“Virtuous has really impacted our relationship with donors in that we are able to segment our donors even more and talk to our donors differently.”
— Meghan Myers, Senior Manager of Philanthropy Operations, Food Bank of Iowa
Top Challenges Before Virtuous
- 20,000 new donors in six months
- Manual gift entry processes
- 8 hours to process 100–150 gifts
- Limited segmentation
- No real human support
What They Accomplished (With Help From Virtuous)
- Increased gift processing speed 7x
- Reduced errors during gift entry
- Improved donor segmentation and personalization
- Expanded engagement across 55 counties
- Delivered real-time dashboards for leadership
Gift Processing: From 8 Hours to 3
Time reclaimed during peak season:
- Before: 100–150 gifts entered in 8 hours
- After: 300–350 gifts entered in 3 hours
- Significant reduction in entry mistakes
That equates to roughly a 7x increase in gifts processed per hour.
“This last holiday season…volunteers would finish 350 gifts in 3 hours.”
— Meghan Myers, Senior Manager of Philanthropy Operations, Food Bank of Iowa
Smarter Segmentation. Better Giving.
With Virtuous CRM+, Food Bank of Iowa now:
- Segments recurring donors separately
- Communicates differently with major donors
- Personalizes outreach at scale
This led to increased gift size and increased number of gifts.
From Bottleneck to Growth Enabler
Previously, list pulls and reporting required heavy manual work.
Now data is clean, accessible, and fast.
“A lot of times, my major gift officer or my marketing and events manager would come to me and say, ‘Hey, I need this list of people,’ or ‘What do you think about these donors?’ Or ‘How would this work?’ And a lot of times, my answer had to be no.
— Meghan Myers, Senior Manager of Philanthropy Operations, Food Bank of Iowa
And I feel like my answer has changed…now my answer is more, ‘Yeah, I can do that. Or that’s super simple. It’ll take me like 5 minutes.’”
Expanding Across 55 Counties With Automation
Previously, rural engagement was limited.
Now:
- Donors filtered by geography
- Automated invitations to smaller regional events
- Gift officers engaging beyond the metro area
“Now we’re able to find those donors and communicate with them automatically with automation.”
— Meghan Myers, Senior Manager of Philanthropy Operations, Food Bank of Iowa
Real-Time Leadership Dashboards
Before Virtuous Analytics:
- Reporting lived in Excel
- Manual dashboard building
- Limited executive visibility
Now:
- CEO sees real-time performance
- VP of Development accesses dashboards directly
- Board-ready reporting capabilities
“To have something that my CEO and my VP of development can get into and just look at in real time has been a game changer.”
— Meghan Myers, Senior Manager of Philanthropy Operations, Food Bank of Iowa
Overwhelmed by Donor Growth and Manual Processing?
If 20,000 new donors would break your current system, it is time for a CRM built to scale.
See how Virtuous CRM+ and Virtuous Analytics can help you process gifts faster, segment smarter, and give leadership real-time visibility.
