iWave’s Ease of Use and Adoptability Helped Implement Streamlined Processes at San Diego Repertory Theatre

Background:

San Diego Repertory Theatre is downtown San Diego’s resident professional theatre. With three stages and multiple art galleries, they are a mid-sized theatre company that produces provocative and intimate plays in the heart of downtown San Diego. During the Covid-19 pandemic San Diego Repertory Theatre made the switch to digital renditions of their performances to keep their patrons engaged.

Challenge:

Communication and routine operations within the department are some of the biggest challenges for the theatre. Doug Oliphant, Campaign Director, was brought in to streamline fundraising communications. Old processes made for wasted opportunities due to not leveraging up-to-date donor information. Uninformed asks were made when gift officers didn’t have the full picture of a donor’s capacity. “We didn’t have a system in place for all the steps in moves management. Steps such as prospect identification, categorization, next action, and who they are assigned to did not exist. We didn’t have the right tools
nor processes in place to bring new donors into our pipeline and strategically advance those who already were.” says Doug.

Solution:

With previous fundraising solutions, San Diego Rep was getting a limited scope of who their donors are. Their two previous solutions only gave them a snapshot of wealth capacity, which isn’t the most important aspect of a donor for them. Oliphant shared “They weren’t using their data or previous fundraising solutions in a way that would be leverageable in a multi-segment campaign outreach. With iWave, San Diego Rep is receiving actionable information faster, which makes a marked difference in our efforts. With iWave, we are able to implement new processes as well as increase awareness into their current donors and prospective donors. The ease of use, adaptability, and top-tier support within iWave has led those who were stuck in old ways and old processes to make the switch easily and swiftly.”

Scoring prospects and donors with iWave has been a valuable feature for Doug and his team. Being able to adjust how much weight is given to capacity, propensity, and affinity means the scores reflect what that means for your organization. “I don’t know why that hadn’t been the system that always existed, every org, every nonprofit is so different that you need to find the right metric that works for you.” said Doug. Diving into iWave’s broad datasets allows them to dig deeper and ask more targeted questions. “There are so many windows and ways you can look at what makes a good prospect, iWave having different data partnerships allows us to see prospects through different lenses. We love how robust and easy-to-use iWave is!”