The Virtuous Responsive Awards were created to spotlight the incredible ways nonprofits are transforming generosity, through automation, innovation, storytelling, and responsive donor engagement.
These awards are an opportunity to celebrate your organization’s impact, recognize your team’s hard work, and inspire the larger Virtuous community with your success.
In 2024 and 2025, Digizent partnered with Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) to support its Summer Bible Camps digital fundraising campaign. These camps are SGA’s most effective outreach, introducing thousands of children across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Poland, and Israel to Christ.
A powerful story featuring 8-year-old cancer survivor Diana illustrated the campaign’s impact. Messaging highlighted how the camps meet kids’ physical, emotional, and spiritual needs through outdoor fun, Bible classes, and counseling.
Using Virtuous tools, Digizent segmented donors, crafted personalized appeals, and tracked performance—leading to a 36% lift in open rates and 57% higher click-throughs. The campaign raised over $128,000 from 476 gifts, with a 9.74% increase in revenue.
From design to data, the campaign proved how strategy, storytelling, and technology can drive meaningful results.
Virtuous automation has transformed how our Stewardship and Development team engages donors.
We use administrative workflows for tagging, task assignment, and group management, while donor engagement workflows personalize communications through segmented series and email lists. Currently, eight active pipelines automate multi-step processes that save time, reduce costs, and eliminate the need for outsourcing or additional staff.
A standout example is our New Donor Welcome Series, adapted from Virtuous’s template. Based on gift level, each donor receives five tailored emails over 30 days—including a message from our Bishop, a downloadable faith resource, impact storytelling, a short survey, and ongoing engagement invites.
This automation not only deepens relationships at scale—it’s also well-received, with positive feedback confirming its value.
Our team faced a problem where having our Data Team was pulling Virtuous data for members who weren’t data oriented. This diverted time from other projects toward running queries and finding contacts. To save time, we built dashboards in Virtuous Metabase tailored to each team. We chose Metabase because it embeds into Virtuous and supports SQL for flexible report-building. We created six dashboards:
1. Directors – Overview of gifts, yearly stats, Officer tracking, Sponsorships, and CEO-level reports.
2. Data Team – View of gifts from a database perspective and import tracking.
3. Fundraising Officers – Individual statistics, recent gifts, yearly performance, and caseload reports.
4. Sponsorships – Recent sponsorships and yearly statistics.
5. Operations – Statistics on Tax Receipts and Promotional Items.
6. Direct Mail – Campaign and segmentation data, plus recurring gift stats.
These dashboards have significantly reduced inquiries and improved efficiency across teams. Gift Officers can easily track their caseload and monthly revenue. The Data Team saves time for other projects and audits more efficiently by monitoring gift imports. Directors quickly access performance metrics and hold Officers accountable. The Direct Mail Team uses metrics to guide and improve marketing.
Our 2024 year-end fundraising campaign aimed to raise $120,000 through two direct mailings, four emails, and coordinated social media between Nov 8 and Dec 31. Each mailer featured a guest family’s story, personalized ask arrays via AskGenius, and multiple giving options. About 8,000 mailers generated 195 gifts—an impressive 2.4% response rate—with nearly 40% meeting or exceeding the custom ask.
The email campaign sent to 37,000 contacts brought in 90 gifts totaling $15,180, including a $25 challenge match from the featured family that spurred 56 additional gifts.
In total, we raised approximately $135,000—enough to fund over 1,100 nights of lodging for families with hospitalized children.
Lutheran Bible Translators (LBT), in partnership with Rev. Wood and Hales Corners Lutheran, launched a successful campaign to fund the Dhirayta Old Testament Translation—powered by a dynamic Giving Form.
The form featured a real-time tracking bar, a segment code for donor attribution, and a video that deepened donor connection. A QR code shared with the congregation made giving easy and immediate.
In just two months, 129 new donors helped surpass the $40,000 goal, including two $10,000 gifts. One donor noted the page made it feel “like it was up to us,” underscoring the campaign’s personal impact.
Thoughtful follow-up—including a thank-you video from the Executive Director and donor tagging for future engagement—ensured lasting relationships. This campaign proved that personalized, data-driven tools can drive extraordinary generosity.
The Automator Award recognizes a nonprofit that has embraced automation as a true strategic advantage. This year’s winner runs an impressive 79 active workflows, streamlining internal processes while scaling timely, personalized donor engagement. From robust welcome series to birthday and anniversary messages, as well as automations for data hygiene, prospecting, and portfolio management, they’ve shown how operational excellence and personal connection can thrive together. Their sophisticated use of automation frees staff to focus on high-value work and ensures every donor feels seen and valued.
The Innovation Ally award honors a partner who has gone above and beyond in shaping Virtuous. With over 470 pieces of feedback submitted, they’ve influenced the product roadmap, tested features, identified bugs, and helped deliver stronger releases. They’ve also mentored peers in feedback forums, encouraged collaboration, and partnered across teams—all while leading a nationwide mission network. Their kindness, patience, and collaborative spirit make them an invaluable ally to the entire community.
The Community Impact Award recognizes an organization whose volunteer mobilization has transformed lives. Over the past year, they recorded more than 70,000 volunteer hours, providing 917 shelter beds nightly, 5,366 meals daily, and pantry resources to 1,270 people each day. With over 40 programs and the use of Virtuous Volunteer to manage activities, their dedication to service and extraordinary community engagement make them a standout leader in impact.
The Responsive Fundraiser of the Year award honors an individual who has fully embraced data-driven donor engagement. Over the past year, they logged 1,500 visits to the responsive dashboard, using engagement, giving, and retention metrics to guide strategy and personalize outreach in real time. Their dedication to tracking donor behavior and fostering meaningful connections has made them a standout leader in responsive fundraising.
The Responsive Nonprofit of the Year award recognizes an organization that blends human connection with data-driven strategy. This year’s winner uses real-time dashboards, 21 targeted automations, and sophisticated segmentation to streamline operations and deliver personalized donor engagement. These efforts boosted donor lifetime value by 137% in the past year and built a culture of data-centric fundraising, making them truly best in class.
In addition to self-nominated categories, Virtuous will recognize five additional winners based on platform data:
This award goes to the individual who has embraced responsive fundraising strategies, using data to personalize engagement and deepen donor relationships.
Awarded to the organization leading the way in responsive fundraising, using donor signals, automation, and data-driven engagement to create a more connected and generous supporter base.
Recognizing an organization that has successfully leveraged automation within Virtuous to drive efficiency, streamline donor interactions, and scale impact.
This award recognizes a dedicated Virtuous user who has played a pivotal role in shaping the platform through their valuable feedback. Their insights have helped refine features, improve user experience, and drive innovation, making Virtuous even more powerful for the entire nonprofit community.
This award honors the organization that has made the greatest impact through volunteer efforts, mobilizing people, strengthening communities, and advancing their mission through service.
Submissions close June 20, 2025, at 11:59 PM EST
Please select an award category to nominate your organization (you may apply for more than one category). You must be attending the User Summit in order to win any award. For each selected category, please submit the following:
Why this work matters to your mission and donor community.
Celebrating the nonprofit that has mastered automation to eliminate manual processes, increase efficiency, and free up more time for meaningful donor engagement.
Submission should include at least 3 items of the below:
Honoring an outstanding donor-facing campaign that demonstrated creativity, impact, and responsiveness—connecting with supporters in a meaningful and effective way.
Submission should include at least 3 items of the below:
Recognizing an organization that has used innovative reporting and data visualization to unlock insights, drive strategy, and enhance fundraising success.
Submission should include at least 3 items of the below:
Highlighting a beautifully designed and high-converting donation form that made giving seamless, inspiring generosity and increasing donor engagement.
Submission should include at least 3 items of the below:
Awarded to a nonprofit that created an engaging, well-crafted email campaign that broke through the noise, connected with supporters, and drove real results.
Submission should include at least 3 items of the below:
There is no entry fee to submit work for the Responsive Awards.
If you are applying for the Giving Experience award, then it needs to feature the Virtuous giving platform, however, if you are showing how Virtuous helped you be successful on another award, then it’s OK to have another donation platform.
Are you ready to be celebrated for your innovation, strategy, and impact? Winners will also receive a $500 donation to their organization!
Please select an award category to nominate your organization (you may apply for more than one category). Submit your entry by June 20, 2025.
