, peer-to-peer campaigns, and the ability to bring in donors with less manual lift on your end. You can automate precise journeys. We saw how important that is through Lacey’s example, and you can do that with Journey Automation. You’re able to welcome new donors, steward major donors, and celebrate milestones automatically. Then there’s the ability to see the whole supporter story with unified donor data and those engagement and generosity insights, and know who’s ready to give or upgrade. Finally, you can activate supporters in more ways with volunteer engagement, monthly giving, and peer-to-peer fundraising. All of these work together to create a true donor growth engine.

To set the scene with an example, I wanted to share a customer story that shows what happens when relationships and the right tools work together. This is Erica from the Lindbergh School Foundation. She and her team are doing really great work, but their old system was making everything feel like a battle. Even simple tasks like managing events, sponsors, and volunteers were clunky and time-consuming. When they moved to Bloomerang, they were able to simplify their workflows and really lean into stewardship. They were able to launch a monthly Green and Gold Society using Bloomerang Fundraising to grow it quickly, and they even added AI to write emails and auction descriptions. Most importantly, the platform freed them up to do what really mattered, which was building connections with their supporters. They hosted happy hours, behind-the-scenes tours, and thoughtful touches, all of these things that helped deepen loyalty with their donors. The impact really speaks for itself. They saw a forty-three percent donor retention rate increase, which is insane, and also a four hundred and fifty-five percent increase in monthly giving, which is incredibly impressive. This really shows the power of combining their great team with the right fundraising tools.

If you’re ready to learn more, Diana’s gonna pop a survey up on the screen in just a second. Feel free to select the question that’s relevant for you. Let me know. Oh, there we go. We’ll leave this up for a moment. While that poll is up, we just wanted to highlight what we’re doing next in this Giving Platform series that we’re hosting. The next session is next month, on the eighteenth of March at two PM Eastern. We’re gonna be talking about the major gift playbook, being able to turn potential into power. Lacey is actually hosting that one, so if you want to hear more from Lacey, she’ll be co-leading that one. Then, a couple of webinars that we are hosting next week: another customer story, how Friendship Bridge was able to achieve forty-nine percent retention using Bloomerang. And we are in the middle of tax season, so we’re hosting a webinar next Thursday, navigating the 2025 tax law and providing strategic guidance on that.

I think we’re getting some good responses on the poll, so I’m going to end that, and we can move into our Q&A. Feel free to drop any questions you have. I know we’ve been answering some throughout the webinar.

One from Libby: does the Bloomerang donation tool allow donors to edit their own recurring donation if they want to change the amount of their monthly gift? Jacob, do you want to take that one?

Jacob Houser: Yeah. With the Bloomerang Fundraising forms, donors actually have the ability to create a donor account where they can go in and edit some information. They’re able to update their card if it’s going to expire. I know a lot of organizations struggle to manage expiring cards, and maybe you don’t know that it’s expiring and then you’re losing out on that revenue. Donors can create accounts where they can go in and manage some of their recurring gift data.

Shannon Gendreau: Fantastic, Jacob. I’m gonna pass the next one off to you as well. Lucy asked, can you repeat what a peer-to-peer campaign is and the other ways new donors can be attracted through Bloomerang?

Jacob Houser: Yeah. Peer-to-peer means a lot of different things to a lot of different organizations. I see it used in a wide variety of ways. Peer-to-peer can mean that, if there’s an organization I care a lot about, I can set up my own fundraising page and include information on why I care about their mission and their cause, and then I can share my donation page with my friends and family. I can even set up my own fundraising goal. I’m opening the doors to my own community, asking my own friends and family to donate to the organization as an individual. I see it used for setting up board member pages and turning it into a little bit of friendly competition among board members, who can each set their own goals and fundraise that way. I just spoke with an organization yesterday who is setting up peer-to-peer pages, essentially using them to vote. I think they were an animal rights organization, and they were having a really fun voting event where you could vote on different animals, but donating to each of those different pages, those causes, through a peer-to-peer campaign. Even down to a simple thing, I don’t know how many of you fundraise through Facebook for your birthday. I know I certainly did quite a long time ago. But something you could do with Journey Automation: we have a happy birthday automation. You could use that to automatically wish everyone in your database a happy birthday and then offer them the ability to sign up for a peer-to-peer page to fundraise for their birthday. Personally, I don’t like a bunch of things, and I would rather my friends and family donate to a cause I care about for my birthday. So you can automatically surface those opportunities and turn your donors and your volunteers into fundraisers on your behalf.

Shannon Gendreau: Fantastic. Thank you, Jacob. Brianna asked, I have a donor that does a recurring monthly gift. Is there a way to create a pledge for them and convert their payments without deleting their information? Diana, do you want to take that one?

Diana Otero: Sure. Jacob, I might ask you as well if there’s a way to do it within Fundraising. But my question for Brianna, if I could clarify, is: did the donor express an interest in converting the recurring gift into a pledge? The reason I ask is that it’s slightly different how we track them in Bloomerang. Typically, when you’re recording a pledge in Bloomerang, there is a total pledge amount they’re building toward. For example, if they’re giving, let’s say, twenty dollars a month, what would you record as the pledge amount there? What are they paying toward with those twenty dollars a month? If you could clarify, we could get you a better response. I’m gonna see if she chats in. While we’re waiting for Brianna to give us a little more info, I answered this question in the chat, but there was a lot of interest around Journey Automation. If you’re already using Bloomerang CRM and you want to learn more about Journey Automation, we do have a group training happening this Monday, February twenty-third, at two PM Eastern. I sent the registration link in the chat and in the Q&A. If you’re curious and want to learn more, please join us at that group training.

Shannon Gendreau: Okay. We had Brianna get back. She said they want to do a three-year pledge.

Diana Otero: Lovely. So the other question there, Brianna, is: the payments they’ve made so far toward the recurring donation, would you consider those part of the pledge or on top of the pledge? I’m kind of curious there. For example, if the total amount they’ve pledged over three years is three thousand dollars, and that’s just a number I’m making up as an example, and let’s say through their recurring donations they’ve already paid a thousand toward it, are you looking to create a pledge for the remaining two thousand, or are you trying to convert? The easiest way to do it might be to create a pledge for that remaining amount. If they do have that recurring donation, that means you already have their token, if they’ve been using a card. When you set up that pledge for the remaining amount, you could use the same token, the same card, and use the auto-processing of that card on the pledge. But I don’t want to speak definitively because I don’t know what their exact situation is, but you could do it that way. Check in with our support team so they can help you set that up the way, or ideally how it would be set up. Great question. Thanks.

Shannon Gendreau: Fantastic. Thank you. We have another pledge question. Can you record a pledge if you only have Bloomerang Fundraising, for example, someone’s event pledge where they haven’t paid, or do you have to have an additional feature? Jacob, would you like to take that one?

Jacob Houser: Yeah. I would encourage using Bloomerang CRM to set up a formal pledge. Bloomerang Fundraising does have some similar tools to help with things like that. Through recurring giving schedules, we have quite a lot of flexibility to set total amounts that a donor might give us, plus recurring donation start and end dates. There is quite a bit of flexibility within that tool, but I would highly encourage using Bloomerang CRM if you’re looking to create a formal pledge itself.

Shannon Gendreau: Fantastic. Thank you. And, Katie, thank you for that question. Okay, it looks like we have a couple in the chat. I’ll make sure I’m getting to everyone since we have the time. Diane asked, if you move data from another CRM, do the recurring donors move with it and automatically get set up as recurring donors? And then how do you set up the token?

Diana Otero: That’s a great question. I’m gonna start, and Jacob, if you have anything to add, please do so. Usually, yes, we can help with migrating those recurring transactions. I say usually because that also depends on where they’re coming from. There isn’t a definitive answer, because it depends on whether we can take that out of the system they’re currently in. The best thing you can do is talk to someone on our team about your specific case and where the recurring donations are coming from, so we can give you an answer like, yes, we’ve done that before and we’re confident we can do that again, or we might need to look into that. Jacob, anything to add?

Jacob Houser: Yeah. We have a wonderful conversion team, and we also have a whole dedicated team called the recurring transaction migration team. They are dedicated to exactly that. First and foremost, the most important thing for us here is donor experience and making sure it’s very seamless for them even as you might be moving from one system over to Bloomerang. We do those migrations all the time from a whole host of other processors and databases. But like Diana said, it does sometimes depend on where you’re coming from and what those tokens might look like. So I would definitely recommend checking in with a member of our team on that.

Shannon Gendreau: Fantastic. And she did clarify: PayPal and Stripe from Little Green Light, specifically.

So, yes, we have plenty of customers who’ve moved from those similar platforms. And like Jacob said, we’re trying to make it as seamless as possible.

Okay. We have time for a couple more questions if there are any lingering ones. Okay. Well, if you do have any questions, feel free to reach out to the Bloomerang team. If you marked in the survey that you’re interested in learning more, we’ll have someone following up soon. The recording and this deck will be sent later today to the email address you registered with. We want to thank you all for taking the time to sit with us for an hour, and we hope to see you again soon. Thanks, everyone. Bye.