The Ocean Institute

The Ocean Institute Enhances Volunteer and Constituent Communications with the Help of Blackbaud® NetCommunity™

The Ocean Institute has become nationally known for its hands-on marine science, environmental education, and maritime history programs. More than 110,000 K–12 students and 8,000 teachers annually participate in the Institute’s 61 award-winning, immersion-style programs. To learn about oceanography, science, and California history, students voyage onto the ocean, study in labs, and live aboard tall ships or in the chaparral, where they can feel and taste the salty sea spray, sort through live specimens, observe migrating whales, collect scientific data, and investigate the culture and world around them.

The Challenge:

• The Ocean Institute had a customized database that wasn’t working and made pulling information extremely difficult.
• The Institute wanted to send out more personalized communications to its various constituents.
• The Institute wanted to be able to handle event registration, membership transactions, and donations online in a way that will automatically update its database.

The Solution:

• The Ocean Institute selected Blackbaud NetCommunity to maintain its website.
• With Blackbaud NetCommunity, the Institute is able to send well-designed e-communications and track the open and click-through rates.
• Additionally, the organization is able to enhance communications with its 400 volunteers using Blackbaud NetCommunity as an
  online portal to post information and encourage volunteer managers to share ideas and successes conveniently in a web interface.

The Results:

• The Institute has an average email clickthrough rate of 30–40 percent.
• The Institute has been able to save valuable time when gathering necessary information from its database.
• Additionally, the Ocean Institute is able to design better e-communications based on the reporting and tracking data available in Blackbaud NetCommunity.