The Challenge
Transitioning from a Legacy System
When Emily Maguire first stepped into her role as Development Director at Providence Network five years ago, the organization was in the beginning stages of transitioning from its previous legacy system to eTapestry.
However, the team quickly began to experience a number of challenges within the first couple of years. They found the system was counterintuitive to their needs, coupled with a lack of user-friendliness that created challenges in using the technology in an efficient manner. Their team desired a well-integrated system as opposed to siloed products that didn’t efficiently work with one another.
Ambitious Fundraising Goals
In 2019, Providence Network began working with an outside fundraising consultant and part of the process was to evaluate its technology infrastructure. During these discussions, it became apparent that in order to achieve their ambitious fundraising goals, they would need to start exploring alternative CRM solutions. After a recommendation from their consultant, the Providence Network team decided to learn more about Virtuous.
“Virtuous pretty quickly rose to the top of our list. It’s an out-of-the-box solution in a lot of ways. We could’ve taken Salesforce, for example, and built it custom for us, but capacity is too low on our team. Having something that could largely be up and running was of great value to us,” says Emily Maguire. “We wanted to add more sophistication to our fundraising efforts, and Virtuous offered everything we were looking for.”
How We Helped
Responsive Approach to Fundraising
Since implementing Virtuous at their organization, Providence Network is able to achieve the ambitious goals they’ve established. “In terms of all the ways that Virtuous has made our lives better, how much time do you have?” says Emily.
Now, their team can take a more responsive approach to their fundraising goals. When creating and sending email communications to their supporters, Providence Network can implement a donation button with a special URL that ties those donations back to a segment within Virtuous; send, track, and tag emails to specific audiences; and better evaluate their communication effectiveness.
“I can’t overstate the user-friendliness, for our team members to feel confident and go into the system and get the information they need or log a supporter interaction they’ve had, it speaks volumes. It just makes for better data because we can see what everyone is doing.”
– Emily Maguire, Development Director
Streamlined Query Searches Reduce Admin Times
Using Virtuous has opened more pathways for success beyond donor communications. The team can query searches and quickly gather information and data without the headache of their previous system.
The import tool helps them have cleaner donor records, make changes in real-time, and see when new contacts are created inside Virtuous. And their donors love having the ability to see their giving history and update their information directly through the donor portal.
Matching Donations Means Greater Impact
Providence Network also leverages Double the Donation and DonorSearch to make their fundraising more responsive and can match donations.
“Just today, we received a $2,500 matching gift from a donor who got our emails, who hadn’t thought about matching gifts before. So we’re seeing our supporters get prompted that matching gifts are a possibility to make an even greater impact,” says Emily.
“Since we’ve been with Virtuous, we’ve been doing more metrics work and have only been on an upward trajectory.”
– Emily Maguire, Development Director
