Seattle Aquarium Society

Seattle Aquarium Society Increases Donations with Blackbaud® NetCommunity™

The Seattle Aquarium Society is the official nonprofit fundraising support organization for the Seattle Aquarium. The Aquarium’s mission is to inspire conservation of our marine environment. The Society conducts annual fundraising events including an auction and golf event to support the mission of the aquarium. Additionally, the Seattle Aquarium Society supports and manages the Aquarium’s membership program.

The Challenge:
In 2006, the Seattle Aquarium was getting ready to open its newly expanded facility and the Seattle Aquarium Society wanted to be able to offer members an exclusive pre-opening tour. The Society spearheads membership relationships and management and needed a simple, quick, and effective way to enable members to sign up for events like the tour and collect member information.


The Solution:
A long-time user of The Raiser’s Edge®, the Seattle Aquarium Society found the integration between The Raiser’s Edge and Blackbaud® NetCommunity™ an ideal fit. Blackbaud NetCommunity provided the solutions the organization needed with the added bonus of storing all the information gathered from their website in The Raiser’s Edge.

The organization uses the events module it purchased with Blackbaud NetCommunity to enable constituents to sign up for tours and fundraising events. This was the primary reason why the organization was seeking a new website solution, but since implementing Blackbaud NetCommunity, they have discovered many other benefits.

As the Society learned more about the robust functionality and flexibility of Blackbaud NetCommunity, it has been able to offer more content online without compromising the specific information to unauthorized viewers. For example, the Society has been able to set up a section of its website for members and a section for board members.

Beyond the ability to limit access to certain parts of the site, the organization has also found the email functionality in Blackbaud NetCommunity to be an excellent marketing tool. The Society now does monthly e-newsletters to members and is looking to expand its use of the email functionality to send targeted announcements to members.

The Results:
Serious was astounded at the depth of functionality and growth opportunity that comes with Blackbaud NetCommunity. “There is so much in [Blackbaud] NetCommunity, and I know we aren’t using it all. Plus, since The Raiser’s Edge and [Blackbaud] NetCommunity are so easy to use, we are able to do a lot of stuff that we couldn’t before. I really think that the functionality in NetCommunity will be a key driver pushing us to do more online and enhance our member acquisition efforts,” she said.

“Using the tracking and data gathered from [Blackbaud] NetCommunity, we are able to track which of our constituents are most interested in certain things and which are not. Because of this, we have been more successful by targeting those members that are active as opposed to doing a mass mailing or phone campaigns, which weren’t successful. We were able to increase donations by approximately 25 percent using targeted emails,” said Serious.

And it wasn’t just with monthly e-newsletters that the Society found success. The organizations annual Christmastime gift membership sales have steadily increased since the organization began using email to send targeted communication. According to Serious, the first year the organization sent emails about gift certificates sales went from approximately 30 to 40 to well over a 100. Overall gift certificates sales have increased each year from 35 – 40 three years ago to 375 last year.