The Fleece & Thank You Story
In early 2015, Nicholas Kristock moved 10,000 miles away to Australia to pursue a career in soccer. While living there, he began to use his free time to volunteer for charities supporting children in the hospital.
He was working daily with kids going through hospital treatments, and inspiration to help grew heavy on his heart.
As he was traveling home to Michigan in late 2015, he received a text message from his twin sister, a pediatric oncology nurse at a major children’s hospital, that would alter the course of his life. She said, “When you have some free time, can you make a blanket for a kid in the hospital?” This question sparked the inspiration for Fleece & Thank You, an organization that has now made and delivered over 100,000 blankets and video messages of support for kids in the hospital.
The Challenge
Inadequate Systems
Before Virtuous, Fleece & Thank You had tried several CRMs with no success. Jumping to a new CRM each year was also causing historical data insights to be challenging. “We just never were able to find a CRM that was as personalized as we NEED to be for our donors,” says Nicholas Kristock, founder and CEO.
Difficult User Experience
Additionally, their staff began seeing a number of issues resulting in a disjointed and unclear picture of their donors. “Our staff had a tough user experience, combined with complicated reporting, and poor customer service, all led to us needing to change our CRM,” says Nicholas.
How We Helped
Personalized Communication at Scale
Switching to Virtuous has helped the Fleece & Thank You team scale the most important part of their brand: the personal touch.
“We have always been complimented on how personalized our donor experience is with the donor receiving a personalized video from the recipient of their blanket,” says Nicholas. The Fleece & Thank You team has finally found a CRM on par with the level of responsiveness required to deliver a personalized experience.
Nicholas Kristock, Founder and CEO.
Automating the Donor Journey
To help ensure that their personalized communications are effectively executed, the staff utilizes Virtuous’ robust automation to reduce the manual efforts of the team. “The automation is first class. We have really leaned into it as we make our entire donor journey responsive,” says Nicholas
In addition to workflows, the Fleece & Thank You team can now easily pull data and insightful lists using the query tool. The ability to quickly and easily query for specific data makes it possible to quickly take action and communicate with donors more effectively.
Improved Segmentation
It’s not just staff members that are appreciating Virtuous’ responsiveness – donors are witnessing it too!
“We are not even a year onto the platform, so we have to get a couple more months under our belt for a true metric, but I can say we have gotten great feedback at the more timely and segmented communications we are now sending”, says Nicholas. “This is a first-class experience truly shattering the ‘donor pyramid’ philosophy and helping its users to create a responsive and personalized experience for donors of all sizes. I have tried almost all of the CRMs and can confidently say that Virtuous is the best of the pack.”
Responsive Video: Virtuous CRM & KindKatch
Fleece & Thank You have built their mission on personalizing the experience for their donors. They leverage the responsive power of the Virtuous and KindKatch integration to engage their donors with personalized videos.
Using the integration, which syncs contact data (first name, last name, email, mobile numbers, and tags) in real-time, Fleece & Thank You can send personalized video messages to one individual in their audience or to an entire segment of their audience using tags.
Fleece & Thank You can see real-time engagement metrics in KindKatch to know which donors are watching which pieces of content, bringing their responsive fundraising approach to a whole new level.
They are seeing an 85% engagement rate on content with their audience, a statistic made possible by the combination of responsive segmentation in Virtuous and the real-time nature of content powered by KindKatch. This tremendous click-through/view rate is leading to more generosity and giving on their platform, and also contributes to an above average donor retention rate of 75%.
“From the second we learned that generosity was a shared core value between us, we knew a partnership was going to be powerful for the nonprofits we serve. The Virtuous + KindKatch integration helps an organization give their supporters a front-row seat to the action. With consistent and powerful donor data flowing into KindKatch for real-time, personalized video engagement, the impact has never been easier to showcase. This is responsive fundraising, and we build it all for the amazing organizations we serve.” – Nicholas Kristock, Founder & CEO KindKatch
