Good Shepherd Centre

Good Shepherd reaches new heights with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT.

Good Shepherd is the largest provider of human and social services in the Greater Hamilton, Ontario area. Good Shepherd’s work is based on a commitment to restoring hope and dignity to the most vulnerable members of the community. Programs offered help those community members tear down barriers and establish a path to a stable, healthy life. Good Shepherd’s continuum of care includes emergency food and clothing services; daily meals; emergency shelter for men, youth, women, children, and families; education; mental health crisis support; affordable and supportive housing programs; and hospice palliative care. All services are provided free of charge and without judgment to anyone in need.

When Chief Development Officer Cathy Wellwood began working at Good Shepherd, she set a goal to expand the organization’s donor base, increase individual gift sizes, and establish more major gifts of $1,000 or more. Eleven years later, her organization has achieved all of those goals with the help of Blackbaud’s technology.

Today, Good Shepherd uses Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT™ to communicate with donors, manage volunteers, plan events, and steward donor gifts. The solution helps staff reach younger donors and makes it easier for existing donors to give online. It’s also allowing the organization to compete more effectively for donor dollars in a low-population area. “The only way we’ve been able to meet our goals is through the freedom our board gave us to
access tools like Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT. Without it, we would not have been able to accomplish them,” she shares.

By using the analytics built into Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, Cathy and Lisa Mulholland, CFRE, manager of annual giving, are able to use data to segment donors and make targeted asks. The added security of the solution allows them to restrict user access to specific roles. That means volunteers can access the database and provide administrative assistance without being able to see private donor or organizational information. This is huge for the Good Shepherd team—being able to use volunteers is critically important to its work.

After integrating Blackbaud Online Express with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, Good Shepherd increased online giving by 35%. The organization was able to drop a number of third-party providers formerly used to process gifts. Working in all of the disparate systems associated with those third parties resulted in time wasted on double data entry. Now, processing happens in a single, automated step with Blackbaud Online Express. It has allowed the organization to save a tremendous amount of time, money, and energy, and
focus on what’s important: the mission.

With Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT and its integrated cloud technology, Good Shepherd is more effective in fundraising and, in turn, more impactful in its community. Paper-based administration has been transformed, and IT troubleshooting has drastically decreased now that the database is hosted. As a result of better data and increased insight, donor engagement has improved and the fundraising team is operating from a proactive position rather than a reactive one. All of these results are evident in the work that Cathy and her team carry out every day. “Blackbaud has been flexible, accommodating, and supportive in helping us reach our goal,” she says. “And we thank them for that.”