New Orleans, LA
Human Services
Since its inception, Team Gleason has provided over $20 million in adventure, technology, equipment and care services to over 30,000 people living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and countless others. Their advocacy and support works toward bringing an end to the disease.
Because Team Gleason focuses on more immediate impact solutions and quality of life versus research, they naturally have people who want to give back. People who have benefitted from their support want to make similar outcomes possible for others! This is why their network and third-party fundraisers expand across the country and why they do so many third-party campaigns.
Before implementing Neon CRM, Team Gleason was using BlackBaud eTapestry, Classy and spreadsheets to track their supporters and campaigns. “With all these tools, reporting was extremely difficult,” said Sally Cox, Chief of Staff for Team Gleason. “Getting information in the system in real-time was also tough unless it was just a direct donation. It also made our data pretty messy and not uniform. So getting it into a better place was important to us.”
“After assessing several different softwares, we decided on Neon CRM because it made the most sense from a price point and its capabilities. Plus, we had a local consultant who was able to support and help with the transition,” Cox added.
Now, Team Gleason is able to access information in real time. This allows them to follow up with donors properly and build meaningful connections with them in real time.
Team Gleason also added Neon Fundraise, a peer-to-peer fundraising platform, so they could give better support to people who do third-party events with them. It allows Team Gleason to run everything on the back end for their fundraisers. As their supporters raise money for them, the donations come directly to Team Gleason instead of going through a third party that collects all the funds and passes them on later.
Jamie Clark, Events and Development Associate at Team Gleason, recently helped with a third-party event called “Acing Out ALS.” Clark used Neon Fundraise to support the event by providing them with QR codes, a fundraising guide, and a pre-written letter they could use to raise money. “Even though this only takes us about 15 minutes to do, it makes that person feel like we really care about them giving their time and fundraising for us,” says Clark.
This year, the Acing Out ALS teams raised $7,970—a $1,500 increase from the previous year.
According to Clark, “Now we have a system where we know exactly how much third-party revenue is coming in, including how much is in memorium or honor.”
“The fact that we can easily add in personalized templates on the back end that are specific to the event is a big reason our third-party fundraising success and recurring events have continued to take place–because we’re able to offer people a good experience.”
–Sally Cox, Chief of Staff, Team Gleason
Another event held on behalf of Team Gleason is the Annual Fin Feather Fur Food Festival (F5). The staff at Team Gleason helped them sell tickets and collect donations with the events function in Neon CRM. The F5 event increased their fundraising 13% over their inaugural year.
Outside of third-party fundraisers, Team Gleason runs 80+ campaigns a year. Neon CRM allows them to segment their database so they can create specific messaging for different groups of supporters. “This is helping our events be more successful and our donations,” said Clark.
Kristi Cook, CRM and Development Associate for Team Gleason and self-proclaimed reporting wizard, appreciates the ability to segment audiences. Cook said, “I like being able to start with a campaign that’s really broad and immediately hyperlink over to exactly what was in the campaign, if there was a related event, and ticket sales and continue to drill down. It allows you to truly see when donations were made.”
“Neon CRM is not an intimidating system. It’s not confusing, it’s very straightforward.”
–Kristi Cook, CRM and Development Associate, Team Gleason
Since Team Gleason started using Neon One products, their organization has grown about 45% and now has 19 full-time team members. For similar organizations that are considering some type of donor and event management system, Cox recommends investing in a CRM. When they started with Neon CRM, they didn’t have as large a staff as they do today: It was critical for their growth to spend the time creating templates and setting guiding principles to save time and allow them to engage and have meaningful interactions with donors.
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