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Avera Foundation Increases Online Giving and Grows Supporters With Classy and Omatic
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Mission
Make a positive impact in the lives and health of individuals and communities by providing quality services guided by Christian values
Challenge
Gain a comprehensive understanding of donors’ giving histories, identify supporters’ propensities to give, and create more visually appealing donation pages that inspire people to take action
Solution
Adopt Classy and its seamless solution with Omatic to offer donors a more streamlined, personalized giving experience backed by data
Without Classy, we wouldn’t have been able to connect our mission and story, engage donors, or reach our fundraising goals.
– Elijah Bonde, Manager, Community Giving
Giving Tuesday 2022 Results:
$192k
raised
128%
raised of the goal
12%
YoY increase in online giving
The Avera Foundation provides meaningful opportunities to support health and healing in the upper Midwest, currently serving the states of South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Whether donor contributions come in the form of monetary gifts, supplies, or volunteer hours, the Avera Foundation uses them to their fullest to extend, enhance, and enrich the lives of those in their communities.
The Power of an Integrated Tech Stack
Ahead of the 2022 giving season, the Avera Foundation knew certain components of their tech stack weren’t cutting it if they wanted to reach their ambitious fundraising goals.
Their top priority was to find a fundraising platform that allowed them to remain closely connected with supporters between events and campaigns and keep in steady contact with their community throughout the rest of the year. Classy made it easy for supporters to give, and Omatic, a tool that helps nonprofits solve integration and data import challenges, made it easy to steward donors afterward. Together, the two solutions rounded out their robust tech stack in a way they were previously lacking.
We looked at other software, but for us, there wasn’t a competition. It was always going to be Classy.
The Biggest Giving Tuesday Yet
Giving Tuesday is a pivotal day for nonprofit fundraising. To ensure they made the most of it, Avera created a dedicated Giving Tuesday 2022 fundraising page on Classy, customized to reflect their specific goals and unique audience. With only a few months on the platform under their belts, the Avera team was excited to launch their first major Classy campaign.
Avera built a Classy crowdfunding website to amplify its “A Gift That Grows” campaign theme, connecting donations with local women’s and children’s hospitals. Their emphasis on personal storytelling helped donors establish a deeper connection to the cause, inspiring new and existing supporters to contribute one-time and recurring gifts.
Post-Giving Tuesday, Omatic made it easy for Avera to follow up with donors through segmented communications based on individual donor behavior.
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Learnings From Giving Tuesday
Avera is constantly iterating, taking the learnings from previous campaigns and implementing them into upcoming initiatives. From their Giving Tuesday campaign, the Avera team learned it’s important to:
- Know your story and tell it on every page
- Get colorful and show off your branding
- Hold onto tradition but don’t be afraid to step outside the box
- Hyper engage your donors
Avera also learned how critical it is to keep the donation process simple. What used to require nearly 10 clicks to complete a donation now only takes two or three with Classy. Donors feel like their time is being greatly valued and are less likely to drop off before completing a donation.
Applying Learnings to an Annual Event
The Avera team then took their Giving Tuesday learnings and applied them to their biggest event of the year, Race Against Cancer. Utilizing Classy’s fundraising event software, supporters could register for the race directly or cover the registration fee by fundraising on the organization’s behalf. The results far surpassed expectations and have set a new standard for their events.
Avera’s Race Against Cancer Results 2023:
$650k
raised (record-setting total for a single Avera event)
20%
YoY increase in dollars raised
31%
YoY increase in total registrations
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Following the event, Avera has the tools to more easily connect and steward supporters, thanks to Classy and Omatic. The success of the Race Against Cancer event is clear evidence of how great tech can help you raise more to do more.