Doubles Impact and Streamlines Fundraising

Powerful Integrations

Tim says Raiser’s Edge NXT also provided Mercy Health Foundation with a platform that could easily and seamlessly integrate with other fundraising and marketing software currently being used by the organisation.

“At the moment, we use a separate email marketing platform and third-party fundraising platform. The fact that Raiser’s Edge NXT integrates so easily with these platforms was a huge selling point for us”, he explains.

“In our previous database, people would unsubscribe from our lists, and then we’d have to manually export those lists and import them back into the database. Raiser’s Edge NXT does all of that for us automatically, which saves a lot of time, and means we’ve always got the most up-to-date data at any given moment.”

Why Mercy Health Foundation Chose Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT

Tim Nelson joined Mercy Health Foundation in 2021 as Marketing and Communications Manager, and it didn’t take long for him to identify that a change in database was critical for helping the organisation fulfill its mission.

“Mercy Health Foundation is all about connecting donors to the causes they care about the most. We needed a fit-for-purpose platform that would help us communicate much more effectively with past patients, philanthropists, high net worth individuals, and families who want to give back to healthcare.”

Tim says the organisation ultimately chose Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT for its range of industry-specific features, including access to powerful donor insights, intuitive reporting options, and much more.

“While the existing system had lots of options that would be useful in a corporate environment, we really needed a platform that was optimised for nonprofits”, Tim says.

Fit-For-Purpose Database and Integrations

One of Tim’s key priorities when bringing on Raiser’s Edge NXT was to clean up and simplify the organisation’s database, which had become complicated and difficult to manage for his small team. He says: “In the past, we were working in an overly complex database environment which made it difficult for the team to access useful data.

“One of the reasons I chose Raiser’s Edge NXT was that it allows anyone from our team to jump into and be able to pull a report regardless of their previous database experience.”

Effective Reporting and Donor Insights

According to Tim, all members of the team at Mercy Health Foundation – from the CEO through to the fundraising team and beyond – rely on the in-built reporting capabilities of Raiser’s Edge NXT, which have proven both powerful and easy to use.

“In the past, reporting on appeals would take one person a couple of days. The first time we ran an appeal start to finish with Raiser’s Edge NXT, it took us about 45 minutes to pull the same reports.”

Tim says some of other the ways the organisation currently uses Raiser’s Edge NXT’s reporting capabilities include:

• Acquisition and retention reports that provide “a better understanding of how well we’re acquiring and retaining new and existing donors”.

• Insights and data on lapsed donors to help the Foundation “effectively re-engage donors who may have dropped off in the past”.

• Gaining a better understanding of past patients to “improve how we communicate with them, look for ways to enhance their journey with us, and track the success of campaigns”.

Customisable Donation Forms in Minutes

The ability to easily design and deploy custom donation forms in Raiser’s Edge NXT has been a huge time saver for Mercy Health Foundation. Tim says the in-built form designer means it no longer requires hours or days to setup, test, and embed forms that communicate with the Raiser’s Edge NXT database.

“Now all it takes is a couple of minutes to create new online donation forms for different fundraising areas, different appeals, and different events. The process of embedding the donation form into other websites is also just a couple of clicks. It’s all really, really simple and easy to use”.

Higher Engagement Through Onboarding Journeys

One of the most effective tools for nurturing relationships with new donors is through personalised email journeys.

Tim and his team are currently developing a number of new journeys that can be delivered via Raiser’s Edge NXT’s in-built email functionality or through integrated third-party software.

“Building connections with donors is so important. Raiser’s Edge NXT offers us a range of options for sending personalised email journeys and tracking subscriber activity, which gives greater visibility over donor behaviour, and provides extremely useful insights for improving current and future campaigns”.

Saving Time and Money with the Events Module

Mercy Health Foundation run a couple of major events every year, as well as a handful of smaller donor-centric events. Tim says they are now making the most of the many features within Raiser’s Edge NXT’s Events module, which has helped to cut costs and save time.

“The Events module has been great for us to get an understanding of who’s been invited to what event, who actually attended, and how we’re tracking against budget.  We’ve always used third-party event management systems that incur fees. So it’s a big cost saving for us to reduce the amount of fees that we’re paying in event registration admin.”

Growing Into the Future with Raiser’s Edge NXT

From powerful database and reporting options, through to a range of cost- cutting and time-saving features, Raiser’s Edge NXT has already provided a number of significant benefits for Mercy Health Foundation.

However, Tim says their journey as an organisation is only just beginning, and they are excited about growing into the future with Raiser’s Edge NXT:

“Our goal is to double our yearly income within the next two years”, he explains. “Thanks to all of the features within Raiser’s Edge NXT, and the insights the database provides us on our donors, past patients, contacts, suppliers, and friends of the foundation, we believe we can achieve that goal.”