Workflows Used
Organization Background
Catholic Charities Boston serves those in need throughout eastern Massachusetts, regardless of faith or background. Its initiatives include refugee and recent immigrant assistance, adult education classes, food pantries, shelters, and other vital programs. To carry out its mission, Catholic Charities of Boston relies on philanthropic support from individuals and foundations. We spoke with Tricia Fennessy, Director of Advancement Operations, about the organization’s use of Omatic.
Challenges
Catholic Charities of Boston’s had a small team that was stretched thin carrying out data management tasks required for gift administration, reconciliation, prospect research, and other key aspects of fundraising. To improve efficiency, the organization hired a consulting firm who recommended Omatic Cloud for help with the following challenges:
A Small Team with a Large Workload
The organization had a small development and advancement services team; a single employee managed all gift processing for thousands of gifts per year. Logging and reconciliation for gifts via lockbox, online donation forms, white mail, and other sources took over a dozen hours each week on average. Leadership knew that this problem would only get worse as fundraising improved – more donations meant more time spent on processing.
Unreliable Import Templates
The organization created templates in Importacular, their previous integration provider, to assist with the transforming data to match fields and formatting standards across different systems. However, if a platform made a change to one of the field titles, if a source file had data irregularities, or if a donor including in an import was a new donor, the template could not properly modify data for an import, requiring additional time for manual record cleanup, an untenable task for such a small team.
New Volunteer Software
Catholic Charities of Boston had recently onboarded Get Connected by Galaxy Digital for volunteer management. This change to the organization’s tech stack required all new processes for editing, mapping, and transferring data between Get Connected and Raiser’s Edge NXT. They needed an integration solution that would be compatible with multiple tools in their tech stack and accommodate additional changes in the future.
Solution
After implementing Omatic Cloud, the team benefited from the following.
Powerful, Reliable Workflows for Gift Administration
Omatic Cloud’s formulas are tailored to Catholic Charities of Boston’s exact needs. Changes in fields or exceptions to common rules no longer disrupt data transfers. Now, the team can download a lockbox report with donation dates, time, amounts, and other key details and have confidence everything will make it into Raiser’s Edge NXT without errors. Plus, advanced matching features help Omatic detect and prevent potential duplicate records before they enter the CRM.
Efficient Data Flows Between Get Connected and Raiser’s Edge NXT
Recording volunteer information is no longer a challenge for the organization. With Omatic Cloud, Catholic Charities Boston can transfer volunteer names, addresses, volunteering dates, and locations from Get Connected into Raiser’s Edge NXT in a matter of seconds, mapped to the right location with proper formatting.
Flexible Integrations That Adapt to Changing Tech Stacks
Earlier this year, Catholic Charities of Boston decided to adopt Fundraise Up for digital fundraising. Because of its success with Omatic with volunteer and donation data integrations, the organization was confident in its choice of purchasing Omatic Cloud’s Fundraise Up connector to help with this substantial change to fundraising operations and data management.
Omatic was the only solution for this. It communicates directly with Fundraise Up and Raiser’s Edge NXT.
Tricia Fennessy
Results
Actively Stewarding Volunteers
For the first time in the organization’s history, the development office has a defined strategy for retaining volunteers and cultivating them to become donors. With accurate volunteer contact information in Raiser’s Edge NXT, it’s possible to send volunteers detailed impact reports on popular programs, including food pantries—a popular avenue for volunteering. Volunteers now have biographical data in Raiser’s Edge NXT that enables prospect research, and high-capacity volunteers receive targeted volunteering and donation opportunities.
Improved Major Gift Donor Outreach
In the past, the organization did not have an accurate picture of who its major donor prospects were. This meant no outreach segmentation—donors who had given thousands or tens of thousands received the same direct mail appeals as donors who give under $100 each year. Now, major gift donors are all assigned to prospect management, who apply a giving tier for more personalized outreach and solicitations.
10-20 Hours a Week Time Savings
Omatic Cloud consistently saves the team at Catholic Charities Boston between 10 – 20 hours per week. In the past, importing 80 lockbox gifts would take the team two or three hours, when factoring in time spent editing spreadsheets and the preparation involved with Raiser’s Edge imports. Adding in gifts from Fundraise Up along with white mail donations (gifts sent directly to Catholic Charities Boston’s headquarters), and the team would spend at least 15 hours each week editing and importing fundraising data. Omatic Cloud turns those hours into minutes of reviews, freeing up ample time for other tasks.
The time savings we had seen made it easy to make the case with leadership for adding the Omatic Cloud Fundraise Up connector.
Tricia Fennessy
More Time for Reconciliation
The time saved has led to major improvements for financial reconciliation. In the past, gift totals in Raiser’s Edge NXT would not always match financial records. The streamlined process for recording gifts has made it so that gifts never slip through the cracks and totals in Raiser’s Edge always match what the finance team sees. Finally, this improvement in data quality means better communication. Now, the team can easily share controller reports and load sheets using the Batch function in Raiser’s Edge and share them with finance for reconciliation in record time.
Our auditors are probably thrilled about Omatic.
Tricia Fennessy
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