When Andy Schroeder was hired as the director of development for Sisters of Charity, the organization was using a one-size-fits-all approach for its annual appeal, asking all donors to contribute the same amount each year. Because Andy came from an organization that used Raiser’s Edge® with Blackbaud Target Analytics®, he pushed for Sisters of Charity to be more strategic with its fundraising, using data to make decisions and drive donor behavior.

After reaching out to Blackbaud, Sisters of Charity made the move to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®, the cloud software company’s flagship fundraising and relationship management solution.

Introducing Intelligence for Good

Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT comes with built-in artificial intelligence and data analytics powered by SKY AI™ and SKY Analytics™. These industry-leading capabilities are the market’s first comprehensive intelligence that’s optimized for people and organizations working for good.

Once implemented, Sisters of Charity focused first on updating its database, running its 90,000 donor records through AddressFinder™, an analytics service provided to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT customers. The tool uncovered 2,600 records marked as “lost” and automatically updated them. This gave Sisters of Charity an additional 2,600 contacts for its annual appeal—an increase of nearly 10%!

After sending the annual appeal, many donations came in from contacts who hadn’t given to Sisters of Charity in 10 or 15 years. One “lost” donor who responded to the appeal had not made a contribution in 22 years! “These analytics capabilities allowed us to not only find those individuals,” Andy explained, “But re-engage them beyond a giving capacity.”

An Annual Appeal Overhaul

With a freshly updated database, Sisters of Charity used the Wealth Analytics capabilities in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT to improve its annual appeal strategy. Instead of asking every donor to continue giving the same amount, Sisters of Charity made a specific ask of each donor based on his or her capacity to give. Powered by SKY AI and SKY Analytics, these predictive analytics capabilities come fully embedded in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT.

“We were asking for the same amount of money every year and people were just giving that amount,” Andy said. “All it took was for us to increase our ask amount based on the Wealth Rating™ for each donor.”

Using the insights powered by SKY AI and SKY Analytics, Sisters of Charity raised over 68% more than the previous year—using the exact same donor base. Even more impressively, the average gift amount increased by more than 60% per donor.

“I attribute the increase in our average gift amount to the Intelligence for Good capabilities embedded in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT,” Andy reiterated. “Without it, we would have raised around the same amount as we did the previous year.”

Focusing on the Right Donors

Sisters of Charity also wanted to develop more meaningful donor portfolios. Using the prescriptive insights generated by SKY AI and SKY Analytics in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, the organization can determine which donors it should be paying more attention to, specifically those who have the capacity to give more than they currently are.

“Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT helps us create a strategy and guide our donor relationships in the direction we want them to go without being overbearing,” Andy explains. “It has allowed us to prioritize, set goals, set reminders, and help run this program from all aspects.”

Using this data-driven approach, Sisters of Charity has focused extra effort on keeping up with those supporters who have not increased their gift size yet but are most likely to do so.

Making More Good Happen Faster

With an annual operating fund of about $1.5 million, Sisters of Charity provides basic clothing, food, shelter, and healthcare needs for the Sisters and also raises money for the less fortunate. Adding another $200,000 on top of that through the annual appeal is already making a significant impact on increasing the organization’s mission work around the world.

Andy summarized, “When you look at the increased fundraising revenue from a percentage standpoint, it means we can do all of the great work that we did last year and increase that by 20% because of one successful campaign.”

Additionally, Sisters of Charity’s Mission and Ministry fund provides scholarships to young adults to continue their Catholic education. With the increase in money raised using Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, Sisters of Charity has been able to increase the number of scholarships it gives each year while simultaneously increasing the scholarship amount. The additional financial resources have helped Sisters of Charity add nine more scholarships, helping to honor scholarship requests from almost every applicant.

Andy looks forward to watching Sisters of Charity flourish with help from the market’s only AI and Analytics capabilities optimized for good: “With Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, we are just scratching the surface of what’s possible for our organization. I am very excited about what’s to come!”