One80 Place Saves 100+ Hours of Time on Gift Entry

Organization & Mission

One80 Place is dedicated to, and laser-focused on, ending and preventing homelessness. What started 36 years ago by community leaders in Charleston, SC as a homeless shelter has evolved into a $12 million nonprofit with regional reach, cohesively working toward a future in which everyone has a home. Approximately one-third of One80 Place’s revenue comes from community support, and the organization proudly boasts that 91 cents of every dollar raised is spent on programs.

The Challenge

One80 Place’s fundraising program is heavily focused on individual contributions and on donor retention. To achieve its lofty fundraising goals, One80 Place has employed sophisticated donor segmentation strategies to effectively target communication to its donor base for continued retention. Donation data from new and existing donors continually come into One80 Place from a variety of external sources; up-to-date donor and donation data are needed to support One80 Place’s complex segmentation architecture.

Yet, the file segmentation process was broken. Not only did it take the team weeks of work, running and merging queries, testing segments through trial and error, and exporting and reviewing lists; but One80 Place could really never get to their desired level of segment granularity. Not for fundraising solicitations, stewardship communications, or relationship building. Not being able to execute on strategy and communicate precisely with donors would affect donor retention and impede new and increased dollars raised.

In addition, using standard import processes was daunting and extremely time-consuming. The team had to import different types of data in multiple passes, and the process sometimes made changes to data that damaged donor records. The team was anxious about running the import process and inadvertently creating erroneous data.