Case Studies

Giving Increases by 40% Using iWave

Background:

Catholic Community Foundation, a religious-based nonprofit, seeks awareness and funds to support ministries related to Catholic education, Catholic charities, and their Seminaries. Catholic Community Foundation dedicates itself to enriching the lives of others, which comes through encouraging faithful philanthropy while providing for the spiritual, educational, and charitable needs of people throughout Northeast Ohio.

Challenge:

“Finding the adequate time and resources to proactively do prospect research is our largest challenge,” says Bob Hickey, Director of Development. Like many nonprofits, Catholic Community Foundation must balance budgetary constraints against the overall goals of the Development Department and organization as a whole. Their other challenge is “incorporating findings and interests identified within iWave into deep relationship building”. For nonprofits to cultivate donors, it’s important to start with the first donor interaction and ensure that their desired impact is being delivered and communicated.

Solution:

With iWave’s datasets, Bob’s team has access to phone numbers, home values, and email addresses, as well as having the ability to perform wealth screens. All of these elements enable the continuation of conversations and solicitation of prospective donors for Catholic Community Foundation. After starting to use iWave, the foundation’s major gift officers experienced a 40% increase in giving.

One annual project for Catholic Community Foundation is the ongoing Annual Appeal, a yearly campaign that has raised $12.5 million dollars through October of 2018. By the end of the year, it is expected that the 2018 annual appeal will exceed the record-breaking $14 million from 50,000 donors in 2017. iWave’s robust wealth and philanthropic prospect information aided in the current progress, and eventual success, of this year’s Annual Appeal.

iWave’s ability to help formulate and foster relationships continues to pay dividends for Bob and his team. With the data available, Catholic Community Foundation continues to leverage 45,000 major gift and annual fund donors five years after the campaign.

Outside of campaign management, iWave features a prominent role in Catholic Community Foundation’s day-to-day. “It’s more accurate, more user-friendly, more versatile, allows for a simple and seamless way to run profiles that can be exported and shared, and also is much easier to run an aggregate pull of donor profiles. It’s just better. I recommend iWave to everyone I speak with.”

Organization:

Catholic Community Foundation

Location:

Cleveland, OH

Industry:

Religion

Key Challenge:

Find adequate time and resources to do proactive prospect research.

Key Benefit:

iWave’s datasets and wealth screening feature allows the team work quickly and efficiently to allow more time to solicit prospective donors.

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"iWave is more accurate, more user-friendly, and more versatile. I recommend iWave to everyone I speak with."

Bob Hickey

Director of Development
Catholic Community Foundation

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