Bank of America supported BlazeSports America by identifying Charityproud as a sustainable solution for tracking and managing nonprofit data, and as a result of this integration the nonprofit anticipates saving 180-200 hours annually.
Sponsored by Bank of America
BlazeSports America is the legacy of the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games. Their mission aims to change the lives of youth and veterans with disabilities through adaptive sports and recreation. BlazeSports serves youth, veterans, and active military with disabilities including spina bifida, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, dwarfism, amputations, and visual impairments, as well as veterans with PTSD and PTS. They offer programs that provide member participants the opportunity to increase physical activity, create new friendships, develop new skills, increase independence, and experience success in school and employment.
BlazeSports came to Apparo utilizing multiple stand-alone tools to track and manage data. These tools lacked integration and required a lot of manual data-management processes, increasing the risk of missing, duplicated, and obsolete data. The organization wanted to improve processes for donors, members, volunteer management, fundraising activities, and event registration. Originally, they attempted to use Neon One and wanted to know if it would fit their needs.
Sponsored by Bank of America, Apparo paired BlazeSports with a team of dedicated skilled volunteers. During their Community Impact Project they determined Neon One did not meet BlazeSports’ needs, and they began demos of many other products, until they identified Charityproud as the donor management tool that could meet all of BlazeSports’ needs.
BlazeSports Nonprofit Team: Dawn Churi
Skilled Volunteer Team: Belinda Myers, Jerome Stone, Pavan Morab, Roja Ravuri, Laura Phyu Sin, Ashwani Chandnani, Remya Durairasu, Selina Almasarwah, Sai Mandapaka
Dawn Churi shared her thoughts with Apparo after the completion of the nonprofit data management project.
Charityproud will consolidate five different systems into one. Because BlazeSports had previously been using different systems, they had been dependent on manual reporting, and with Charityproud, they will now have automated reports. This will increase BlazeSports efficiency. Dawn anticipates saving between 180-200 hours per year due to this integration. The time savings can be used to further reach more constituents and get them more involved in their community-building activities.
During this community impact project, Dawn emphasized how veterans often feel lonely. She said BlazeSports puts a lot of emphasis on having their members participate in events. Freeing up staff time to touch a veteran’s life is so important.
Dawn shared, “We can get 1000 people to join and become members. That’s meaningless if they’re not coming to the programs and being part of the community. It’s a mission without purpose.”
BlazeSports also anticipates significantly improving their data health and reducing risk to their constiuents by reducing duplicated, outdated, and incorrect data sets. Dawn stated that when you are using multiple systems sometimes one forgets to delete data in one system versus the other. When someone asks them now how many donors they have, they will feel confident by being able to pull one report, instead of having to aggregate data from four systems. Dawn also stated this will reduce spam violations by removing communications (when donors or members) opt-out from one single source, instead of having to remember to go to multiple software systems to opt-out constituents.
Dawn also sees a reduction in future costs by incorporating the cost of Constant Contact into CharityProud. Initially, BlazeSports cost to implement CharityProud will increase, however this is a investment in technology Churi is willing and has been wanting to make for the last four years to encourage the growth of BlazeSports in a sustainable way.
Nonprofit Data efficiency leads to increased capacity.
Dawn shared she loves the built-in touchpoints with CharityProud. One of the biggest aspects of BlazeSports is the community, and she likes how CharityProud sends auto-emails to remind veterans of events to attend. She feels this will greatly help their mission.
The Bank of America volunteers shared their experience during the wrap-up.
Belinda Myers shared, “I would like to say this volunteer experience was truly enjoyable for me as I had the chance to combine a charity experience with career interests. Virtual volunteering allowed me to put in as much time as I wanted to, which was easy to do, especially know I was putting my efforts toward an incredible cause. It was really wonderful being introduced to Dawn Churi and BlazeSports as well as learning more about nonprofits. Apparo was a great partner. They helped us navigate the volunteer project and ensured we understood the assignment. I would love to volunteer again.”
Jerry Stone said, “I really appreciated the opportunity to work on this project. It was exciting to learn about BlazeSports and what they do for their members and volunteers. Working with Apparo I felt like I was working on finding a solution for my own company. Everyone was great to work with and I’m glad to know we recommended a solution that BlazeSports agrees with.”
In conclusion, Dawn feels CharityProud will increase BlazeSports’ efficiency and allow them to better serve their donors. “Thank you doesn’t seem like enough. Without the help of the Bank of America volunteers and Apparo, we might be working with outdated technology systems for the next two years. With increased efficiency, we can now focus more on bringing our youth and veterans into the heart of our programs. This improvement allows us to spend more time supporting both groups, making sure they know they are active and valued members of our BlazeSports community. This project and its outcome are directly aligned with our mission, helping us better serve those we’re here for, and truly enhancing the impact of our programs.”
