Top challenges West Cancer Foundation needed to address:
- Selecting a new donor management system that aligns with the team’s requirements
- Finding a CRM that could natively integrate with its current fundraising platform, Classy
- Improving peer-to-peer donor stewardship through personalized outreach
The Search for a Responsive Nonprofit CRM
West Cancer Foundation’s mission of fighting cancer through research and education is fueled by the relentless support of its passionate donors. Previously, the team had a very manual process for managing donor data and fundraising efforts, using multiple spreadsheets.
As the organization grew, the manual work created two main bottlenecks:
- Because it lacked a robust reporting tool, West Cancer Foundation struggled to track the effectiveness of its fundraising efforts.
- Without an intelligent donor management platform, the team could not properly segment donors and personalize communications.
As the organization looked to implement its first nonprofit CRM software, with a team that had past experience with various platforms, West Cancer Foundation was very specific about what it wanted.
Given that a significant portion of its annual revenue comes from two of its signature events—Ride 2 Rosemary® and She to Sea—it was an essential requirement that the new CRM seamlessly integrates with Classy, the platform the team uses for peer-to-peer fundraising.
Virtuous offers a native integration with Classy, which met West Cancer Foundation’s requirement. However, West Cancer Foundation ultimately chose Virtuous for its intuitive user experience and flexibility. The platform’s customization options allow West Cancer Foundation to tailor it to the team’s specific needs, ensuring it can evolve with the organization over time.
“What Virtuous had to offer… it was robust enough but not too robust for what we were looking for. We knew that it could become even more robust with regard to reporting. The query tool is much simpler than what we’ve experienced with other CRMs in the past; in the reporting structure, all of that was very user-friendly for us.” — Keri Burnette, Vice President of Operations, West Cancer Foundation
How We Helped
Seamless Integration Between Systems Helps Steward More Peer-to-Peer Donors
Unstructured data can often create a roadblock to personalized donor journeys and building long-term relationships. Because the fundraising data in Classy seamlessly funnels into Virtuous, it completely eliminates the need for any manual data import or cleansing. This gives West Cancer Foundation full visibility over its peer-to-peer fundraising program.
“Having [Classy and Virtuous] integrate to each other makes life much simpler for us… We don’t have to toggle back and forth to get that information—it automatically just imports.” — Keri Burnette, Vice President of Operations, West Cancer Foundation
One of the main challenges of peer-to-peer fundraising is that donors typically give to their friend’s or family’s fundraisers and then never give again.
With clear insights and reporting into the initial point of entry and interactions of peer-to-peer donors, West Cancer Foundation can develop a donor stewardship communication strategy that converts the peer-to-peer donors into recurring donors . This includes targeted emails based on previous engagement or inviting them to sign up for the monthly newsletter.
“When reporting, we can see how many donors we had for a specific campaign or how many donors were given to a specific project… [Virtuous] allows us to wisely choose where we need to focus our efforts, as far as some of our marketing and promotional information, where we’re lacking.” — Keri Burnette, Vice President of Operations, West Cancer Foundation
A Platform That Grows As West Grows
As West Cancer Foundation’s fundraising strategy evolves, it is confident with Virtuous that it has a tool that will grow with them.
“Our giving has definitely improved because we’ve been able to use emails to communicate with our donors, which has definitely steadily increased—to use the emails, the templates, setting up the forms and the campaigns.” — Keri Burnette, Vice President of Operations, West Cancer Foundation
With the recent addition of a grant writer, tracking grants has become an emerging need. Fortunately, Virtuous offers a comprehensive grant management solution, enabling the West Cancer Foundation team to track applications, store documents and materials, manage tasks, and follow up with granting organizations with ease.
Moreover, the Virtuous support team is consistently responsive and timely, assisting West Cancer Foundation in addressing any questions or challenges that come up.
