Dottie Rose Foundation focuses on closing the gender gap for females in technology and computer sciences, connecting the dots within the technology and computer science sphere to educate, support, and inspire the next generation. Their camps offer hands-on experiential learning, so kids can develop the skill set they need and explore the areas of technology that excite them the most. 

In order to support their tremendous organization growth, Dottie Rose Foundation leadership wanted to work more efficiently managing, tracking, reporting and communicating with current and potential donors. They hope to reduce the manual effort  of reporting, be able to collect and track a wide range of data and have capabilities to understand donor trends and other key analytics.  Apparo matched them with a corporate volunteer team from Bank of America, who also generously sponsored this project.  The team assessed their current fundraising processes, conducted market research, helped them evaluate options and make the best selection for their organization. As a result of this project, Dottie Rose leadership chose Kindful as their donor management solution. See PDF of Project Snapshot.

As the project wrapped up we connected with Dottie Rose leadership, Dr. Sharon Jones (Founder) and Jillian Klingberg (Executive Director), and Bank of America volunteers to learn about the anticipated impact of implementing Kindful.

Sharon explained the importance of this work. “The issue is growth. We have grown tremendously over the past 3 years. Originally, it was easy to manage our data with our manual processes, but over the past 2 years we have quadrupled in size, in terms of budget and reach, and we need a way to manage and merge our data so that we can monitor it efficiently.”

Dottie Rose’s new donor management tool is anticipated to save considerable time and increase fundraising revenue.

Jillian explains Kindful features will not only strengthen fundraising efforts, but also free time to dedicate to additional fundraising. “Today, for my fundraising work, I do a lot of manual data entry and often have to search through multiple data sources for information that I need. Kindful will save me many steps and a lot of time. I’m expecting to save at least 20 hours a month.” Jillian shares that she’ll be able to put this extra time to work on more fundraising efforts, including applying for more grants.

Improved donor communications are anticipated to drive increased donations, says Jillian. “Kindful’s reporting and other tools, like text-to-give and automated notices are going to make a huge difference. We’ll be able to reach more people and remind them that we are still here. With Kindful it will be easy to execute campaigns based on donor behavior and prior year’s giving. That would be incredibly time consuming for me now.”

Freed time and increased revenue will help Dottie Rose increase their reach and impact.

“The more time I have to be out and about, developing relationships, the more I can fundraise, which means more money coming into the foundation, allowing us to serve more girls and give more scholarships to girls who would not normally have access to this education. We would like to be able to be 100% scholarship based and Kindful will set us up to be able to do that.” explains Jillian.

She shares that they are also hoping to expand into new areas:

• Semester long virtual programs – allowing them to serve and build their name nationally
• An educational app
• Camp-in-a-box, licensed curriculum

Sharon shared the exciting news that because of the work that this volunteer initiative took off of her plate, she has been able to dedicate more time to cultivating partnerships. This has already paid off in grant support from AvidXChange and MeckEd, which has enabled them to launch a new program, providing robotics and coding education for 25 girls. “We were able to proceed with confidence, knowing that we had Bank of America on our team, ensuring we would have the right platform to meet the data demands of this new funding.”

Project team members shared their appreciation for each other and the Community Impact Project Process.

Bella-Giavanni Williams, Volunteer, Bank of America – “I do projects like this on a daily basis at work and it makes me feel so good that I can take those skills and use them for the good of the community. I appreciate being a part of this project and I  know this is going to create more growth. I am so happy to be a part of this impact.”

Joni Adams, Volunteer Bank of America – “You have been fabulous partners. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to work with you. We have so enjoyed this process, the partnership and the opportunity to work with you.”

Dr. Sharon Jones, Dottie Rose Foundation – “It was all so well done and our time was so well spent. The way that you managed our time, Bella, everything was always ready to go when we got on a call. We were able to move through the options with ease.

Jillian Klingberg, Dotte Rose Foundation – “The process was incredibly smooth and painless! Allison did an amazing job keeping the team on track. We loved the spreadsheet with all the donor software options from Bank of America and all the details for each, it was a wonderful reference point throughout the project. Both Apparo and BoA asked all the right questions to understand what exactly we were looking for in a donor software. We would highly recommend working with Apparo and Bank of America!”

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT https://www.apparo.org/dottie-rose-foundation-crm-application-selection/