Workflows Used
Organization Background
Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit affiliate of the global Habitat for Humanity network, dedicated to eliminating substandard housing locally and worldwide through constructing, rehabilitating, and preserving homes; by advocating for fair and just housing policies; and by providing training and access to resources to help families improve their living conditions.
The organization relies on a diverse mix of fundraising to support its mission, including a large-scale monthly giving program that generates hundreds of unique donors each month, the Cars for Homes vehicle donation program, online and peer-to-peer giving, corporate donors, foundations, and partner organizations. We spoke with Sarah Herrle, Development and Donor Relations Manager, to hear about her organization’s use of Omatic Cloud.
Challenges
Before adopting Omatic Cloud, Greater Cleveland Habitat’s database administrator, Sarah Herrle, faced the following challenges that limited the organization’s ability to engage donors effectively and holistically.
Thousands of Donors Missing from Raiser’s Edge NXT
The organization participates in a monthly fundraising program that generates an average of 630 unique donors and anywhere from 500 to 1,300 individual gifts each month. Handling that volume of manual data entry would likely require more staff, since Sarah is also responsible for day-to-day development duties. The team simply didn’t have the bandwidth to enter all that data. Donors who gave through this program were never entered into the system, meaning the entire giving history for that program went unrecorded at the constituent level. Engaging those donors was impossible; there was no way to see who they were.
Some donors just weren’t in the system at all…they would just live in Excel spreadsheets that we would never use. They would never hear from us unless they were already in our system.
Sarah Herrle
Manual Data Entry Was Slow and Subject to Human-Error
Even for smaller programs or the organization’s annual walk event, data entry was time consuming for Sarah. For the Cars for Homes vehicle donation program, which generates 5-20 gifts each month, Sarah had to manually key in donor names, phone numbers, addresses, and record information for accurate reporting. Similarly, workplace giving programs and online fundraising campaigns generated data in systems like Benevity and GoFundMe Pro that also needed manual processing. Extensive manual entry introduced a risk of human error, while the significant time investment in data entry reduced opportunities to engage donors and fully utilize Raiser’s Edge.
I was manually entering phone numbers, names, amounts—all of it. That data entry took me a couple hours once a month.
Sarah Herrle
Disconnected Platforms Created Gaps in Constituent Records
Greater Cleveland Habitat uses Civic Champs as its volunteer management platform and integrated it with Raiser’s Edge CRM. However, out of concern that syncing would overwrite carefully collected donor addresses and contact information, the integration had been left inactive for over a year and a half. As a result, valuable volunteer data, including emergency contacts, T-shirt sizes, organizational affiliations, existed only in Civic Champs and was missing from Raiser’s Edge, continuing to limit a holistic approach.
Solution
After recommendations from fellow Habitat affiliates Sarah made the case to her leadership team to purchase Omatic Cloud. The platform addressed each of their core challenges directly.
Automated, Scalable Gift and Donor Data Transfers
Omatic Cloud accepts any Excel or CSV file and maps it directly into Raiser’s Edge NXT, making it possible to map, transform, and route hundreds of donors, gifts, and registrations in minutes rather than days. Sarah built dedicated formulas for each of Greater Cleveland Habitat’s programs, including the monthly fundraising program, Cars for Homes, events, and workplace giving programs through Benevity or Fidelity Charitable, so that data from any system makes its way into the CRM, efficiently and in the proper format. What once took hours of manual entry now takes 5 to 10 minutes per program.
Built-In Data Transformation and Duplicate Prevention
Omatic Cloud’s transformation tools automatically clean and standardize incoming data before it ever enters Raiser’s Edge. Capitalization rules ensure names are formatted correctly, removing the headaches inconsistent casing and all-caps entries. Custom batch numbers can be configured for each import, and every record can be reviewed before it posts, giving Sarah confidence in the data without slowing down the process. The platform’s duplicate detection also flags potential duplicates, so existing constituent records are updated rather than recreated.
After hearing about [Omatic Cloud] from other Habitat for Humanity affiliates, we got a demo and immediately could see it was going to be user-friendly. It addressed our concerns about duplicate records. It did nearly all the data cleanup I was doing myself. And because it’s any Excel or CSV file to Raiser’s Edge, the opportunities were endless.
Sarah Herrle
Results
Since onboarding Omatic Cloud, Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity has seen measurable improvements in capturing data in Raiser’s Edge, staff capacity, and donor engagement.
600+ Monthly Donors Now Receive Personalized Outreach
Finally, donors who give through the organization’s monthly fundraising program are entered into Raiser’s Edge NXT as complete records. This means they now receive newsletters, event invitations, and communications that reflect Greater Cleveland Habitat’s local mission. Donors who were previously invisible to the organization are now active donors in its community and are more likely to become long-term supporters.
10+ Hours Saved Per Month, Allowing for the Launch of a New Stewardship Program
With hours of manual data entry eliminated each month, Sarah was able to redirect her time toward more mission-critical work. This year, the affiliate launched the Builder’s Circle, a formal donor stewardship program with tiered giving levels. Working with the development team, Sarah updates donor profiles and creates lists by giving levels to send welcome packages and engage major donors. This program would have been much more challenging to launch in the days when Sarah had to process gift records by hand.
A Complete, Trustworthy Constituent Database
Omatic Cloud has fundamentally changed how Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity’s team relates to its data. Volunteer records are now unified with donor records. Contact information is clearly sourced and never overwritten without intention. Constituent codes are applied consistently, giving staff a full picture of each person’s relationship with the organization. And because Omatic Cloud’s transformations and duplicate detection run automatically, data hygiene is built into the workflow, not added as an afterthought.
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