Calgary, Alberta Canada
Human Services
Meet Two Wheel View
Two Wheel View, a Calgary, Alberta-based youth development organization, is dedicated to helping young people ages 12-14 build life and leadership skills, find a sense of belonging and purpose, and develop the skills to contribute to their greater community. The specific way they do that is through the use of bicycles!
Their largest and most well known program is their Earn-a-Bike program, a 10-week after-school program for youths grades 7-12. Each participant receives a bike, helmet, lock, toolkit, and resources to help them navigate around Calgary . During the program, they learn hands-on biking skills, bike awareness, and how to bike safely. The Earn-a-Bike program helps kids stay physically active and helps them get to school, work, or even away from unsafe spaces. This year, almost 400 young people will graduate from the program—that’s their largest class ever!
Small Team, Big Impact
Today, Istead is joined by several other full-time staff that manage everything from fundraising to programming. There are also 30 part-time employees, and they have over 100 active volunteers at any given time.
All that growth means more data to manage. At the beginning, they didn’t have much data to manage!
But, as they started to grow, they needed to manage more participants, more programs, and more donors.
At first, the team experimented with free Salesforce tools. That quickly became overwhelming, and the team found themselves trying to make due with limited reports and tools. Istead saw a need for structure and change—they needed a solution that would enable them to streamline their operations and access valuable, insightful data. The team began their search for a CRM that was user-friendly and could manage donors, volunteers, communications, and participants in one system.
Finding Neon CRM
In 2020, Two Wheel View took a look at their internal processes and asked themselves, “What do we need to change? What do we need to evolve into?”
They realized they needed to do more than manage their donors—they also needed to manage their events and volunteers. There was a ton of crossover in their data, and the ideal solution would make it all accessible in a single place. Neon CRM was that ideal solution.
“For ease of use, compared to where we were…was just, aha! I can actually run a report! I can actually see graphs! Oh, I can create a dashboard! There was a comfort level felt right away of being able to use our data.”
–Laura Istead, Executive Director, Two Wheel View
More Than a Donor Management System
In addition to simplifying donor management, the team uses Neon CRM to manage other important parts of their operations:
Volunteer Management
Neon CRM’s integration with Volunteer Local has helped streamline all of their volunteer opportunities and processes. Having all of their data in one place makes it possible for them to track their volunteer recruitment efforts, handle their scheduling, simplify volunteer management, and pull together reporting metrics for grants.
Email and Other Communications
The Two Wheel View team regularly communicates with their donors and volunteers to share updates and stories that keep them informed and engaged. They use Neon CRM’s automated email tools alongside the MailChimp integration to create and send segmented campaigns.
Staff can also record and track their conversations with donors and volunteers. That means they can refer back to conversations—including when they spoke and what they talked about—and identify when and how to follow up on them.
Donor Prospecting and Forecasting
Neon CRM’s Generosity Indicator tool is another especially useful feature. It helps Istead and her staff understand their most engaged supporters and identify potential donors. This is an especially popular feature with Istead because it’s easy to use and helps them with their forecasting efforts.
Event Management
While the team is heavily focused on fundraising and volunteer efforts, they also host a number of events throughout the year. The team uses Neon CRM’s built-in events management tools to build their events, track registrants, and report on their successes. And, because all of their supporters’ data is available in a single system, it’s easy to track and engage attendees and understand how else they’re involved.
Fundraising In Canada & America
Because a significant portion of their donors are in Canada, Two Wheel View regularly imports data into Neon CRM from Canada Helps. This has proven to be a simple process for keeping things streamlined, and everything organized and efficient.
Now, Two Wheel View has a central place to store information for their growing base of donors, and they can easily see who’s donating, which campaigns they’re supporting, when they volunteer, and which events they attend—all in one centralized place. And, since Neon One makes regular updates to the platform, the team knows that their system can grow along with them.
“Neon’s great about sending emails about new product and feature updates. It’s good to know that there is an evolution, and change happening—the company cares about moving itself forward in innovation and trying to make changes and take feedback.”
–Laura Istead, Executive Director, Two Wheel View
Manage Your Data and More with Neon CRM
Good donor management is an important part of running a nonprofit, but it’s just one of many activities you may need to manage. You may also find yourself tasked with supporter communications, event planning, donor prospecting, and tons more.
All of those activities are more manageable when you can handle them all in a single platform like Neon CRM. Check it out for yourself with this self-guided tour.
Check it out!
