“Every hour that I’m saved from building this spreadsheet or pivot table or PowerPoint presentation…I can meet with our donors. We can have a coffee. We can have that lunch. We can build those personal relationships.”
Jennifer Ragsdale, Donor Relations and Systems Management Specialist, Hope for the Heart
Top Challenges Before Virtuous
- Understanding and segmenting different donor audiences
- Identifying donors who needed more attention and cultivation
- Turning fundraising data into clear, actionable information
- Spending less time on manual research and reporting
What They Accomplished (With Help From Virtuous)
- Grew active donors by 13.9%
- Increased revenue by 47.3%
- Reached an average gift of $151
- Grew recurring revenue from $25K in 2025 to $37K in 2026
- Added 69 new recurring donors
- Sent hundreds of personalized emails through Momentum
Virtuous CRM+: Turning Fundraising Data Into Clarity
When Jennifer Ragsdale joined Hope for the Heart, she was a first-time fundraiser.
Stepping into a nonprofit ministry and learning a full fundraising CRM was a completely new experience.
The transition quickly became manageable with hands-on support and training. Jennifer credits her customer success manager and Virtuous Academy videos with helping her through her first six months at the ministry.
Today, Hope for the Heart has a much clearer picture of its fundraising performance. And the organization is seeing substantial growth:
- Active donors increased 13.9%
- Revenue increased 47.3%
- Average gift reached $151
“We are exceeding or close to exceeding a lot of the benchmarks for new donors, recurring donors…so we were really excited to see with this new benchmark report that we are making progress.”
— Jennifer Ragsdale, Donor Relations and Systems Management Specialist, Hope for the Heart
Giving Leadership a Daily View of Fundraising
The team also has a clearer way to see and share what is happening across its fundraising program.
Jennifer describes the dashboards in Virtuous CRM+ in three words: clarity, transparency, and simplicity.
Hope for the Heart’s CEO has his own dashboard and checks it daily. He even takes screenshots to share with the executive team.
Leadership has an accessible view of performance, while Jennifer can spend less time manually assembling spreadsheets, pivot tables, and presentations.
See how Virtuous CRM+ can help your team build stronger donor relationships →
Virtuous Insights: Finding Potential Recurring Donors Faster
Hope for the Heart added Virtuous Insights, the prospect research tool within the Virtuous platform, at the beginning of 2026 and quickly found a practical way to put it to work: growing monthly giving.
During a campaign earlier in the year, the team used the Potential Recurring Donors audience in Insights to identify supporters who were more likely to commit to a recurring gift.
Previously, identifying those supporters would have required Jennifer to research the donor base herself. With Insights, Hope for the Heart has seen its recurring giving program grow:
- Recurring revenue increased from $25K in 2025 to $37K in 2026
- The organization added 69 new recurring donors
“I’m very excited that we are meeting the benchmark for recurring donors. It’s something that we just didn’t have a lot of a few years ago before implementing some of the tools of Virtuous.”
— Jennifer Ragsdale, Donor Relations and Systems Management Specialist, Hope for the Heart
See how Virtuous Insights can help you uncover opportunities in your donor base →
Virtuous Momentum: Bringing More Structure to Personal Outreach
Now, Hope for the Heart is beginning its next chapter with Virtuous Momentum, the Virtuous portfolio management platform, tapping into the power of AI to scale personalized donor outreach.
In its 40-year history, Hope for the Heart has never had formal donor portfolios.
Now, the team is beginning to build those portfolios and put more structure around a donor engagement process that Jennifer says has historically been more ad hoc.
And they’ve already sent out hundreds of donor emails using Momentum.
“Our CEO is even getting trained on Momentum. He really understands that [Momentum] can move the needle. [Momentum] can help us be more intentional and build a closer, better relationship with the people that support us.”
— Jennifer Ragsdale, Donor Relations and Systems Management Specialist, Hope for the Heart
See how Virtuous Momentum helps fundraisers scale personalized donor outreach →
Less Spreadsheets and More Coffee With Donors
For Jennifer, saving time on research, reporting, and other manual work means something simple: more time to actually be with donors.
That’s what responsive fundraising looks like in practice. Hope for the Heart now listens to what its data says, sees which donors are ready for a next step, reaches out personally, and learns from the results. More supporters are hearing from a real person, and fewer are slipping through the cracks.
“Every hour that I’m saved from building this spreadsheet or pivot table or PowerPoint presentation or whatever it is that these tools are helping me do in a fraction of the time, I can meet with our donors, can have a coffee, we can have that lunch, we can build those personal relationships. It helps you do a better job at what you were blessed to do, which is to bring people to a cause and create that love of generosity.”
— Jennifer Ragsdale, Donor Relations and Systems Management Specialist, Hope for the Heart
Ready to spend less time on manual work and more time building donor relationships?
Get started with a Virtuous demo →
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Hope for the Heart use Virtuous CRM+?
Hope for the Heart uses Virtuous CRM+ to manage donor information, segment audiences, understand fundraising performance, and give leadership clearer visibility into fundraising data through dashboards.
How has Hope for the Heart’s fundraising performance changed?
Hope for the Heart has seen active donors increase 13.9%, revenue increase 47.3%, and its average gift reach $151.
How does Hope for the Heart use Virtuous Insights?
Hope for the Heart used the Potential Recurring Donors audience in Virtuous Insights to identify supporters for a recurring giving campaign, reducing the manual research Jennifer would otherwise have needed to do.
How has recurring giving changed at Hope for the Heart?
Recurring revenue increased from $25K in 2025 to $37K in 2026, and Hope for the Heart added 69 new recurring donors.
How does Hope for the Heart use Virtuous Momentum?
Hope for the Heart is in the early stages of adopting Momentum. Jennifer, Nancy, and CEO Curtis Hail have already sent hundreds of emails through the product while the organization begins establishing formal donor portfolios for the first time in its 40-year history.
How does Virtuous help Hope for the Heart save time?
Jennifer says Virtuous reduces time spent building spreadsheets, pivot tables, presentations, and researching donor opportunities, giving her more time to meet with donors and build personal relationships.
