Now includes 12-month follow up below.
Bank of America skilled volunteers conducted a software donor selection project with Dottie Rose Foundation to identify the best tool for their nonprofit.
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!”
Impact Update:
In 2020, Bank of America skilled volunteers embarked on an application selection Community Impact Project with Dottie Rose Foundation and Apparo. Since the completion of this project, Dottie Rose has been able to save over 360 hours in staff time, allowing staff to focus on serving and funding their mission.
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 June 2020, Dottie Rose knew they needed a new donor management software solution in order to support their tremendous growth. Their leadership team wanted to work more efficiently managing, tracking, reporting and communicating with current and potential donors and hoped to eliminate tracking data manually in Excel. Apparo matched them with a corporate volunteer team from Bank of America, who also generously also sponsored the project.
The volunteer team helped Dottie Rose select a new donor management tool, Kindful, that has made a huge impact at the organization. The staff estimates they have saved over 30 hours a month after implementing the new tool. Dottie Rose Executive Director, Jillian Klingberg, shared, ” Having Kindful to manage donor data has taken steps out of my daily work. It is so fantastic! I have a lot more time to meet with potential sponsors.” Having more sponsors allows Dottie Rose to serve more girls and that is just what they have accomplished over the last year. Dottie Rose has plans for 2 new 10-week after school programs this spring and will be expanding to Greenville, SC where they will hold workshops and a summer camp. Dottie Rose anticipates serving an additional 60 girls, an increase of about 60% from the 100 girls they serve today. They also were able to increase scholarships from 65% to 85% over the last year making their important programs even more accessible to all girls.
In addition to the Community Impact Project, as a part of Apparo’s Tech Therapy program Dottie Rose was gifted 10 laptops which were donated by Compass Group. These laptops were all used this summer during their camps. Klingberg shared, “Most of the girls we worked with over the summer came from Title I schools and did not have their own computers. Having the laptops donated by Apparo meant each girl was able to have the computer they needed for the camp.”
Learn more about the Compass Group laptop donation
Apparo is excited to hear about Dottie Rose Foundation’s continued success and we look forward to seeing how they continue to impact the lives of girls near and far.
