Community Food Share Improves Donor Communication, Gift Processing, and Impact Reporting with Omatic Cloud

“There is so much Omatic can do—you can customize it in a million ways.”  – Trevor Bosetti, Senior Marketing Manager, Community Food Share

Community Food Share

Organization Background

Community Food Share is a food bank in Colorado that serves Boulder and Broomfield counties. The food bank provides residents with fresh, nutritious food thanks to the support of volunteers and donors. We spoke with Steffanie Frye, Donor Services and Database Manager, and Trevor Bosetti, Senior Marketing Manager, about their use of Omatic Cloud.

Challenges

Community Food Share needed support connecting all their third-party systems with their CRM, Raiser’s Edge NXT.

  • Difficulty Moving Data Between Raiser’s Edge NXT, Classy, and Mailchimp: After adopting Classy and Mailchimp to streamline fundraising and communications functions, Community Food Share recognized the need for an integration solution. The team wanted to implement a new communication strategy that incorporated donor and volunteer interests but needed support moving relevant data between the organization’s CRM, donation platform, and email marketing systems.

“We knew it would be tough to get all our new systems to talk to each other.” – Trevor Bosetti

  • Limited Customization Opportunities: Community Food Share has many types of constituents in its database, including donors, volunteers, and families seeking assistance. Each of these audiences requires different communications: solicitations and impact reports for donors, volunteering opportunities and event details for volunteers, and food distribution information for families. Without an integration solution, tailoring communications to the right audiences would require the team to create email lists by pulling data in Raiser’s Edge NXT and load them into Mailchimp—a tedious manual process. The team needed a way to automate data transfers to share the right message to the right constituents.

Solution

Community Foodshare sought a solution to these problems and adopted Omatic Cloud to connect all their third-party data sources.

  • Mapping Data for Complex Campaigns: Omatic Cloud’s advanced mapping capabilities make it easy to move data between systems to the right fields in the correct format. When implementing Omatic Cloud, the team at Community Food Share carefully mapped out all the fields they would need to track donations coming through Classy, crediting the correct donors, campaign, and appeal codes. The seamless data mapping was especially helpful for the organization’s Corporate Caring Program. The program encourages local companies to form a team that raises money for a virtual food drive. With Omatic Cloud, Community Food Share can easily track donations from Classy and note the accurate soft and hard credit for donors in the CRM. Donor information travels smoothly between Classy and Raiser’s Edge NXT without time-consuming data entry.

“When a donation comes in, we can credit it and sort it into the right bucket. The mapping does it correctly each time.” – Steffanie Frye, Donor Services and Database Manager

  • Automatic List Updates in Mailchimp: After implementing Omatic Cloud, Community Food Share had data moving between Raiser’s Edge NXT, Classy, and Mailchimp automatically. When donors make an online donation through Classy, that gift information moves to Raiser’s Edge NXT, which then updates Mailchimp email lists, based on custom formulas the team at Community Food Share designed. No more manual imports or custom queries for email communications—the team has data moving across systems in real-time.

Results

After implementing Omatic Cloud, Community Foodshare had greater visibility into their supporter base leading to:

  • Improved Monthly Impact Reporting: The efficient movement of donation and biographical data into Mailchimp has led to more email customization opportunities. Since implementing Omatic, Community Food Share has started sending donors monthly reports on the impact of their donations. The organization has customized these updates so that donors have the experience of receiving a digital report from their primary point of contact at Community Food Share, a portfolio manager, instead of a general email address for the organization. This added personalization has led to a significant increase in engagement from donors, who are more interested in reading—and responding to—an email from someone they know. Being able to send the right audiences accurate updates on their giving on behalf of their point of contact at Community Food Share wouldn’t be possible without the constant movement of data between systems.
  • Well-Timed Solicitations and Communications: The integration solution has also improved the timing of communications from Community Food Share. The organization will segment email lists based on donor behavior including donation amount, giving history, or type (including corporate and individual donors). By segmenting lists according to specific donor characteristics, the organization can schedule updates, acknowledgements, and appeals based on when they will be most effective. For example, when a donor makes a gift to Community Food Share, they are automatically suppressed from solicitations for thirty days to prevent donor fatigue. This has been useful in the lead up to Giving Tuesday when the organization sends out an influx of appeals to supporters. Community Food Share can increase its outreach at any time without alienating its loyal donor pool.
  • Increased Email Customization: The team at Community Food Share has also honed its email segmentation to tailor the content for constituent outreach. Since implementing Omatic Cloud, the organization has developed automatic follow-up communications based on constituent interest. After filling out a short intake form on the Community Food Share website, individuals in need of groceries automatically enter the queue to for the programs team to initiate contact. Individuals interested in volunteering enter the volunteer communications flow to hear about future events and food distribution opportunities. Donors receive more information about the variety of initiatives they can support.

“It took some time to set everything up in Omatic Cloud to flow automatically, but now that work is paying off. We would not be able to maintain this kind of segmentation without it.” – Trevor Bosetti

  • Faster Gift Processing Without Added Staff Time: Like many nonprofits, Community Food Share receives the bulk of its support from digital gifts, compared to in person donations of cash or checks. In the past year, the organization increased digital gifts by 5%, a trend that continues year after year. Keeping up with the growth in online donations has increased the organization’s administrative workload—each time a donor makes an online gift through Classy, information must enter the CRM to trigger acknowledgements, updated donor records, financial reconciliations, and other crucial tasks. By integrating all its data sources, Community Food Share has kept up with the increased workload without having to hire extra staff.

 

“Without the Omatic connector, it would be a full-time job just to get contact information into Mailchimp.” – Trevor Bosetti