How The Parkinson’s Foundation Used Omatic to Improve Donor Stewardship and Become a $50 Million Fundraising Organization

Organization Background

The Parkinson’s Foundation is a nonprofit that makes life better for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) by improving care and advancing research toward a cure. The foundation raises approximately $50 million each year to support the Parkinson’s community and advance research.

Challenge

After merging the National Parkinson Foundation and the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, the newly formed Parkinson’s Foundation had complicated data needs that accompanied its expansion. The Parkinson’s Foundation turned to Omatic Cloud to help with the following issues:

• Tracking Tribute Gift Data
  Tribute gifts—donations made in honor of an individual or group—make up about 20% of annual donations. Formatting differences between the foundation’s giving forms and Raiser’s Edge NXT fields made it difficult to track honoree information and connect it to gift records and constituent records. Stewardship team members faced challenges when thanking donors and notifying honorees respectively for these gifts.
• Transferring Data from Multiple Systems
  Before merging foundations, one of the organizations had a custom-built solution for transferring data between Luminate Online and Raiser’s Edge NXT, but the tool strained to process the increased volume of records. Similarly, volunteer data in NetCommunity did not consistently transfer to Raiser’s Edge NXT, delaying communications. The Parkinson’s Foundation also struggled to centralize support calls from Salesforce with their constituent records in Raiser’s Edge NXT.
• Infrequent Uploads and Unreliable Data
  Data transfers from Luminate Online into Raiser’s Edge NXT were manual, error-prone, and infrequent. Incomplete records from donation forms became new records with missing data in Raiser’s Edge NXT. The manual transfer was time-consuming, leading to unreliable data and limited donor engagement opportunities.

“Prior to using the Omatic and Salesforce Connector, we relied on a manual export. That data was messy. The records were added in, but we couldn’t catch duplicates. And we only refreshed our data once a month.” – Russell Presgraves, Director of Development and Data Systems, Parkinson’s Foundation

Solution

The Parkinson’s Foundation needed a solution that could effectively connect all their systems for volunteering, fundraising, and submitting help requests. By implementing Omatic Cloud and the Omatic Salesforce Connector, the foundation was able to:

• Transfer Information Across Luminate Online, Raiser’s Edge NXT, and Salesforce NPSP
  After the merger, the newly formed Parkinson’s Foundation was able to connect and synchronize data across systems with Omatic Cloud. Time-consuming monthly imports became daily automatic syncs, so that data is fresh, reliable, and properly formatted for each application.
• Capture Volunteer Interest for Timely Engagement
  Volunteer data from Luminate Online now easily flows into Raiser’s Edge NXT. Now, whenever a supporter submits a volunteer request to the foundation, the foundation can create automatic notifications assigning important follow-up tasks to a development officer within Raiser’s Edge NXT.

“It was a challenge to get volunteer survey data into our database for development staff. With Omatic, we were able to process that information automatically overnight.” – Russell Presgraves

• Provide Accurate Tribute Gift Data
  Omatic’s advanced mapping capabilities made tracking tribute gifts simpler than ever. Previously, when donors made a tribute gift, the donation form had one field for the gift honoree’s full name. The separate first and last name fields in Raiser’s Edge NXT caused errors in in mapping honoree data to a constituent record in the CRM. Because of Omatic Cloud’s integration rules that automatically concatenate and map text across records, both donors and tribute honorees can be tracked easily and acknowledged accordingly.

“Tribute gifts gave us very messy data. With Omatic, we can catch problems as the data comes into the database.” – Russell Presgraves

Results

After implementing Omatic Cloud, the Parkinson’s Foundation had greater visibility into its supporter base leading to:

• Improved Volunteer Experiences
  With volunteer data centralized in Raiser’s Edge NXT, development officers have immediate insights into which supporters to contact. As a result, volunteers have less wait time before learning about next steps, and submissions no longer fall through the cracks—a welcome improvement for staff and supporters alike.

“Our volunteer program has expanded quite a bit over the years, and we’ve been able to integrate data from Blackbaud Luminate into Raiser’s Edge NXT seamlessly.” – Russell Presgraves

• Reliable Data and More Stewardship Opportunities
  Complicated tribute gift data no longer requires manual manipulation to transfer to Raiser’s Edge NXT, saving hours of staff time each week. Greater insight into giving data has been a boon for stewardship. The team can track tribute gifts and acknowledge donors and honorees quickly and accurately, as well as spend more time on stewardship communications that lead to future support.

“We were able to make customizations within Omatic profiles that made processing tribute gifts a substantially less difficult procedure. This shaved hours off the process.” – Russell Presgraves

• A Data Integration Plan for Continued Growth
  After successfully merging two national organizations, the Parkinson’s Foundation recognized its data needs had outgrown the outdated bespoke solutions and out-of-the-box data integration tools it had been relying on for years. The investment in Omatic Cloud set the Parkinson’s Foundation up for long-term success, helping contribute to the organization’s growth from two $10 million organizations to a unified $50 million organization.

“The Parkinson’s Foundation has grown from being two $10 million organizations to roughly one $50 million organization. Omatic has helped us manage the growth.” – Russell Presgraves

About the Parkinson’s Foundation
The Parkinson’s Foundation makes life better for people with Parkinson’s disease by improving care and advancing research toward a cure. In everything we do, we build on the energy, experience and passion of our global Parkinson’s community. Since 1957, the Parkinson’s Foundation has invested more than $449 million in Parkinson’s research and clinical care. Learn more at Parkinson.org.