About Boyd-Buchanan School

Founded in 1952, Boyd-Buchanan School is a co-educational private Christian school located in central Chattanooga that has an impressive enrollment of over 1000+ students from PK 3 to 12th grade.

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The Problem

Starting from scratch: Building an alumni community that is inspired to give

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1. Boxes full of outdated alumni records

Boyd-Buchanan’s was tasked with setting up the alumni community from scratch. It was a daunting challenge as they had no alumni record system in place. All they had were boxes brimming with handwritten notes with names and addresses from years ago. Mark decided to refrain from manually constructing the alumni database to sidestep the inefficiency of the process and due to the significant chances of entering inaccurate data.

That's when they started searching for solutions that would enable them to gather updated information and help alumni effortlessly connect.A Dozen Endeavors With a Small Team

2. A dozen endeavors with a small team

Despite being a two-person advancement shop, the team juggled multiple projects along with the alumni community. Among them, a key focus was on expanding their fundraising programs.

While they had experience with fundraising campaigns like a pre-tournament fundraiser for their major annual golf tournament, an alumni giving day had never been ventured into.

3. Lack of a centralized platform to facilitate relationship building

The advancement team was particular that alumni shouldn't be bombarded with unnecessary gift appeals. The lack of a centralized medium to facilitate periodic conversations with alumni hindered relationship building. As a result, they sought an all-in-one solution to help them cultivate meaningful relationships with alumni while also equipping them to convert engagement into fundraising success.

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The solution

An all-in-one digital-first engagement platform optimized for complex giving campaigns

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1. Intuitive UI captures alumni attention

Boyd-Buchanan launched Almabase in 2022, primarily focusing on capturing a significant portion of their alumni on the platform. The platform's intuitive design and smooth registration experience helped capture the attention of its alumni.

2. Powerful communicaton centre makes building 1-on-1 relationships a breeze

As alumni sign-ups began, Boyd Buchanan employed various strategies to enhance visibility and attract more registrations. Initially, they leveraged word-of-mouth and social media campaigns to connect with alumni.

As registrations increased, they capitalized on the robust communication centre that comes with a drag-and-drop email builder to establish weekly touchpoints with their alumni.

3. Hassle-free event setup and world-class registration experience helps bring engaged alumni closer.

Almabase helped Boyd Buchanan streamline all event processes—from registrations to merchandise ticketing to guest communication—in one place. This allowed them to dedicate more time to curating the event than spending hours on setup.

The success of their first event, a Coffee and Donut gathering during a Home Basketball game, bolstered their confidence to organize a grander homecoming event later that fall. All the various components of Almabase came together to help Boyd Buchanan cultivate a strong rapport with their alumni and create excitement for their first-ever giving day.

Five features that catapulted Boyd Buchanan’s Giving Day success

1. Keeping the hype alive with Spaces: Boyd Buchan leveraged Spaces to create personalized content feeds through which they shared constant updates with alumni before and during the Giving Day.
2. Unlocking new audience with donor segmentation: The ability to collect custom affiliations from donors on the giving page helped Boyd Buchanan discover that parents were their largest contributing group despite not targeting them specifically. For their next giving day, Boyd Buchanan plans to expand its marketing efforts to everyone, not just alumni.
3. Leaderboards and goal thermometers: Mark believes that the Giving Day pages on Almabase beautifully balance comprehensive information with a non-overwhelming design. The leaderboards and campaign goal thermometers played a pivotal role in engaging diverse alumni groups by fostering friendly competition.
4. Streamlined gift processing with Raiser’s Edge Sync: Before adopting Almabase, Mark and his team had to manually organize and enter gifts received into Raiser's Edge NXT. Almabase lets them effortlessly sync gift data with their CRM with its granular sync rules tailor-made for Raiser’s Edge NXT.
5. Lightning-fast support on the day of Giving: Stellar setup support and rapid event-day responses eliminated any worries, especially for someone slowly getting more comfortable with technology.

Outcomes

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