Arts Organization Uses GiftWorks to Increase Productivity June 29, 2009

The GiftWorks stories are coming fast and furious.  And they keep getting better!  Read on....

"The Center for Arts in Natick (TCAN) is a nonprofit arts organization in Natick, Massachusetts, founded in 1997 and relocated to a historic town Firehouse in 2003.  Our mission is simple: TCAN is dedicated to bringing people together, through the arts. We accomplish our mission by presenting music concerts featuring national and local performing artists, community theatre, family events, children’s arts education and dance programs, and monthly visual art exhibits.  

In our short history we have experienced significant change and dramatic growth. As a regional venue, our mailing list of patrons now holds over 20,000 addresses. To cover our operating expenses each year, TCAN fundraises over $250,000 annually through several campaigns including a membership program, business sponsorship, foundation grants, and an annual fund campaign. But with a total staff of less than four full-time equivalent positions and no dedicated development staff, administering these campaigns has been a continuous challenge for us.

Our most difficult fundraising challenge has been sustaining a major gifts campaign. The tasks of researching donors, organizing and hosting a regular schedule of cultivation activities, developing solicitations and providing stewardship and recognition are time-consuming and staff intensive.  We quickly discovered that a donor database was a crucial prerequisite to this work, whether it was maintained by employees or volunteers. While our ticketing system includes some integrated functionality that supports Development activities, they are extremely limited and not designed from a fundraiser’s perspective.  We do not have the financial resources to invest $25,000 or more for a “professional” development application.  These obstacles had slowed our progress in major gifts fundraising.

In the summer of 2008, we renewed our search to identify affordable fundraising software applications that might enable us to make progress on our major gift efforts. Our search led us to GiftWorks, which we found appealing due to its simple user interface, the ability to easily import transactions and donor information from our ticketing system, and its low software license fee.

Shortly after importing our donation history to GiftWorks, our fundraising efforts were immediately more productive – and we learned much more about fundraising in general. Using GiftWorks’ extensive reporting capability and SmartLists, we identified select groups of donors to better target our appeals and cultivation activities. We recorded relationships between donors, as well as other organizations they are associated with, and used this information to redesign our approach to donor cultivation.  These capabilities have helped us gain a deeper understanding of our donors, and have led us to completely reorganize our approach to major gift fundraising. 

In a relatively short time using GiftWorks, we are now able to hold more frequent and effective donor cultivation events.  In the first six months of 2009 alone, we can attribute at least $40,000 in major gifts to these activities.  In addition, we have attracted new Board volunteers to participate in major gift fundraising activities since they feel our approach is much more structured and efficient. GiftWorks has helped renew our confidence that TCAN can continue to grow."