This blog is about the latter.

At Bloomerang, we’ve spent years building toward a simple but demanding promise: one platform that allows nonprofit staff to focus on what truly matters. Serving their causes. Sharing their stories. Building real relationships with the people who believe in their mission.

The promise of the Giving Platform is not more features or more time spent in software. It’s the opposite. It’s about giving nonprofit teams clarity faster, helping them uncover insights they never had access to before, and enabling them to act with confidence—while spending the least possible time inside the system to do it.

That promise has guided every hard decision we’ve made along the way. In 2026, our focus is clear: delivering fully on that promise—not in theory, but in the daily lived experience of nonprofit teams.

If there has ever been a time to be excited about making complex problems work simply, this is it.

The hard work we did first

For nonprofits, fundraising has never lacked heart. It has lacked infrastructure that respects time, context, and continuity.

Most nonprofits move from one fundraising moment to the next—events, appeals, campaigns—without the benefit of momentum compounding behind the scenes. Each effort generates insight, engagement, and signals from supporters, but too often those signals are trapped in disconnected tools so teams feel like they’re from scratch with each new initiative.

That feeling is understandable—but it’s also deeply misleading. Opportunity never resets. The system and tools you trust just fail to carry that opportunity forward.

That’s the problem we set out to solve first.

In 2025, we made a deliberate choice to do the hard work of unifying the core of nonprofit operations. Not slapping logos on acquired tools. Not loosely integrating data. Not bolting separate systems together and calling it a day. But building a single Giving Platform where donor activity, fundraising performance, volunteer engagement, and payments live together and reinforce one another.

That foundation is now real—and it’s already delivering measurable impact.

Nonprofits using the complete Bloomerang Giving Platform grow 1.5x faster than those relying on disconnected tools. They see an average 22% increase in the number of monthly recurring donations, and those recurring gifts are 58% larger than the industry average. Organizations using the full platform also achieve meaningfully higher donor retention year over year.

These results don’t come from working harder or adding complexity. They come from clarity. When systems are unified, insight compounds. Decisions improve. And teams stop losing ground between fundraising moments.

That was the work that had to come first.

Deepening the Giving Platform—so the work feels seamless

With that foundation in place, the question for 2026 is not whether the Giving Platform works. It does.

The question is how far we can take it.

Nonprofits using the full platform can already see how donors, volunteers, and prospective supporters behave across moments that used to live in isolation. Engagement is no longer fragmented. Patterns are visible. Momentum carries forward instead of resetting after every campaign.

In 2026, our focus is on deepening that experience—making the platform feel seamless in daily work, not just conceptually unified. This is the year we remove even more friction so insight surfaces faster, actions feel more confident, and nonprofit teams spend less time navigating systems and more time advancing their mission.

That focus centers on three deliberate areas:

First, deepening the platform itself.
We are strengthening the connective tissue across fundraising activity, constituent data, volunteer engagement, and payments so every interaction contributes to a single, continuous story. The goal is to eliminate the sense of “starting over” and allow learning, relationships, and results to compound naturally over time.

Second, delivering AI that works for fundraisers.
This is not AI layered onto disconnected data providing generic answers. Let’s be honest, you could just use Chat GPT for that. Bloomerang’s AI fundraising partner, Penny, is grounded in your data stored securely within the Giving Platform and informed by real nonprofit best practice–over 2,000 consulting wins to be exact. Its role is to surface what matters, explain why it matters, and help teams know where to focus next—without replacing judgment or human connection. AI should remove analytical friction, not add cognitive load.

Third, continuing fundraising innovation where performance matters most.
From checkout optimization to continuously improving conversion, we are taking responsibility for the mechanics of giving. Nonprofit teams shouldn’t have to become experts in optimization just to raise more. High performance should be built in, not bolted on. In 2026 all our customers will benefit from a dedicated team that will continually optimize the giving performance for free!

The promise we’re ready to deliver

Across all three areas, the principle is the same. Technology should expand human capacity, not compete with it. It should make insight easier to reach, decisions easier to trust, and action easier to take—while demanding as little time as possible in return.

That is how we deliver on the promise of the Giving Platform.

Less time managing systems.
More time serving causes.
More space to share stories that inspire generosity.

The post Bloomerang’s Vision for 2026: Living the Promise of One Platform appeared first on Bloomerang.

That momentum underscores a big opportunity for nonprofits: your online fundraising strategy matters now more than ever.

To elevate fundraising this year and set your organization up for future success, your nonprofit must find the right online fundraising platform for your needs—one that helps you harness generosity, strengthen relationships, and fuel mission impact.

This guide dives deep into the best donation platforms your nonprofit can use to strengthen your online fundraising strategy, comparing features, costs, and more. We’ll cover:

• Online fundraising platforms: FAQs
• 12 essential features to look for in a fundraising platform
• Best donation platforms for nonprofits and schools

First, let’s discuss the basics of fundraising platforms and why they’re a good investment for your nonprofit.

What are the different types of fundraising platforms?

Donation platforms encompass more than just solutions for accepting online donations. These software tools can manage a wide variety of fundraising activities, including:

• Crowdfunding: Create a primary campaign page and share it via social media, email, and other digital platforms to collect donations from a wide audience.
• Peer-to-peer fundraising: Empower supporters to create personal fundraising pages based on your nonprofit’s main campaign page and share their pages with family members and friends.
• Auctions: Plan silent and live auctions with tools that make it easy to procure items, plan the event, facilitate bidding, and deliver items to winners.
• Events: Plan and carry out engaging nonprofit events such as walk-a-thons, concerts, galas, and other fundraising opportunities.
• Merchandise: Design custom, branded merchandise, such as T-shirts, mugs, or hats, to sell to supporters and generate a new revenue stream.
• Text-to-give: Use a centralized platform to create a text-to-give keyword and facilitate SMS donations.

Our list below includes options for each of these fundraising activities to help you find the right tool for your specific needs and goals.

7. Paypal: fundraising tool for secure payment processing

Crowdfunding platforms

Event & peer-to-peer fundraising platforms

Creative & alternative fundraising models

Donor insights, retention & revenue growth tools

Wrapping up

Ensure your organization is ready for your next online fundraising campaign by choosing the right software solutions to meet your needs.

If you’d like to learn more about virtual fundraising and software that can amplify your strategies, check out these additional resources:

• 19 Incredibly Easy Online Fundraising Ideas and Expert Tips. Check out these helpful virtual fundraising ideas as you plan your next fundraising campaign.
• 22 Best Fundraising Software Tools to Boost Results in 2026. If you’re looking for even more fundraising solutions for your nonprofit, check out this guide.
• How to Buy Fundraising Software That Lasts: Essential Guide. Before you purchase your next virtual fundraising platform, read this guide to help make the right decision.

The post 29 Fundraising Platforms to Supercharge Donations in 2026 appeared first on Bloomerang.

Dear Charity Clairity,

Everyone is talking about AI, so I fear I can’t ignore it. But we’re a small nonprofit, I’m not particularly tech savvy, and I just don’t know where to begin. Can I wait for the bigger organizations to figure this out, and then jump on the bandwagon later?

— Overwhelmed, dazed and confused

Dear Overwhelmed, dazed and confused,

I had a boss in 2010 who told me “social media is a fad.”

Gulp.

It wasn’t.

Similarly, AI is here to stay.

So, best to stop being scared of it.

Dig into the technology (e.g., ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Gemini), and see what it’s capable of.

And remember: What it can do now is way less than what it will be able to do next year. And the year after that.

So, if you’re at all strategic, you can no longer be so without becoming comfortable with AI.

Why AI is worth paying attention to

It will soon be impossible to do your job without it.

Most likely 80% of the work people do in business today will be AI-assisted, at least in part, within the next two years.

Let’s say you do 20 things/month. Look at them and ask: how much can AI help me with these things? How can it enhance what I’m capable of doing? Can it actually automate some of these tasks?

Let’s say 50% of your tasks could be benefited by this technology. That would save you as much as 10 – 20 hours a week. Arguably, a small nonprofit can benefit from AI even more than a larger one. And, on a personal level, if you can save resources this way, you’ll become insanely valuable within your organization. Worth considering!

AI won’t go away.

What to do

Consider how you learn best; then engage in education and training.

Reading? Listening? Watching? Doing?

Take some time to curate some AI educational resources that match your favorite learning method. I highly recommend listening to AI Explored, a free YouTube podcast series put together by Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner. Back about 15 years ago, I learned much of what I know about content, inbound marketing, and social engagement from him. That was then; this is now. This series will cover everything you need to know to understand how AI can most effectively serve your nonprofit.

I just listened to a podcast episode featuring Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute, and want to share some of his tips.

Pick one to three tools to go deep into; practice.

In other words, have AI help you with some of the tasks you identified earlier. For example:

• Ask it to write a newsletter article; email headline;
• Ask for a draft of an agenda for your event;
• Ask it to identify speakers

You’ll see ways to blend the technology into your workflow.

You can’t simply listen to what others do. You must experiment yourself.

AI wants you to play.

Prepare yourself

You need to take some time to think about what you want it to do, and then experiment.

Just because you tried it a year ago, and thought it was meh, doesn’t mean you adequately prepared yourself for what it can do. Also, today’s versions (and paid versions) are infinitely more capable than yesterday’s versions.

Here are some practice tips:

• Talk to it like a person.
• Tell it specifically what you need help with.
• Tell it why you need this help.
• Tell it what you want to accomplish.
• Ask it what it needs to know from you to do what you need.
• Give it examples of what you did before and ask it to make improvements (e.g., shorter, snappier, funnier, using more emotional adjectives, warmer, etc.). Again, be specific (e.g., 2 pages; no more than 10 words; multiple use of the words “you,” “your,” and “us.”).
• Ask it where it would insert images.
• Ask it for some variations of what it just did. Ask it what else it would suggest.

The more you practice, the better you’ll get.

As you learn how to prompt it, it will begin to understand your style and, more or less, prompt itself. In other words, if you offer a super-wordy prompt, it will rewrite it (internally) and improve on what you wrote. In fact, Google found the best performing prompts are, on average, 21 words. [Bonus Tip: If you want to learn how to prompt more effectively, ask the AI what prompt it used to deliver your results.]

AI is getting better, fast.

What can you do besides draft text?

There’s generative AI and predictive AI.

More people are familiar with the former, where you use it to draft text. It’s equally good at the latter, which involves data analysis.

To grasp how this works, understand all AI models have vision capability. They can “see” things. They can understand what they see.

This means you can feed them data, a screen shot, a URL or a pdf.; then ask them “what’s happening here?” You can tell them the criteria you use to assess something (e.g. a web page; email series; ad campaign; even whether or not your major donor has received sufficient touches and moves to be asked for a gift) and ask them what they see. They’ll suggest things (like more images; different colors; less text; alternate placement; timing, etc.).

AI is here to stay.

Ground rules

Develop generative AI policies that give you basic guidelines. 

These help everyone in your organization, internally and externally.

• Which tools are you allowed to use? (e.g., AI-generated images? Video?)
• For which use cases?
• What are acceptable inputs?
• Which data will you allow it to access?
• How will you keep information secure and protect privacy?

One way to start developing an AI policy for your organization is to search the internet for “responsible AI framework.” You’ll get a lot of hits from businesses (e.g., KPMG, IBM) and also from places like Project Evident for responsible AI adoption in philanthropy. There are also many templates from which you can borrow (see here, here, and here).

Create a draft policy; run it by an attorney to make sure you’re not running afoul of copyright, trademark, breach of confidentiality, unintentional bias, or other potential pitfalls.

Put your generative AI policy on your website so folks know you have a policy and are acting above-board. AI is best used transparently, ethically and legally.

With AI, and anything else, there’s a right way.

The best way to become un-overwhelmed is to alleviate fear and confusion by digging in!

— Charity Clairity (Please use a pseudonym if you prefer to be anonymous when you submit your own question, like “Overwhelmed, dazed and confused” did.)

Have you had success using AI for fundraising? Let us know in the comments. 

The post [ASK AN EXPERT] Do I Really Have To Worry About AI? appeared first on Bloomerang.

That’s great in theory, but how do you go about doing that? Do you have the time or resources to find out what people are saying?

If you’re like most nonprofit professionals, you’re too busy focusing on your day-to-day tasks to search the internet for mentions of your nonprofit. It doesn’t make sense to have one staff member scour the internet every day for new articles and events.

That’s where Google Alerts come into play. Keep reading to find out what they are, why you should use them, and how to create them.

What is a Google Alert?

A Google Alert is an update that shares information about a specific keyword. Once you set one up, Google will send you an email summary of recent articles and other Internet activity that mention that keyword.

You can choose the sources you want to prioritize and even set things like language, region, and number of results you receive.

The best part? This service is free.

Why should my nonprofit create a Google Alert?

As we mentioned above, it’s good to keep tabs on what people are saying about your nonprofit. Not only that, but you also have the ability to keep up with things like industry news (via a keyword like ‘nonprofit’) or events that might impact the work your nonprofit is doing (via a keyword like ‘hurricane’).

A Google Alert can also help you form meaningful relationships with others and make a greater impact. For example, let’s say you operate a nonprofit organization that builds quality housing for low-income families. A Google Alert could point you toward people within your community who have expressed a need for housing assistance or companies that are searching for a nonprofit to support.

Creating your Google Alerts

First, go to Google Alerts and enter your keyword.

To get the most useful information, click “show options” next to the Create Alert button. You can change the settings to reflect how often you want notifications sent to you, what language you prefer, which specific locations to monitor, and what types of content you want to search.

Next, you’ll have to decide who you want to receive the Google Alerts email summary. Choose someone who can check the alerts regularly and enter their email address.

Tip: We recommend reviewing and editing the alerts as your needs and goals change.

Search terms to use

When setting up your nonprofit Google Alerts, here are a few basic guidelines to follow so that you can select the right terms.

• The name of your nonprofit organization: Include alternate and incorrect spellings and acronyms, if applicable.
• Names of important people in your organization: This includes founders, board members, and other prominent figures.
• Keywords related to the cause you support: Think of things like pet care, health services, women’s leadership, etc.
• The area(s) you serve: Include neighborhoods, cities, states, or countries.
• Broad industry and fundraising keywords: This could include peer-to-peer campaigns, fundraising, charity, eco-friendly, social justice, and community aid.
• Additional descriptors of your mission: Choose words that describe your nonprofit’s mission (ex: animal shelter, transportation, financial education, etc.).

Google Alerts alternatives

While Google Alerts are a valuable tool for nonprofits tracking specific keywords, your organization might need a service with more extensive capabilities. After all, meaningful donor relationships are the key to securing more support for your mission, and it can be difficult to turn a keyword into valuable donor insights.

Google Alerts alternatives offer more comprehensive tracking, tapping into often overlooked sources such as news outlets or social media platforms. This holistic data enables nonprofits to access real-time donor information that informs outreach strategies, major gift fundraising efforts, and more.

For example, imagine your nonprofit has a long-time major donor, John Smith. When Mr. Smith’s spouse passes away, your nonprofit won’t find out by tracking a specific keyword. Instead, the news will be shared in:

• A local obituary website
• Social media posts by the family or community members
• A private memorial page hosted by a local funeral home

In this case, your nonprofit would benefit from a Google Alerts alternative, such as a donor news alert service. This service provides real-time updates about donors, which nonprofits can use to develop personal connections with their supporter base. With this data, you might send flowers to Mr. Smith’s house or a handwritten letter expressing your condolences.

Not to mention, these tools also prove valuable for prospect research and developing donor cultivation strategies. Deeper insights provide an exhaustive (and highly personalized) view of potential donors, which can help you identify, engage, and retain them over the long term.

Other types of strong Google Alerts alternatives include:

• Social listening tools, which crawl social media sites, blogs, and forums
• Search engine and web monitoring tools, which track specific keywords across web pages
• Predictive analytics tools, which use artificial intelligence to identify patterns in donor behavior and predict future campaign performances

Final tips

Ready to get started? Evaluate Google Alerts and its various alternatives to decide which tools (or combination of tools) will be most beneficial for your nonprofit. Using several of these tools rather than just one ensures your nonprofit doesn’t miss out on any critical donor information.

If you go with Google Alerts, leverage a keyword checker tool to determine which keywords you should track. If you find that a keyword isn’t generating many relevant notifications, you can always remove it from your list of Alerts and add a new one to replace it.

Bloomerang is another powerful but easy-to-use tool that can help your team fundraise more effectively. Reach out to our team to get a Demo.

The post Google Alerts for Your Nonprofit: appeared first on Bloomerang.

48 million Americans move each year. This is 17% of the adult population in the US. This means for a database of 15,000 accounts, potentially 2500 constituents may have different addresses if your addresses haven’t been cleaned in the last year, which could result in a significant cost in returned or delayed mail.

NCOA explained

The NCOA (National Change of Address) update involves both standardizing your address formats per recommendations from the US Postal Service and comparing the addresses on file to the information in the National Change of Address database. This database contains data for all change of address requests filed by US postal customers in the past 48 months.

NCOA doesn’t just find movers, it also corrects addresses such as adding St, Ave, Rd, etc. if missing from your address or changes it if incorrect. It also adds/changes the directional (N, E, S, W, NE, etc.) if necessary, corrects misspellings, adds the +4 to ZIP codes, and formats the address according to USPS standards.

There are times when a person has moved but the new address couldn’t be returned. Examples of this would be a PO Box that’s been closed with no forwarding address, people who have moved to a foreign country or people who have moved but did not provide a new address. Even though a new address can’t be provided, this information is provided to help you know who may need follow up or who may need to be removed from your mailing list.

There may be people who may or may not have moved, but because a key piece of the address is missing or invalid a match can’t be made to the NCOA database to know for sure. NCOA can tell you if the secondary address (apartment or suite number) is missing or invalid.

Having all of your addresses up to date helps facilitate duplicate checking.

If you are considering a data enhancement service such as a phone, email or birth date append, or a deceased suppression service, clean addresses can improve the match rate for these services as they all use the address as part of the primary matching criteria.

If you claim preferred mailing rates, USPS requires that your mailing list be run through an NCOA processing within 90 days of the mailing. A CASS Summary Report is provided with the cleaned addresses. CASS stands for Coding Accuracy Support System and means your addresses have been checked for accuracy against the Postal Service’s database using an approved system.

Bloomerang has partnered with TrueGivers to offer nightly data stewardship updates. With the click of a button, all individual constituents with US addresses will be scanned and updated each night with NCOA information that includes address updates, deceased information (when applicable), and some optional demographic information.

Yes, that’s right – it’s included with your standard Bloomerang subscription!

We are committed to helping the helpers by saving you time and allowing you to focus on what’s important. Say goodbye to yellow return labels and hello to Bloomerang nightly updates today!

The post The ultimate guide to NCOA processing for nonprofits appeared first on Bloomerang.

1. Build Excitement

Let your audience know that you’ll be participating this Giving Tuesday! Start sending emails early on leading up to Giving Tuesday to get your supporters excited about the opportunities it brings. Send a personalized “Save the Date” email to generate momentum and inform recipients of your campaign goals.

You will also want to include board members and volunteers in your Giving Tuesday strategy, reminding them of your mission and why you need their support. Give these people plenty of time to prepare for their roles and think about how they can best serve your cause.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask

Send at least three emails throughout the day (morning, midday, and evening) asking for gifts. Use a catchy subject line to grab the recipient’s attention, and add buttons that link to your donation page in the body of the email. If your organization does not have a way to process donations online, set up Bloomerang Payments in less than five minutes to begin receiving credit card and EFT donations. Before sending the next round of emails, make sure to segment recipients that already made a gift to ensure they are not included in additional asks.

You may also consider creating a recurring-only giving page to promote your monthly giving program. Monthly donors are exponentially valuable to nonprofits. Not only do recurring donors give more over the course of a year, but they also stick with you longer. According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, 90% of monthly givers renew.

3. Thank your supporters

You want to thank your donors as soon as possible. Follow up with your supporters and let them know how much your organization raised and what impact that will have on your mission. Segmentation is key! Make first-time donors feel welcome with a personalized thank-you email. Send a follow-up email to your recurring donors to affirm their commitment to your organization. Finally, celebrate your Giving Tuesday success with all of your followers through social media posts, newsletters, or blog posts.

We understand Giving Tuesday and the days leading up to it can be busy. To help our users get started, we’ve created five ready-to-be personalized Giving Tuesday Email Templates to kickstart your Giving Tuesday communications.  Access the templates from your database to prep and schedule these templates ahead of time!

The post 3 Keys To A Successful Giving Tuesday Email Campaign appeared first on Bloomerang.

But if you are like a lot of nonprofit professionals, somewhere along the way a board may have rained on your wealth screening parade. They may have had a lot of trepidation and indicated that this kind of a service was sneaky, underhanded, or violated people’s privacy. Before you knew it, the “ick” factor had set in and suddenly you felt like people thought doing a screen was creepy.

I’m here to set the record straight.

Since when is wanting to know more about your prospects and donors a bad thing? Spending your financial resources wisely to raise more for your cause is an admirable goal. Let’s look at the facts.

Where do wealth screens get information?

Companies aggregate consumer data from many sources that are public records including the IRS, marriage records, birth/death records, property records, taxes, consumer behavior, political contributions, real estate holdings, government data, survey data, etc.

Whether the customer is a for-profit or nonprofit (hey, that’s you!) they have the same goal – efficiently finding their best prospects so that they can spend less time (and money) pursuing people who are not good prospects.

Just like corporations buy marketing data to target their products to consumers, this data is also available to nonprofits to reach potential donors.

Of course, much of this data can be discovered online for free with research. But there are also vendors in the space, like DonorSearch for example, who use this data as well as public giving data from annual reports, newsletters, campaign honor rolls, press releases, and more to do what is called a “wealth overlay” or wealth screen.  This can better inform a charity of their current donors’ capacity or even give them insight, through modeling, on prospective donors they want to target.

Can’t I figure this stuff all out by myself online?

Nothing is stopping you from doing this research yourself. However, your time is not free. Not only are you paid a salary but there’s the opportunity cost of what putting your time into donor research is taking away from other money-raising activities.

Do donors opt out of giving if they learn an organization is using such a tool in development?

I have never heard of a donor opting out of donating because an organization did prospect research.

Frankly, there is no logical reason to inform donors that you are doing prospect research.

By the same token, I see no reason to inform your board you are doing prospect research. You, as the CEO or fundraiser, have a fundraising budget to spend as you see fit to meet your objectives. If doing a wealth screen allows you to achieve your objectives and is within your budget, you do not need board approval to do it.

Does it really help you to know more about your donors or change how you approach a donor?

I would argue that leadership wants and needs thorough, accurate information to minimize risk/maximize opportunity. Doing a wealth screen is an extremely efficient way to zero in on your top giving prospects. It can help you reveal major gif and planned gift prospects. It can help you with knowing how much the right amount is to ask for. Potentially it could even assist you with when you want to make your ask or what fundraising goals you want to set.

What are the ethics of using this information?

All of this data is public information. In case you want a refresh, here is the AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals) code of ethics.

My advice?

“Let the fundraisers fundraise!”

While the data you will reveal from doing a wealth screen is only as good as the data you put in, it can provide valuable insights to reveal your top gift prospects. You might reveal new prospects you didn’t have on your radar as a current donor.

The post How To Handle Objections To Doing A Wealth Screen appeared first on Bloomerang.

Unique among CRMs, Bloomerang has solved the oft complex, time-consuming and expensive task of updating your donors’ addresses, marking deceased records and appending basic demographic information like age, gender, income and presence of children.

Thanks to the Bloomerang-TrueGivers Data Stewardship Integration every Bloomerang user can now choose to have their database updated every night, automatically and absolutely free. This money-saving, time-saving, income boosting feature is now comes as part of your basic subscription package.

Bloomerang Solves a BIG Problem

On average 11% of all U.S. nonprofit mail appeals won’t be delivered by the postal service. That’s because nearly 45 million Americans move each year and for millions their mail becomes undeliverable because of incorrect addresses.

As a result, nonprofits waste money in undeliverable communications. Lose millions in revenue…and lose contact donors they can no longer communicate with.

And that’s a BIG Problem. 

A recent study conducted by TrueGivers of over 1,200 small and mid-sized organizations containing a total of 9.6 million records found 545,000 bad addresses (5.6% of the total) and 268,000 deceased donors (2.79% of the total.) That’s a lot of wasted appeals and communications…lots of lost income and donor retention.

In fact, the study estimated that if the wrong addresses were not corrected those 1200 organizations would lose a projected $21.8 million in the first year alone and more than $100 million over a five-year period.

Bloomerang Values Your Time

All the great copywriting…all the donor care imaginable…and all the brilliant fundraising strategies in the world don’t matter if your donor no longer receives your communication.

But until now keeping your addresses up-to-date has been a time-consuming hassle—often a task we all put off until we have more time.

No more. Bloomerang values your time. And that’s why we’ve made the Bloomerang/TrueGivers Data Stewardship Integration. Automatically. Every night.

Bloomerang Provides More Than Correct Addresses. Far More.

Not only are your donor addresses automatically checked and updated every night with accurate, mailable addresses, you also receive:

• Notification of Deceased Donors

Over 2 million people pass away each year in the U.S. Knowing when a donor or member of a donor’s household has passed away is critical to managing donor relationships.

The fallout from just one mismanaged interaction can produce shock waves. Can you think of a bigger motivator for a negative response than to address an appeal to a deceased volunteer or donor? How about that cringe-inducing phone call when a gift officer asks, “How’s Charlie doing?” only to find out that Charlie passed away 10 months ago.

Bloomerang automatically, and as part of your basic subscription, alerts you to the death of a donor so you can take appropriate action to either reach out to the family or take steps to suppress future actions.

• Donor Profile Information

Has your CEO or board members ever asked, “Who are our donors?”…”How old are our donors?… “What’s their average income?” And on and on.

Or does a colleague come to you and ask,”Can I get a list of donors 50 to 60 years of age for our planned giving mailing?”

Now, as part of the Bloomerang/TrueGivers Donor Stewardship Integration you this information is at your fingertips and is updated automatically each night.

AND…if you want to append specific demographic data to individual records you can do this only for those records you wish to enhance. No expensive minimums. No data contracts.

Bloomerang automatically, and as part of your basic subscription, keeps the profile of your data base updated and provides a fast, inexpensive process for appending donor-specific information to only those records you choose

Bloomerang’s Birds-Eye-View Dashboard

Within minutes of enabling the Donor Data Stewardship service (enable here) a Dashboard is created especially for your organization to give you a high-level view and analysis of your data.

The Data Stewardship Dashboard provides you with instant, up-to-date information on such vital signs as:

• Total records on file
• Trends over the previous changes over the last 30 days
• Your postal savings from corrected records
• Deceased individuals and deaths in household
• Number of mailable addresses and number of unmailable addresses
• The number of records enhanced with demographic data
• A chronological history of updates on your database

A new row is added after each update to show Status, Record Count and when the update was started and completed.

• AND…the Dashboard provides a dynamic map so you can visualize the geographic distribution of your donors

In addition, the Dashboard alerts you to a list of tasks you might consider and act on:

• “Staying in Touch” with donors who’ve moved
• “Individual Condolences” to families of deceased donors or someone in the donor’s household who has passed away
• “Birthdays” in the upcoming month should you wish to send a greeting

Bloomerang Improves Your Bottom Line

We’ve designed the new Bloomerang Data Stewardship service to not only improve your immediate fundraising results, but to make regular, meaningful contact with your donors easier, more cost-efficient and far more effective. All this automatically while dramatically reducing your time spent.

Most folks just want to know that the new Data Stewardship service works automatically and for no charge because it’s part of their Bloomerang subscription.

For those who are more into the nuts and bolts of ‘how’ it works we’ve provided lots of information here.

The post Automated Donor Data Stewardship Is Here appeared first on Bloomerang.

“What’s the best thing we can do to improve our fundraising results this year?”

The answer I give is usually received with surprise.

Perhaps they are expecting me to say “call more donors” or “get board members to ask for money” or “be more active on social media” – none of which are bad ideas, but aren’t my favorite.

Have I aroused your curiosity enough yet? Just what is my magical answer?

Running a National Change of Address (NCOA) Update Service is the answer!

Why an NCOA?

Whether your database of donors and perspective donors has only 50 names, 500 names or 5,000 names, an NCOA is the single-easiest, fastest and arguably best thing you can do all year to enhance your fundraising efforts.

Why?

An NCOA update will standardizing your address formats based on recommendations from the US Postal Service and compare the addresses of your constituents to the information in their database to see if any of them moved.

Consider this: 17% of the U.S. population moves every year.

That means if you have not run an NCOA update in the last three years, up to half of your direct mail could go undelivered.

Think of all your appeals, newsletters, invitations and acknowledgements that might never reach their intended destination.

Given the effectiveness and pervasiveness of direct mail, running an (at least) annual NCOA should be a no-brainer. Even if you did it every three years, you have the chance of doubling your direct mail fundraising results, which is usually the most relied upon source of fundraising dollars.

Finally, think about the postage expense that can be saved as your list is truly cleansed. The postage savings alone should more than make up for the cost of the service!

Like so many key bits of advice in life, most of the very best ones are timeless in nature. This is truly the case with NCOAs.

Give it a try and let us know what impact it has upon your results this year. Perhaps this is the game changer you and your organization has been searching for!

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