Through nonprofit technology grant program, Accenture volunteer team identified and implemented crucial software solution, helping improve life in West Charlotte
Sponsored by Accenture
The West Boulevard Neighborhood Coalition is a 501(c)3 nonprofit community-driven organization in Charlotte’s West Boulevard corridor. West Boulevard is one of Charlotte’s primary western corridors and serves as the commercial center for established neighborhoods to its north and south. The corridor is a community of over 13,000 residents, united by a powerful desire for an inclusive, sustainable, better way of life; where neighbors are empowered, rather than limited by beginnings.
The goal of the WBNC is to ensure that collective efforts involve local residents, churches, community organizations and businesses in the West Boulevard corridor and that these efforts are beneficial to the economic development, education and health outcomes for the residents of the West Boulevard corridor.
WBNC applied for Charlotte’s 2023 Mission Possible Award because they are growing, and have a need to improve their systems and the way they track and interact with donors and other constituents. As an organization with limited staff and staff capacity, having a streamlined data management system will improve the efficiency of their overall operations, thus, increasing their ability to raise more capital to support other initiatives. Moreover, a singular donor and people management software system will relieve the organization from the need expend vital resources on acquiring additional storage space.
As the winners of the 2023 Mission Possible Award in Charlotte, WBNC partnered with an Accenture skilled volunteer team to assess their current state of managing donors and constituents to identify and document business requirements for a donor and people management system. Following the assessment, the team scheduled and attended vendor demos and evaluated potential solutions, empowering WBNC to make the best decision for their organization. Finally, along with identifying a software solution, volunteers assisted with implementing the program.
With a new system in place to manage donors and people, WBNC anticipates many positive outcomes. The team is looking forward to increased communication with existing donors, the potential for opportunities engaging with new donors, and the ability to widely disseminate information and spread their mission across a large population of people. Additionally, WBNC hopes to experience increased overall community engagement and connection, and a greater ability to drive and sustain revenue. Read more about the original project here.
- Volunteer Team – Accenture:
- Michael Turner, Ankur Singh, Michael Flanagan, Simon Pfister
- Nonprofit Team – WBNC: Sharika Comfort, Elliott Royal
One year after the project was completed we met with Elliott Royal, now Intermin Executive Director, to check in on the sustained impact of our work together. She shared that the use of Bloomerang has significantly supported the fundraising efforts of their organization, including the Three Sisters coop capital campaign. They are successfully using Bloomerang for donor communications and tracking and look forward to using more features to cultivate donors, for in-kind donations and for volunteer management.
Key features of Bloomerang make it much more effective than PayPal (the tool they were using for past fundraising). They are taking advantage of ability to:
- Use UTMs (unique URLs which identify the source), which are very helpful in knowing where to apply funds and which sources to credit
- Copywrite more descriptively, building their brand and inspiring donors with on-mission language
- Create donor and sponsor tiers, so that they can tailor campaigns and benefits at different levels
- Gain free fundraising education from the Bloomerang library and webinars
Elliott shares, “The support of this project was fundamental to getting us this far in our campaign. We are well on our way to being a community-owned and led food co-op. We wouldn’t be here if we were doing as much manually as we had been before our work together.
“Your help to select Bloomerang and provide technical support galvanized our use of the platform, and that is so valuable. If we were doing it on our own, it would be easy to say that it’s not worth the effort or that we just don’t have the time. Your team’s assistance in selecting and vetting the best platform for us created opportunities for us to expand our donor services.”
“We’ve grown from very grassroots fundraising, with just 2-3 recurring donors, with little engagement from us, to having a real, formalized donation strategy with more than 440 co-op member-owners.”
“With so much funding being eliminated, optimizing your capacity is critical. When we began working with Apparo and Accenture, we didn’t have a formal fundraising strategy, so having their subject matter expertise was so important. It helped me expand my understanding of the importance of donor relations and donor management platforms. I’m able to be more of an Executive Director and understand the importance of donations and fundraising because of working with the Apparo and Accenture team.”
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