The Virtuous Difference
- Gained more value from its technology investment by switching to a nonprofit CRM solution
- Personalized individual donor journeys with workflows, automation, and insights
- Increased collaboration, efficiency, and transparency between internal teams
Top challenges Hope Media Group needed to address:
- Reducing costly expenses by consolidating multiple disparate solutions into one platform
- Shifting away from organizational silos caused by non-collaborative systems
- Forming stronger donor relationships with better visibility of donor behavior and more responsive donor journey workflows
Consolidating to a CRM That Every Team Could Use
Heavily investing in various software solutions, Hope Media Group recognized it was paying a premium for technology but saw little value in return. Multiple internal teams were using different well-known industry platforms. However, these tools did not integrate effectively, creating an internal information rift.
Disparate systems led to internal data silos. Because other teams had limited access and training to retrieve necessary information, data collection and analysis became tedious, often requiring extensive back-and-forth to complete even simple tasks.
Hope Media Group’s objective was to unify operations, foster an intelligence-driven working environment, and make collaboration less forced and more natural.
“The goal was to find something all-encompassing so our marketing team could use it. Our major donors could use it. Our finance team could use it. It was a little bit of everything without paying insane prices for other CRMs that are much bigger that kind of fit the size of our organization as well.”
Kayla Pacheco, Manager of Donor Strategy and Reporting, Hope Media Group
Breaking Down Silos to Build a Collaborative Culture
When switching to Virtuous, Hope Media Group was able to break down data silos and discover many new benefits to help the team in the process. Creating a unified system that met each department’s needs made sharing accurate information and pulling high-quality reports easier than ever.
Previously, report generation rested on the shoulders of a single team member who was the only person with the necessary skills to handle the task. With user-friendly and intuitive reporting features like the query tool, team members from different departments can now independently find the answers they need without relying on a single person.
“[The Query tool] has transformed people’s freedom to pull their own reports and their own data.”
Kayla Pacheco, Manager of Donor Strategy and Reporting, Hope Media Group
More team members finding and sharing data within Virtuous has naturally led to better collaboration and the discovery of new insights. Better yet, the skilled team member who was once bogged down with report generation can spend time on higher-value work.
Virtuous BI dashboards enable teams to streamline and automate reporting, resulting in greater transparency and clarity for leaders to make data-driven decisions. With Virtuous, Hope Media Group’s data gatherers can centralize all crucial insights in a single, user-friendly location. This allows executives or directors to easily navigate without the hassle of searching through numerous links on different platforms that may contain outdated information.
“[Virtuous] takes away the manual work, and it jumps [the team] into automation, and then they can focus on expanding or doing better content, better digital forms… it changes the way you work. And I think that’s been probably the biggest benefit of it.”
Kayla Pacheco, Manager of Donor Strategy and Reporting, Hope Media Group
One unexpected but valuable advantage of transitioning to Virtuous for Hope Media Group is that securing support and finding answers no longer consumes the team’s time and resources. The staff had become accustomed to waiting days or even weeks for responses from previous vendors, but with Virtuous, customer service, and technical support are prompt, accessible, and quick to deliver effective solutions.
A More Intentional Donor Journey
The most significant aspect of the transition is the positive response from donors. Hope Media Group supporters no longer receive random or solicitation-heavy messaging. The team can monitor every donor journey, build on interactions intentionally, and tailor a personalized experience for each supporter. With workflows and automation, manual tasks are minimized, allowing staff to concentrate on what will encourage donors to take the next steps. Virtuous further supports this by offering suggestions based on donor behavior, ensuring the highest level of responsiveness.
CRM analytics and insight tools within Virtuous—like wealth screening—also allow the team to take an informed targeting approach to optimize campaign performance. This way, the right audience receives the right message at the right time, driving the fundraising outcomes Hope Media Group is looking for.
“[T]hey’re giving more because you’ve been able to tailor their journey to what they like and don’t like and what they respond to. So that alone, we’ve seen an impact on just how donors respond because you’re able to identify that stuff much much better than other systems we’ve used.”
Kayla Pacheco, Manager of Donor Strategy and Reporting, Hope Media Group
By combining various single-benefit tools into one holistic nonprofit CRM, the internal dialogue regarding technology investment has evolved. With the ability to directly track contributions related to its strategies, alongside time and resource savings and enhanced cross-departmental collaboration, discussions within Hope Media Group have transitioned from “What is the cost of this tool?” to “How is Virtuous boosting donations?”
