Meet The Rowan Tree Foundation - GiftWorks Story Winner August 10, 2009

We having been sharing the results of our Share Your GiftWorks Story Contest where clients could tell us how GiftWorks has helped their nonprofit organization achieve its mission. Here is the winning entry submitted by Corinne O'Flynn, Executive Director of the Rowan Tree Foundation in Parker, Colorado. The Rowan Tree Foundation is dedicated to helping families heal after the loss of a precious child.  The pictures below are from their Butterfly Release and Remembrance Event in June. Here's an exerpt of what Corinne had to say:

For an all-volunteer nonprofit organization, managing our donor lists, receipt numbers, acknowledgements, contact information, and especially our events, using only spreadsheets has been cumbersome. Most CRM products were simply beyond our reach financially.

Then I heard a few things GiftWorks that instantly put it at the top of my "to try" list.

One is the ease of use. Downloading the free trial took moments, and I was up and running in less than an hour with my own data. On the first day, the reports I produced using the GiftWorks SmartList tool enabled me to see my fundraising history in a whole new way.

Another is that it links up directly with QuickBooks. My fantasy of doing data entry only once has come true! All donation information is entered and posted into QuickBooks with the touch of a button.

Using GiftWorks, in less than a month I had sent out all of my pending tax receipts, corresponded via email using the built-in mass mail tool, finally had a single place to store my donor information, printed out perfect mailing labels, and began thinking about campaigns and appeals differently.

GiftWorks has a fabulous help window that you can keep expanded on the side of your screen that gives helpful tips and tricks relating to the current tasks you are performing. By nature of its own design, GiftWorks has improved the way I collect data, manage data, and plan for donation campaigns….It is hard to believe that we used to attempt all of this using a spreadsheet! With GiftWorks, we spend most of our time working on our mission and less time managing the back-office. I am not sure how to put a price tag on that!