The Challenge
Millard Public Schools Foundation (MPSF) found their previous CRM, Bloomerang, was riddled with manual processes and wasn’t able to provide the support needed to scale their fundraising efforts.
When Kristie Anthis, Annual Giving Manager joined MPSF, her Development team was already looking at alternative solutions for their nonprofit CRM. Poised with the need to raise more to support their mission, the MPSF team quickly began searching for a new nonprofit CRM provider.
“[After joining] I really led the charge for the transition. One of the things I know that was really important to the team was really wanting to find a CRM that was going to make our jobs a little bit easier,” says Kristie Anthis.
Additionally, their Development team was looking to deepen their supporter’s relationships by including donor journeys and finding a way to help automate the process. MPSF focuses their fundraising efforts on five major areas – events, direct mail, privately funded scholarships, workplace giving, and in memorial gifts – and any way to help strengthen their donor relationships with the Development team was a high priority.
“Before even switching to Virtuous, all we did was events. We have one big event a year – it’s our holiday event and it is really wonderful. We love to have our donors and guests have a really wonderful experience,” says Anthis.
MPSF needed a software partner that would enable them to have full visibility into their donor data, connect more readily with their loyal donor base, and the ability to access data they needed immediately and in a very simple way.
How We Helped
Greater Trust and Visibility in Their Data
One of MPSF’s top priorities was uncovering and understanding the metrics that drove donors to support the foundation’s efforts. Since adopting Virtuous, Kristi’s team now has better visibility into how their campaigns – especially those centered around direct mail and events – are performing.
“We always look at our response rate and we can now do weekly reports that I can share with our Executive Director which gives us greater trust and transparency in how those campaigns are performing.”
Kristie Anthis, Annual Giving Manager
As MPSF’s Development team progresses into their use of Virtuous, the possibility of tracking metrics is endless! In the next fiscal year, MPSF is looking to expand their tracking capabilities to see metrics like average gift amount, total dollars raised annually, number of active donors, number of lapsed donors, and the ability to re-engage with those lapsed donors. “We’ll be able to pull that information into a monthly report for our Executive Director and the Board”, says Anthis.
Multichannel Marketing
Now, through Virtuous’ powerful email marketing tools, Kristie’s team can streamline their marketing efforts and create engaging email campaigns that inspire and encourage greater participation from their supporters.
“We’re really proud that our email open rate is at 44% since adopting Virtuous. We’re strategic about not spamming our donor base and being thoughtful about the emails that we send out. We’re excited to launch a campaign to ask donors to give via email – which is a first for our team and we’re anxious to see how it performs.”
Kristie Anthis, Annual Giving Manager
With Virtuous’ responsive multichannel marketing tools, MPSF’s Development team can now create holistic giving experiences for their supporters. In this upcoming campaign, their team is hoping to steward donors through a multichannel campaign that spans direct mail, email, and social media.
“Hopefully, with this kind of engagement, we’ll get some of those supporters that won’t engage with the direct mail piece but will engage with the social media posts or give through the email,” says Anthis.
Deeper Supporter Relationships
In January 2023, MPSF launched their first-ever donor journey to help steward their supporters into becoming life-long donors of the foundation. Primarily aimed at new donors, the Development team uses donor journeys strategically to not only welcome new donors but to also educate them about the Millard Public Schools over the course of three weeks.
“We start with just a welcome email and then a phone call as well. Within the next two weeks, they get a series of five emails. The last email asks them to become a monthly donor – so there’s just one ask throughout the entire series. Otherwise, it’s just information about the programs that we do, the services that we provide,” says Anthis.
Since launching their donor journey, MPSF has seen great engagement from their supporters and are able to learn more about their preferences. The Development team has learned that their donors better respond to emails that only have one call-to-action and offer clear communication about how their gift is impacting the organization’s recipients.
