Year-end fundraising prep: simplify, segment, succeed

Margie Worrell: Here we go. All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our webinar today. We are so glad that you are joining us, where we’re gonna be talking about year-end fundraising prep, a very important topic. “Simplify, Segment, Succeed.” I love alliteration, so that title makes me extremely happy. And I have here with me today Ryan Maloney. Ryan, thank you for being here.

Ryan Maloney: My pleasure, Margie.

Margie Worrell: And if everyone would please drop into the chat and tell us where you’re joining us from and what the weather is like where you are today. Ryan, what’s the weather like where you are today?

Ryan Maloney: It’s rainy. You know, we live in the same city, Margie.

Margie Worrell: I know. That’s why I asked.

Ryan Maloney: Yeah. We walked out to school this morning, and my youngest was like, why is it raining? And I was like, I don’t know, because it’s fall and the weather is thick. I have a very profound answer.

Margie Worrell: I know. It’s hard to say why. It looks like it’s raining in a lot of places today. A lot of fall weather coming in, which I’m personally grateful for.

So thanks for being with us wherever you’re joining us from. We’re really glad that you’re here today and getting to spend some time with us to learn a little bit more about fundraising at the end of the year. I’m gonna run through a few quick things and then let you get to the really important part, which is what Ryan’s gonna share today. Yes, this webinar is being recorded, and we’re gonna share it with you at the end of the day via email. So please don’t worry about that. You will get the slides and the recording. Also, any questions that you have, please put those into the Q&A. That way, if the chat really gets going, we don’t lose questions in the chat. We like to keep the questions in the Q&A.

The chat, though, is really great for us to be able to socialize and learn from one another. If you’re doing something and it’s really working for you, the chat’s a great place for that. Also, if you’re struggling with something and you’re like, I would love to have the attendees chime in on what they’re doing about this, please put that into the chat as well. We can really learn a lot from each other through these webinar sessions and develop a sense of community. So let’s use the chat for that.

All right. If you’re not familiar with Bloomerang, which I think most of you probably are, we are a giving platform that’s built for purpose. And our purpose is to help strengthen your relationships and help you grow your impact. So we have a lot of different tools, like donor and volunteer management, online fundraising, peer to peer campaigns, and custom donation forms. All of these help all of you really accomplish your goals. If you’re interested in hearing more about any of those different areas, maybe you aren’t utilizing all of the different products that we offer, feel free to answer at the end of our session today. We’re gonna have a poll, and you can answer that you’d like to hear more, because we would be happy to reach out to you if there’s something there that resonates that you might benefit from. So, without any further ado, I am going to introduce to you my friend, my colleague, my partner in crime, Ryan Maloney. Ryan, I am so happy that you are here today.

Ryan Maloney: Thank you, Margie. That’s just really kind. I will say, in full transparency, I did not come up with the title. Our friend Sarah in marketing came up with “Simplify, Segment, Succeed,” as any true marketer would. I think what I submitted was something really dumb.

Margie Worrell: I’m sure that wasn’t.

Ryan Maloney: Credit where credit is due for those really smart marketing people. I was like, how does this sound?

Margie Worrell: Because, you know, it’s gotta be snappy.

Ryan Maloney: It’s gotta be snappy.

Margie Worrell: That’s awesome. I’m so glad that Sarah was able to help out with that.

Ryan Maloney: Well, thanks for being here. It’s very nice to meet you all. My name is Ryan. I’m on the onboarding team here at Bloomerang. I’ve been here going on four years, so almost a high school diploma in Bloomerang, which feels wild. Before this, to qualify myself a bit so that you’re not just like, who is this Yahoo, I worked for a nonprofit arts organization for six years, managing programming and community outreach. I’m still on the board of a local nonprofit here in Central Indiana. My wife does consulting for nonprofits. So I always say I stumbled into nonprofits and then stumbled into tech, but nonprofits really are a part of my day-to-day personal and professional conversations.

I say all that not to self-deprecate, but just to clarify: this is just my experience. I am by no means some expert, but I do have a bit of experience. At the end of the day, my goal, as I tell all my customers, is to help you understand how Bloomerang can work for you and your circumstance and your nuance and your needs and your organization, because, as we know, every nonprofit is different, and that’s what makes them special and beautiful. So feel free to take everything I say with a grain of salt, or say, you know, Ryan, that’s silly, I’m not gonna listen to that. I promise I won’t be offended, and I’m happy to have that conversation if I can help. But I’m also glad Margie’s here as well, because she truly is an expert, and she’s gonna keep an eye on the chat and make sure I don’t lie to you.

So what are we doing here? “Simplify, Segment, Succeed.” What does that mean? That’s a splashy title. I am gonna share my screen here in a minute, but, again, a little bit more qualifying. If you know me at all, which none of you do that I can tell, I also can’t see anybody, so if I do, hello. I always like to start any sort of presentation, talk, webinar, lecture, or homily with a quote, because I think there are people in this world who have done incredible work and are much smarter than me, and I like to lean on their wisdom and stand on their shoulders. So I’m gonna start with a quote. I’m going to share my screen, because I wrote it down for you. There we go.

This is from Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering. When I worked for a nonprofit, we were a theater company. We did productions. We did storytelling events and gatherings. We did topical forums. We did artist workshops. So we were truly in the business of gathering and collecting together. And then during the pandemic, we, like everyone, had to shift, but we were still gathering. And, this is for another conversation, I think the pandemic taught us a lot about why we connect with people and how we connect with people. I think, to its detriment, a lot of institutions and organizations switched from a participatory, relationship-building model to a spectatorial, information-sharing model. I think there was a noticeable shift in how people felt included and, honestly, why we all have Zoom fatigue.

So I really appreciate Priya’s research. This also came out before the pandemic, but I think a lot of keywords here apply. This is a conglomerate of her introduction. She says: we often make the mistake of conflating category with purpose. Having a purpose simply means knowing why you’re gathering and doing your participants the honor of being convened for a reason. The purpose of your gathering is more than an inspiring concept. It’s a tool, a filter that helps you determine all the details, grand and trivial.

I start with this because some people were like, we’re talking about databases, Ryan. We’re not necessarily talking about getting people together. But as someone who came from the nonprofit world first and then stumbled really face first into tech, I would argue that the purpose of our database is not to be just another index or another organizational box. It’s not a system. It really is a strategy. I made this connection live when Margie was talking about what Bloomerang is. Bloomerang is built for purpose, and that purpose is building relationships. That took the words right out of my mouth. The purpose of having a database is not just so we have a pretty place to put information that just collects dust. It really is to inform us and help us understand how we can better build relationships with our constituents, connect them to the mission and the good work we’re doing, and ultimately build stronger neighborhoods, stronger communities, stronger cities.

That’s a kind of lofty ideal that I want to funnel us into: why are we here today? We’re here to talk about getting down to the foundations of how we can make sure our database, and our data in particular, is a solid system that we can build, maintain, and ultimately use. Because, again, if we can’t use it, it’s just collecting dust. A very wise person once said that exact same thing: data is only as valuable as it is usable. And not to sound so capitalistic, but I do think that’s very true, especially in a day and age where it does feel like we’re playing the scarcity game and trying to grasp at straws to make sure we’re sustainable and survive economic headwinds, pandemics, and donor fatigue. There are a lot of obstacles that nonprofits face every day. But I personally would encourage you and say, you are doing incredible work, and we don’t have to maintain a scarcity mindset to be successful. As my wife and I and another friend who does marketing for nonprofits have found, embracing a spirit of abundance allows us the freedom to pursue joy and to engage deeper, and not feel like we’re always playing catch-up, but really lead from the front.

So, with that, I want to focus today on the basics. Anybody who knows me or spends any time with me in onboarding knows that I bang the drum of funds, campaigns, and appeals. This slide is 100% for Margie. I literally added it an hour ago, because she says, I can’t hear the phrase “funds, campaigns, and appeals” without thinking of lions and tigers and bears. I think it’s a little campy, Margie, but, you know, it’s cute. Also, to celebrate Wicked: For Good coming out in November. My girls cannot wait. Also, who doesn’t love The Wizard of Oz?

So we’re gonna focus on funds, campaigns, and appeals. My baseline assumption is that y’all are familiar with funds, campaigns, and appeals and Bloomerang in general. If you’re not, let Margie know, and I can do some backtracking. But I like to say, whether you’ve been in Bloomerang for twenty years or two months, every database is trying to do the same thing. They’re all just trying to keep us organized. This is Bloomerang’s structure. We did not invent funds, campaigns, and appeals, and we may use the terms differently than other systems. So that’s where I wanna make sure we have the core building blocks of being able to use a database, as well as understanding how the tool works. I wanna make sure we have a really strong grasp on funds, campaigns, and appeals, and ultimately how that can help us do all of the impact work of engaging constituents via the email tool, making sure we’re up to date with reporting, making sure we know how to send follow-up information, and also tracking for year-end giving. If we can grasp this, the whole ecosystem of Bloomerang really opens up to us.

So where are we going today? Let’s make a little bit of a road map just to hold myself accountable, otherwise ADD will get the best of me. We’re gonna define terms. We’re gonna look at real-life examples and move from theory to practice. I’m not gonna spend too much time on the cleanup tools, because I think there are a lot of resources on them, but I am gonna take a brief pause just to make sure we know what’s available to us in Bloomerang to do some cleanup or maintenance before we dive into year end. I’m sure Margie can find us the statistics of what percentage is raised in the last quarter of the year for nonprofits. That’s why I wanna make sure we are set to receive those gifts.

We’re also gonna talk about integrations. Some of you may still be using Kindful. Some of you may be using Bloomerang’s native forms. I’d imagine most of you are using Bloomerang Fundraising tools, formerly known as Qgiv. That’s where I wanna make sure we understand that integrations are not magic. They’re just logic. I also wanna reiterate that while Bloomerang is one platform, one suite of tools, they are separate products. So making sure we know in which product we are trying to accomplish which goal, and what functions are set up in each product, helps us know where we are.

We’re gonna do a few examples. We’re gonna get into my demo database, which honestly looks like garbage, but I tried to clean it up for y’all a little bit today. And then we’re gonna talk about how this actually helps us. Because it’s nice to talk about things in the abstract, but how does this actually impact our day to day and make our jobs a bit easier?

So, starting out: what are funds, campaigns, and appeals? Many software companies use the terms, and so I wanna define them as far as Bloomerang’s concerned.

Funds are our biggest bucket. Think income accounts, bank accounts. At the end of the day, where is money being allocated or pulled from? Funds are the only requirement in Bloomerang, and I’ll repeat this over and over, because Bloomerang does not dictate a particular hierarchy. The only thing it demands is funds. I have some organizations I work with who just use funds. They just have five fund buckets. They’re putting money in one of those buckets, and that’s all they need to be successful.

Campaigns are that next tier of tracking. I know the term “campaign” can elicit thoughts of fundraising efforts, fundraising events, email campaigns, and mass marketing. But in Bloomerang, a campaign is simply a bucket of money with a label. That’s why I really love this image of the Salvation Army red buckets, because it’s really just saying, okay, this is all the money that was collected for this event, project, program, goal, or initiative, and then I’m gonna dump that into one fund or multiple funds. That was really the catalyst.

Appeals are the third level of tracking. I chose this image, and I don’t know if you can tell, but it kind of looks like a calculator. It’s not a calculator. It’s a label maker, which my mother would be very proud of. Appeals are simply, in my opinion, designations. The typical understanding would be direct mail pieces and solicitations. That can absolutely be the case in Bloomerang. If we’re sending out a year end appeal, as those gifts come back through the mail or through your online forms, we can make sure all of those gifts are tagged with the year-end appeal code, or a year-end appeal label, regardless of the campaign bucket they’re being dropped into or the fund they’re sorted into. But, again, I also like to reiterate that appeals are simply designations that are valuable to you.

We’re gonna get into some examples here in a bit and get into the weeds. But that’s where I want you thinking, in the typical sense, direct mail, social media, email, but also tracking grant dollars, tracking sponsorships, tracking matching gifts. Anytime there is a broad designation that you want to be able to keep track of, in my opinion, that’s an opportunity to use an appeal. That way, all of the money can still live within a singular campaign bucket or even within a singular fund, but we’re never losing that tag or that label for sponsorship or matching gifts.

I also wanna reiterate, and I say this with a lot of generosity, that Bloomerang doesn’t care how you set it up. That is not something we’re gonna dictate. At the end of the day, funds are the minimum requirement. I have some organizations that just use funds and campaigns, or funds and appeals, and then I have some that use all three. All three are equally filterable and usable in Bloomerang, whether you’re looking for donations or people, by funds, campaigns, or appeals, or any combination of the three. That’s where I really harp on these. Because if we want usable data, which I would argue we do, this is where we can start. And the cases where we need beyond this are few and far between. That’s not to say they don’t exist, but I love having these conversations, especially with my customers in onboarding who are just getting started, to really dig into: okay, how are you currently tracking gifts, and how does that translate to how we can use this information in Bloomerang? Do we wanna use this opportunity to rearrange or consolidate, to make sure we are getting the most out of it?

These lovely pictures are to look at as we keep diving into some real-world examples. This is where I’ll ask for some audience participation. Margie, you’re kind of on the spot. If anybody is brave enough, these are the three most obvious models that I always use as examples.

First is a pyramid, with funds at the top, campaigns in the middle, and appeals down at the bottom. I think this works really effectively for schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, and Jewish community centers. They’ve really broken up their pyramids by arts, athletics, aquatics, academics, specific programs that live under those campaigns, and then applicable appeals.

The next option is the hourglass model. That’s where you’re driving everything through singular campaigns, and the campaign is kind of the king. You’re saying, okay, everything’s coming through an annual campaign and then being distributed into one of our four funds, or however many funds. Or everything’s coming through a year-end campaign and distributing to one of our funds.

And then there’s the chaos model, which I don’t think is very kind, so let’s call it the crossover model: multiple streams, where your funds all live up here, and then you’ve got multiple campaigns going simultaneously, or multiple events. From any campaign, people can determine and say, I want this money to go into one of these buckets, and then we’re using a lot of crossover appeals. It may seem messy, but I would encourage you: there isn’t a wrong or a right way. Bloomerang doesn’t care how you set it up, as long as it is specific and intentional. I talk about this all the time with teammates. The goal is not for it to be complicated or even robust. And, going back to what I said earlier, we don’t have to hold on to every scrap of data we’ve ever collected. The goal is really for it to be sustainable, repeatable, and maintainable. If it’s a system that works for you, that’s the goal, because if it works for you, then it is usable in Bloomerang.

Before we jump into some examples that are gonna be very straightforward, does anybody, and I’m putting you on the spot, or, Margie, maybe, if nobody says anything, you have to answer, have any examples of what they’re doing that is very successful? Or does anybody have any questions, like, this is what we’ve been doing, but we know we need to do it better? I love live participation, but I know we didn’t sign up for a participatory webinar. You can also tell me to kick rocks, or maybe Margie has an example.

Margie Worrell: Well, I thought you were gonna say I could tell you to kick rocks.

Ryan Maloney: Or you can tell me to kick rocks.

Margie Worrell: We have a really great discussion going in the chat, because we had one of our attendees asking about how you use funds. What are the different ways? So people are just chiming in and talking about the various ways that they use funds.

Ryan Maloney: I’m not in the chat. There are too many notifications, so now I’ve got FOMO and I’m missing out on everything.

Margie Worrell: You are missing out. I don’t wanna tell you that, but you are. It’s awesome. People are talking about using restricted and then unrestricted and then special funds. It’s really cool. Someone also brought up the point that you wanna make sure your funds align with your accounting system, so that makes life simpler for the financial people. It’s really great. I see Giles is saying, I inherited the chaos model, but I’ve been working towards the triangle. So, yeah, sometimes we have to take what we’ve gotten and adjust and move forward with it. But there’s been some really great discussion around it.

Ryan Maloney: If the wheels are turning, great. I don’t need to interject. I’m glad that’s working, and that’s a great call, and kind of where we’ll go in a minute. But let’s just jump into some examples. These are really high level, very straightforward, just some examples I use every day. The example we’re gonna use later on is the end-of-year campaign, so I’ll jump to part three. You can read through the rest.

As we look ahead to year end, some organizations like to know what our last two months are gonna look like. We need to make up a shortfall of $50,000, $100,000, a million dollars, or we just need an extra $20,000 to get across the finish line. Whatever it is, we’re raising money for year end. I’m gonna waffle back and forth, because sometimes people are like, we’re just gonna do everything on Giving Tuesday, it has to come in on Giving Tuesday. Or some people drag it out and say, Giving Tuesday is a big push, but we’re also raising money to the whistle, so we’re gonna go all the way to 11:59 on New Year’s Eve.

If we just need to get some more annual funds at the end of the year, our fund could just be unrestricted. These are general, where needed most. But let’s set up a year-end form or a year-end campaign, because we really need to get that last $50,000. From that, you have an option. Giving Tuesday could be an appeal, because we’re gonna have a specific form that’s up on our website for 24 hours, or maybe 48 if you like to give people a little buffer before and after, because we specifically need to raise $10,000 of that on Giving Tuesday. So Giving Tuesday could be an appeal, or it could also be its own campaign.

If we’re sending out mailers, if we’re gonna have links on social media, if we’re really investing in doing an online campaign, or if we’re gonna send out an email series, saying, now through the end of the year, we’re gonna send out these four emails with updates along the way, to say, hey, we have not hit $50,000 yet, we’re only at $15,000, and then after Giving Tuesday we’re at $35,000, we can really start to make sure, as we collect this data, that it’s all falling into the right place, and we’re using appeals appropriately. That way, next year, if this is not something we’re already doing, and that’s why I wanna encourage you, you can start now. If you’ve not done this yet, that’s fine. We’re not behind, but we can start leading from the front and say, okay, we need to just try something year one. We’re just gonna start something this year so that next year, if we need to do a year-end campaign again, we can look back and say, all right, how effective was our direct mail? We spent, I don’t know what the going rate of a mailing letter is, but maybe we spent a buck sixty on individual letters and envelopes and stamps, but we only got about $200 back through the mail. Maybe we can start to see: do those people not have email addresses? Is that why they sent us letters? Maybe we shouldn’t send out as many letters. Maybe we just send a letter to the people who wrote via check, send them personal notes, and then really focus on beefing up our email campaign. We got a lot of momentum at the end. Maybe instead of four emails, we do six emails. It gives you more information when you look back, to see not only how much money came into the bucket, but how it got there.

Couple of thoughts on funds, campaigns, and appeals, especially as we relate it back to Bloomerang. My wife rolled her eyes, because this is where she and I differ the most. I think time is optional. She thinks time is integrity, and we’re working on that. We’re coming up on ten years, and we’re making it work so far. But one thing you don’t have to do in Bloomerang, and what I love about Bloomerang, is that you don’t have to add years to campaigns or funds. We don’t have to have 2025 Back to School, 2025 Gala, 2025 End of Year, because in Bloomerang you can always filter by time frame. We’ve got really robust date filter functionality, so you can say, I wanna look at everything in the year-end campaign that came in between November 1 and December 31, 2025. It also allows you, instead of looking at multiple campaigns, which would fill up your campaign list in your database, to look year over year and say, show me a column with donations that came in 2024, 2025, 2026. So you can start to see that year-over-year information.

Don’t get lost in the weeds. You do not have to have overly specific appeals, because appeals can transcend fund and campaign. That’s where you can really start to think, okay, what are the things I’m always gonna be looking for? When we’re running an event, we’re always gonna have sponsorships. We’re always gonna have matching gifts. We’re always gonna have an auction or raffle purchases. We’re doing a lot of direct mail, or a lot of email or social media. Use appeals to give you overarching data on the effectiveness of your investment. It also allows you to see macro data. If you have multiple events running throughout the year and all of them are getting corporate sponsorships, you can always zoom in and look at reports to see how much money came into this event from sponsorships and see that really micro information. Or you could zoom out and say, regardless of my campaign, in 2025 how many donations did I get that are tagged with corporate sponsorship, to see what kind of income we’re getting from sponsorships versus matching gifts versus general donations at an annual level. It allows you to always zoom in or zoom out, because all of these are equally filterable.

I like to say, if we record data in Bloomerang, it is trackable. Nothing is gatekept from you. It is your data. That’s where I really encourage you to think: okay, what information do I need to see? That is always, in my opinion, the starting point of how you should set up funds, campaigns, and appeals.

Sorry for going back and forth. I also wanna reiterate, to whomever said, I inherited a chaos model, I think that’s inevitable. I don’t know statistics. I’m sure Margie can pull us some statistics. But with turnover, or people coming and going, seasons of life, sometimes we inherit a model that is not ideal. Or sometimes the CEO tries to jump in and pull something out and doesn’t understand how it’s being organized. Or fundraising and marketing aren’t speaking the same language, and the data isn’t really helping them understand what they’re asking. This is where I could go back to funds, campaigns, and appeals being the building blocks. Not everyone on the team needs to be an expert, but everyone needs to understand the hierarchy, so that if one person does leave, we’re not trying to start over and build a whole new system, essentially negating all of the previous data because we don’t understand it. We want that data to be transferable from person to person and understandable from person to person.

That’s where, from frontline people who are entering the data, to finance people who need to pull it out for reconciliation, to development directors, CEOs, and even the board, because I sit on a board, and if I’m looking at a funds report, half the time I’m like, I don’t know what these terms mean, so can you break this down for me? What does this actually mean for where we’re raising funds and what our expenditure is? And, to go down a rabbit trail, Bloomerang is not accounting software, and I wanna reiterate that, because we’re not tracking expenses. We are just tracking income. It’s development software. It’s relationship software. It’s for development professionals who are engaging with their constituents. As we talk about integrations and mapping, mapping is just logic. It’s just saying, okay, if it’s in this fund, campaign, and appeal in Bloomerang, I want it to map to this income account in the accounting software.

As far as terminology goes, from my perspective, you can name your buckets whatever you need to in Bloomerang to help you understand what you’re looking for. Then you can pull it out and say, okay, this was in the unrestricted, or this was in the restricted, or this was in the capital. You can hand that over to the finance people, and they can assign their GL codes and a really specific number system, which, again, is not helpful for you as a development professional, but they do ultimately need that information. As long as we’re translating and sharing this common knowledge of how information appears in the database, I think that is paramount for the team to be successful, especially as you’re doing year-end fundraising and then rolling into tax season. If we’ve not been doing it, I would definitely recommend starting now.

Before we dive in, I don’t wanna spend too much time on this, because we are gonna look at mappings. Again, systems don’t integrate. People do. Someone has to turn on the integration. That is true from Bloomerang Fundraising to the CRM, but also from the CRM to QuickBooks. Or if you’re running reports, you have to make them understandable for the person reading the report. We’re gonna get into mapping for Bloomerang Fundraising here in a moment, but just remember: it’s not magic. It’s just logic. If you need help with that, or if that’s something that’s not been made clear for you before, I talk about this all day in onboarding, but you can also reach out to our support team to help you understand the integration and make sure you know how data is flowing from one system to another, so you’re not just compounding a mess. Garbage in, garbage out, to quote my mother-in-law and probably every mother-in-law.

I just wanna call out the bulk update tool. This is located within your CRM under Data Tools, Bulk Update. If you want to do some consolidation or some cleanup before you head into year end, this is where you can say, okay, everything that’s in this campaign and everything in that campaign, I want now to be in a singular campaign, or we can combine appeals. It’s a really great way to make sure you’ve got your grasp around the scope of all of your data as you’re getting started and heading into year end. I’m not gonna walk through those steps. There are lots of resources on that in Bloomerang Learning, but I just wanna call it out. If you’re like, oh, I don’t know if my data’s clean, I don’t wanna dive into all this yet, take a look at the bulk update tool and merge your duplicates. Those are things I would strongly recommend doing on a weekly or monthly basis just to keep clean data.

For those of you who are using Bloomerang Fundraising, and I would say this is true for Kindful as well, and also as you’re building out forms in Bloomerang if you’re using the native forms: Bloomerang Fundraising is simply your box office. This is your online donation tools. You can have infinite donation forms: general forms, year-end forms, events, peer to peer, auctions. This is an online, virtual payment processor where someone is interacting with you either on social media or through an email link or directly through your website. The mapping is very simple. And, again, it all goes back to funds, campaigns, and appeals. I’m such a broken record. Because in Bloomerang Fundraising, well, of course, it kicked me out. Everything is safe in Bloomerang. I promise. Oh, Margie, we are flopping. Margie, sing a song.

Margie Worrell: What song should I sing? I could sing something from The Wizard of Oz to stay in theme, if you would like.

Ryan Maloney: Right. Go with it.

Margie Worrell: I don’t think I better, actually. This is being recorded.

Ryan Maloney: Well, great. That was all I needed. Oh, good. The darn timeout. That’s fine. Everything is safe.

So in Bloomerang Fundraising, you can have infinite donation forms. I’ve just got a bunch of standard forms here. All of these can tie back to funds, campaigns, and appeals. As I build a form, and this form is gonna be linked specifically to social media, or specifically to my emails, or this is the one that’s gonna live online, or this is the general form I’m funneling all my year-end fundraising through, in the Integration tab in Bloomerang Fundraising I can build out specific mappings. It does not have to be complicated. We’re just saying, okay, I want this form, add new mapping. I want this form, say Giving Tuesday, to map to this fund. Or in this case, let’s say I’m gonna use my year-end campaign, but I’m gonna use Giving Tuesday as an appeal.

Margie Worrell: Did you create a Giving Tuesday appeal?

Ryan Maloney: I don’t think I did, but I can do that. And that’s it. I can update these whenever I need. All this is saying is that I’m gonna tether this form to this bucket, so that everything flows into Bloomerang, my source of truth, in an organized way. Whether I’m adding data manually or information is coming in online, it’s always gonna land in the correct buckets. And I can create infinite funds, campaigns, and appeals in Bloomerang. Margie, can you actually verify something for me? What are you looking at when I’m screen sharing?

Margie Worrell: Right now, I see your CRM.

Ryan Maloney: Okay. Sorry. The preview view of the slide deck was still showing, so I wanted to make sure I was still sharing the right thing.

Margie Worrell: Great.

Ryan Maloney: Thank you. So, just an example: I can build out infinite campaigns. I don’t have to create a 2025 annual campaign and a 2024 annual campaign. I can use these over and over. I think this is really helpful for that transference. If I’m out of office, or on leave, or I retire and someone takes over, this is, in my opinion, very understandable. Even if this isn’t how we wanna continue to move forward, I at least understand what they were doing and how information was sorted.

Funds, campaigns, and appeals are very simple. They’re just labels. You’re just creating your fund labels, your campaign labels, and your appeal labels so that, whether you’re adding information manually on an individual donation on an individual constituent profile, cash, check, in-kind gifts, we’re selecting a fund, we’re selecting a campaign, we’re selecting an appeal. Again, fund is the minimum requirement, but all of these will be options. None of them are explicitly tied to each other.

Okay. Well, we just did that live. So how does this help us? Okay, Ryan, great job. We did Bloomerang 101. Now what? Looking ahead, because I truly believe funds, campaigns, and appeals are the foundation of Bloomerang, once you get into reporting logic, whether we’re running transaction reports or constituent reports or we’re in the email tool, you’ll see that all filtering is exactly the same. You can always identify people by funds, campaigns, and appeals to send them emails, or you can run transaction reports by funds, campaigns, and appeals. You’ll start to see how everything in the Bloomerang universe is very interconnected if we’re set up well.

As we’re looking ahead to year end, what can we do with clean funds, campaigns, and appeals? We can set up automatic reports. I always say, if there’s a report you’re pulling with any regularity, set it and forget about it, especially as you’re expecting a lot of donations to come in on a specific time frame. Set those reports. New report: let’s build a transaction report. Let’s say, okay, I wanna see everything that’s coming to the campaign year end, and then set that. In my columns, I always wanna keep that appeal. Oh, I forgot, because I’m looking at the year-end campaign, I also wanna set a date time frame, so I can say, during this year, because I don’t wanna include last year’s. Obviously, I’m not gonna have any results. Set up your columns so that you only see applicable information. Columns are great because you don’t have to keep them all. I already know it’s gonna be the same fund and campaign. I really just wanna know appeal and type. Save it. Schedule it. Name it. Let’s do a weekly transaction report, because those are gonna be rolling in. Schedule: I want it to go out weekly, on Mondays, at 9 AM, because that’s when I like my reports. I’m gonna choose myself. Subject: Weekly Transaction Report. Save and schedule. Now you can send that out to board members, executive directors, anybody on your team who needs this information at their fingertips. This can also be applied to daily transaction reports if we’re expecting thousands of dollars a day. Set it and forget about it so that we can get back to good work. We don’t need to be spending more time than we already do in Bloomerang.

Journey automation, the belle of the ball in 2025 for Bloomerang. And I will say my colleague Jacob is leading a webinar in two weeks about personalized communication, so I’ll let him get into the weeds of this. But as you’re thinking about year-end fundraising, journey automation can be proactive. We can say, okay, I wanna send a series of emails to everybody who’s given in 2025, because we still need to make up that shortfall of $50,000. So I’m gonna set up a new automation in Bloomerang. First, I’m gonna add everybody to a group. I’m gonna say, okay, these are all my donors in 2025. If you don’t know how to make a group, reach out to support. But for journey automation, we’re just saying, okay, “Year End Launch.” That’s convenient for me. The first step is determining my entry source. I’m gonna pick everybody who’s in a group. I named them “Hoosiers,” because Indiana. I want this to start, let’s say, next week on the 14th at 9 AM.

Now you do have the choice of: I want everyone to receive all four emails, or, once they make a donation, I don’t wanna keep bugging them with emails about donating. I maybe want them to fall into a reactive journey automation. Once they make a donation, I want them to off-ramp from my first journey automation, and then I want them to receive a really special series that we’re creating, with videos and pictures and stats about all of the impact we’ve been able to make in 2025 because of their gifts. So you can create off-ramps. Once you create that category, then it’s just mechanics. I build an email. I can build infinite emails in the email communication tool. Sorry for jumping around. Email one goes out week one. I wanna wait seven days. Email two goes out. And to close that loop, in those emails I’m not only writing about our mission and all of the impact they can make, but I’m also using my specific email form, so that all of the donations that are generated from this email are tagged with email. In 2026, or at year end when I’m doing a retro report, I can say, this is how effective our email communication was versus our mailing or versus social media. I can close that loop and have a clear picture of how we are receiving donations and also know how people are giving to us.

I think it says a lot about your constituents, the way they prefer to give and what they give to. How are we giving of our treasure? We want to be able to honor that as nonprofits, because we wanna make it as easy as possible to receive that money. That was always my line when I worked for a nonprofit. I’d say, if you wanna give me cash, if you wanna Venmo, I will make it as easy as possible to receive your money. I want to be able to mark that. I want to be able to know this person likes to give online. They are really moved by our email stories, or stories that include links to videos that we make, or they like to show up in person and make a cash gift. We can really honor those who are in the room by acknowledging how they are giving, because that’s very telling of them and good data to have.

Journey automation: there’s a lot of good information on Bloomerang Learning, and we’re hosting regular webinars on how to build out journey automations, so I’ll spare you the mechanics. But also, because 2026 is right around the corner, we have to do those dreaded tax receipts. Again, lots of content in Bloomerang Learning about how to build a tax receipt. But I will say, as long as our transactions and gifts are organized in our database, it makes tax receipting, especially via email, extremely efficient. You can just say, these are the gifts you’ve given, these are all the funds they’ve been going to, thank you for your contribution.

So, the impact of clean data and organized funds, campaigns, and appeals: automatic reports, journey automations, tax receipting, all of the outreach functions of Bloomerang. But, again, I go back to it all starting with a strong foundation.

That was a lot of me talking, Margie. I think that was a solid forty-five minutes. I’m gonna take a drink of water.

Margie Worrell: Please. Thoughts, feedback, concerns? Does Ryan get to keep his job?

Ryan Maloney: I think my job’s secure for today. Don’t tell my manager. I’m gonna stop sharing now, Margie.

Margie Worrell: You’d be right on.

Ryan Maloney: But, yeah, questions, concerns, feedback.

Margie Worrell: Let me start with a couple of questions, if that’s all right.

Ryan Maloney: Great. Always a blessing when people actually have questions.

Margie Worrell: I know. Right? It’s just great to be able to help them out. So we have a couple of folks asking about the gala example that you used. With these definitions, how would you categorize an annual gala? Would the gala be a campaign and the individual years be appeals?

Ryan Maloney: Great question. My question back is: what is the gala raising money for? I’ll spare pulling up that slide again, but in that slide where I have those examples, the gala is specifically raising money for a renovation. I would argue that gala is just one campaign by which you’re raising money for the renovation. You could also be running a digital campaign. You could also have sponsors. I really like to think of galas or events as a campaign, because they’re an initiative. They’re a project. And then appeals can be corporate sponsorships, matching gifts, auction purchases, raffle tickets, the ways by which money is coming into that campaign, or, excuse me, that event. I really think of the event as a bucket, that Salvation Army bucket. We show up at the event, we want all the money to go into this bucket, but we also wanna know, okay, is this an auction purchase? Was this a sponsorship, someone saying, I wanna pay $5,000 to put my name on all of the wine bottles so that we can get some cross-branding out there? I really think of galas, whether they’re going to unrestricted or to a specific project, as campaigns. But, again, you can tell me to go kick rocks, Margie.

Margie Worrell: I would never tell you to go kick rocks. So, Lisa has a question. She says, love this, thank you so much.

Ryan Maloney: You’re very welcome.

Margie Worrell: She does have a question.

Ryan Maloney: Great.

Margie Worrell: How do you best handle membership? I mark appeal with membership. Then how do I automatically send renewal notices near their yearly renewal dates?

Ryan Maloney: Margie, honestly, I feel like you may have more insight on this, from someone who talks about the membership tool a lot. That’s where I would say: are we using the memberships tool? Are we not? I also broadly think of memberships as their own campaign, because they’re really specific dollars, and we’re treating those members specifically. We are honoring their commitment to membership and communicating with them differently than we would someone who’s given maybe a couple of dollars every other year. So I like to think of that as a campaign, personally. If you have the memberships function, Lisa, there is a way to set up annual reminders. But also, if you’re just using a general form, there are ways to send out specific communication based on contributions to a campaign. But, Margie, do you have anything to add? Because you truly are the expert of all things.

Margie Worrell: Expert of all things? That’s a lot of pressure. No, I have nothing to add. I think that was a great answer. So, another question. Before I do the next question, I’m gonna go ahead and launch that poll that I threatened everybody with earlier, so that you can participate in that while you’re listening to the Q&A here. So Elise wants to know: are you supposed to track an auction purchase? It’s not a charitable donation, and it doesn’t require a tax receipt.

Ryan Maloney: That’s where I’m gonna plead the Fifth and say I am not a financial expert. I am not a CPA. I am not your tax adviser. I would argue that knowing that people are purchasing auction items is good for you, as a development professional, to have that information, because that tells you how they are engaging with your organization. Bloomerang is for relationship building and tracking. How do you wanna relate with that person next year? What’s their buy-in when you’re sending out invites next year? “Remember last year’s auction? It’s even bigger this year.” That can draw them back in. But for reporting purposes, I’ll defer to your tax adviser for how to track nontax-deductibility or tax-deductibility. And if you’re really not tracking the money at all, you can always tag them as a group, a segment in Bloomerang, or add an interaction on their profile, something that’s non-transaction-based but still gives you that information to say, hey, Ryan really likes the auction. He’s gonna come back for that bougie brunch basket. That’s always gonna get me. Brunch baskets.

Margie Worrell: A brunch basket.

Ryan Maloney: That’s the first one I go to.

Margie Worrell: Who can resist?

Ryan Maloney: Nobody can resist a brunch basket.

Margie Worrell: No. Nobody. We have another question. Will you be covering segmenting for the annual appeal in the CRM during today’s session?

Ryan Maloney: I feel like that question came up at the beginning, so we might already know.

Margie Worrell: I think it’s a repeat.

Ryan Maloney: I’m gonna defer, honestly, to the next webinar that, again, my colleague Jacob’s hosting, because I forgot the title, but it is on segmenting for communication purposes. To my point, as long as we’ve set up funds, campaigns, and appeals well, we have really good data to be able to then segment for year end appeals, because we know who’s given last year but not this year, who’s given in 2025, and where they’ve given. We can communicate differently with donors who maybe made a one-time gift of $100. We can invite them back in. But we can also send specific communication to our large donors who have given over $1,000 or over $5,000 in the past twelve months, to say, hey, we’re gonna talk to you a little bit differently, because we know you have capacity to give and a heart to give. We’re gonna send you a different communication for a year-end appeal, knowing we have a shortfall and we really need those high-end donors to step up a bit.

Margie Worrell: Exactly. And, by the way, I did drop the link into the chat earlier for Jacob’s amazing session coming up. It’s gonna be October 1 at 12. It’s called “From Data to Donations: Craft Personalized Year-End Appeals.” And that is snappy, right?

Ryan Maloney: I bet Sarah came up with that too.

Margie Worrell: Probably Sarah.

Ryan Maloney: Yeah. That’s the one you wanna go to. Jacob’s way smarter than me. That’s gonna be exceptional content.

Margie Worrell: You’re both smart. Let’s be fair. All right. Is the only way to segment into funds, campaigns, and appeals through using different forms, or is there a different way of assigning these, using tracking on URLs?

Ryan Maloney: Great question. When it comes to donations that come in online, right now the clearest way is to create a unique form. Say you’re using a Linktree on Instagram: you could link a specific form that is only publicly available on your Instagram or LinkedIn. And then you’re also using only a specific link for your emails, so that when you have “donate here” on an email, that’s always going through the same form. I’d honestly have to do some digging to see if there are some workarounds, but I would say the most foolproof way is to create a unique form that is specifically used for that means of communication. Do you have any thoughts on that, Margie? I may have missed the mark.

Margie Worrell: No, I think you hit the mark. I think that was well done. So someone is asking here, is there a better way to track nontax-deductible transactions?

Ryan Maloney: Better?

Margie Worrell: No.

Ryan Maloney: I would say, within Bloomerang, you can always track nontax-deductibility, which is baked into any transaction that’s added. From forms, if you’re taking transactions that are nontax-deductible, you can set that amount on the form itself. That would be a specific mechanic of the fundraising tools. Also, within the CRM, if you don’t capture that on the front end or you’re manually adding information, you can always individually add a nontax-deductible amount. So you’re still tracking: okay, this person made a contribution, no, it’s not tax-deductible, but that could also be included on year-end tax summaries. Even if it is zero, you’re still acknowledging, okay, you gave to our organization. They have a buy-in. Maybe next year is the year they actually wanna make a big tax-deductible gift. So, again, it’s still good data to know how people are giving to you, as long as we’re tracking that.

Margie Worrell: Absolutely. So, yeah, it’s about relationship building. Anything that you can record, and to your point earlier, this is a system to help build relationships, and any piece of it is gonna be important data, as long as we track it consistently.

Ryan Maloney: Yes. Agreed, 100%.

Margie Worrell: It’s already one o’clock. In fact, it’s one minute after, so everyone has stayed with us one extra minute.

Ryan Maloney: Wow. God bless them, because they’ve got work to do.

Margie Worrell: They’ve got work to do. So I guess we have to let them go, as much fun as this has been. I really appreciate all of you engaging and being a part of this. Ryan, thank you so much. As always, it’s a pleasure to work with you and to have you share your knowledge with us. And I wanna say to each and every one of you, thank you for everything that you do in your communities. I speak for Ryan, I know, when I say that the places that you live and work are better places because of the work you do, and we’re very grateful to be able to help you with that as much as possible. So, hopefully, we will see you at the next webinar. Ryan, thank you once again.

Ryan Maloney: You’re welcome.

Margie Worrell: And everyone have a great day. Take care.

Ryan Maloney: Bye, y’all.

Margie Worrell: Bye-bye.