Direct Relief Uses Omatic Cloud to Improve Data Integrity and Accelerate New Donor Acknowledgment

Organization Background

Direct Relief is a nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian support and disaster relief to communities domestically and around the world. The organization relies on donor support to carry out its mission of getting resources where they need to go to save lives. We interviewed Laurie Ann Tuttle, Database Administrator at Direct Relief, to hear about the organization’s use of Omatic Cloud. 

Challenge

Inaccurate gift data hindered the team at Direct Relief. Staff spent hours each week on time consuming record cleanup, especially during periods following high-impact fundraising campaigns. Direct Relief sought a solution to the following concerns:  

• Persistent Data Integrity Issues 
  Direct Relief had two main sources of donor data: third-party giving platforms, including Classy, and its own website. Team members uploaded large spreadsheets with third-party platform giving data into Raiser’s Edge NXT as often as they could to refresh the donor database. The task was so time consuming and complex that valuable donor data often never made it into the CRM. Website data also had its limitations; data transfers regularly produced duplicate donor records in the CRM.  
• Delayed Recognition of New Donors 
  Unreliable giving data meant that development staff had trouble identifying and thanking new donors. This was a problem for the organization. Direct Relief brings in many of its donors during campaigns for disaster relief. Often, first-time donors will give to support hurricane or earthquake victims without realizing that Direct Relief is the organization providing aid. Stewarding first gifts is a crucial moment for educating donors about Direct Relief’s mission to lock in future support.  

“We couldn’t steward new donors—we didn’t know who new donors were. When we have long delays in communication people forget who Direct Relief is and that they ever donated to us.” – Laurie Ann Tuttle

• Data Clean-up Stretched Staff Thin
  Before implementing Omatic Cloud, Direct Relief fixed duplicate records in Raiser’s Edge NXT using the CRM’s out-of-the-box tool. This manual process was sustainable on a short-term basis but became difficult when large influxes of donations came in following natural disasters.  During those times, staff could spend anywhere from 80 to 160 hours over the following months on data hygiene—an untenable workload for a small team.  

“Direct Relief was getting more visibility for its work and was getting more donations. There was so much activity, it was getting to the point where there was no way to manage it anymore.” 

Solution

Direct Relief sought a solution that could improve data hygiene and speed up the process of stewarding new donors. The organization turned to Omatic Cloud for:  

• Seamless Integration Between Classy and Raiser’s Edge NXT
  With Omatic Cloud’s automation solution, Direct Relief could transfer data into its CRM more efficiently than ever. Instead of exporting and manually editing spreadsheets to be compatible with Raiser’s Edge NXT, the data team had an automated daily upload from Classy, with mapping rules that automatically formatted fundraising data to fields in the CRM.  
• Improved Data Accuracy and Fewer Duplicates 
  The team at Direct Relief had a powerful new hack for data hygiene: duplicate prevention. Before implementing Omatic, there was no way to stop website data imports from creating duplicate records in the CRM. Now, each time an import occurs, Omatic flags the potential duplicate records before they transfer.  
• Importing More Types of Data into Raiser’s Edge NXT
  Advanced data mapping features in Omatic made it possible to get more gift information into the CRM. In the past, the organization stored useful donor information in spreadsheets. There was no straightforward way to transfer online giving data from Classy into Raiser’s Edge. Now, that data imports automatically thanks to the data configuration rules set up in Omatic.  

Results

After implementing Omatic Cloud, Direct Relief had greater visibility into their supporter base leading to:  

• Efficient Donor Segmentation and Communication 
  With Omatic, Direct Relief had benefitted from fresher data. Direct Relief knows more about donors, including first-time donors and the sources of successful giving campaigns. This enhanced look at donor behavior has greatly improved the speed and quality of donor communications. Direct Relief can tailor stewardship messaging for optimum results.  

“The biggest benefit of using Omatic is that we have a more accurate view of who is donating to us.” 

• Timely Recognition and Increased Supporter Satisfaction 
  The increased insight into Direct Relief’s donor base has sped up the process for acknowledging first-time donors by months. The nonprofit can see—and trust—first time donor records in Raiser’s Edge NXT and can send an acknowledgement immediately. Long delays caused by unreliable data no longer happen; supporters receive their gift acknowledgment while their donation to Direct Relief is still top of mind. By sending crucial communications at the right time to the right audiences, the nonprofit has improved donor retention.  

Direct Relief is thrilled with the results they’ve seen with Omatic. 

“Without Omatic, our data would be much less accurate. We wouldn’t have been able to connect names and contact information for donors. The product is fabulous.”