Charlotte Rescue Mission anticipates saving 494 hours annually with implementation of new donation processing software application.
Founded in 1938, the Charlotte Rescue Mission (CRM) has a long history of reaching out to the homeless and those battling addictions. They provide cost-free, faith-based residential recovery programs that help people struggling with the disease of addition to achieve long-term sobriety, financial stability, stable housing, and to build healthy relationships. CRM leadership reached out to Apparo for help with finding a donation processing software to process donor checks.
Background and Participants
Apparo matched CRM to a skilled volunteer team from Duke Energy. The team studied CRM’s existing manual processes for documenting check donations within their donor database, Virtuous. After reviewing the internal donation processes and comparing products, Duke Energy volunteers and CRM employees chose AQ2 as the solution.
Duke Energy volunteers: Matt Wiseman, Josh Glassberg and Greg Stock
Charlotte Rescue Mission: Sharon Bremer, Lea Love, Laura Krug, and Ryan Clowers
Anticipated Result of Donation Software Implementation
Due to the implementation of AQ2, CRM anticipates a significant time-savings. Ryan Clowers, the Development Database Coordinator, indicated during peak season (October – December), donation processing may be reduced by 1.5 hours a day. Annualized, and accounting for reductions in donation processing throughout the year, Clowers anticipates saving 234 hours annually in the development department alone. In addition, the Accounting Department may see a reduction of 260 hours annually, resulting in a total time savings of 494 hours. When asked what they would do with this time savings, Clowers laughed and said, “There’s never nothing to do.” With the extra time, he will focus more on report-running and developing strategic best practices for database implementations.
Donor Satisfaction and Cost Reduction
Nonprofit participants, Lea Love, Sharon Bremer, and Laura Krug, believe the donation processing software, AQ2, will increase donor satisfaction. Bremer indicated with the freed time they can bring back some important donor programs, such as the Alumni Phone Call Program. They can also honor first-time donors, because Laura will have more time to make thank-you phone calls. They would like to expand their honor and memorial programs too. Bremer said they believe the freed-up time and outreach will help them increase their donations and achieve their 10% growth goal. Also, because the software searches and eliminates duplicates, they will be able to reduce multiple mailings. Data integrity will not only help with donor satisfaction, but it will reduce the cost of unnecessary mailings as well. Love said she anticipates the implementation lowering cost by reducing the need for temporary personnel. Usually during the end-of-the-year, CRM hires temporary staff to help process the donations. Because of the times-savings, they may not need to do this.
Love shared, “We really do appreciate the help of Apparo and the Duke volunteers. None of us would have had the time or background to do the research they did. They were able to move the project forward. Thank you for letting us use your knowledge.”
In Conclusion
Due to the significant times-savings provided by the implementation of the donation processing system, CRM anticipates increasing donor satisfaction and reducing cost. An increase in donor satisfaction may lead them to be able to expand their programming to help even more people in our community. “We work a lot on ‘being innovative’ in our jobs, which includes the idea of talking directly with those you will impact. This experience reinforced the validity of that concept. Our gracious partners at Charlotte Rescue Mission invited us in and allowed us to witness the problem we were solving. They even took the time to show us around their facility to infuse us with a great sense of why we are doing this. Thank you Apparo for putting us together,” Greg Stock, skilled volunteer from Duke Energy shared of his experience. Skilled volunteer Matt Wiseman also shared, “It was an honor working with Charlotte Rescue Mission which does such important work in our community. The team was a pleasure to work with. We ended up with a great solution after learning from other rescue missions.”
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