“We were really happy to have this powerful solution that merged separate efforts into one.” ~Bonnie Kirkpatrick, BTGCP
About Bridge the Gap College Prep
Founded in 1995 in Marin City, California, Bridge the Gap College Prep (BTGCPCP) is a college preparatory and youth development organization that provides programming aimed at preparing Marin City students for college success.
The Challenge
As COVID-19 swept the state during March 2020, organizations around Marin started fundraising initiatives, many around providing food to families of low-income students. Efforts were disconnected: one principal was collecting funds through a personal Venmo account, another school created a campaign on GoFundMe, neighbors were seeking support via NextDoor. Seeing piecemeal efforts fail to deliver quick results, Bridge the Gap (BTGCP) sought to build one campaign that could be quickly implemented and easily managed.
The Solution
Through their use of NonProfitEasy, BTGCP knew NonProfitEasy had a crowdfunding solution, Fundly, that could potentially be the answer. They reached out for assistance and had a crowdfunding campaign up and running in 48 hours.
“The Fundly team was super helpful—we called on a Friday and were ready to go on Monday,” said Bonnie Kirkpatrick.
In addition to moving quickly, Fundly offered BTGCP several unique capabilities. Because BTGCP is a NonProfitEasy CRM user with a Tax ID number and Stripe account set up, they were able to quickly start a Fundly campaign and link it to both. With minimal administrative work, BTGCP kicked off a crowdfunding campaign that was easy for the community to promote, share, and contribute to; and provided BTGCP built in reporting to manage the campaign. Fundly also sends automatic thank you emails to donors and campaign updates to donors and/or BTGCP employees, keeping everyone up to date.
To round out the campaign, volunteer Stacy Achuck used SignUpGenius sign up forms to organize volunteers, making it easy for people to sign up online for time slots to package and distribute food bags.
“It was a beautiful, collaborative initiative that gave BTGCP the opportunity to step up in a leadership role,” said Kirkpatrick. “It feels good to connect people in their common interest for doing good. And we’re making donors feel good by doing good.”
The Results
With their campaign in place, BTGCP reached out to community partners, local schools, their Facebook audience, and The Marin Independent Journal. They raised an extraordinary $75,000 in under a week from over 300 donors and are well on their way to achieving the $120,000 that will help feed families through August 2020.
“We raised $75,000 in a week [with crowdfunding], which is totally different from our usual focus on bigger gifts” said Kirkpatrick. “Fundly really opened my eyes to the power of $50 here, $25 there.”
About Lumaverse for Nonprofits
As part of the Lumaverse Family, NonProfitEasy, Fundly, and SignUpGenius are continuously building integrations to help customers use multiple solutions together. Here are a few examples:
Start a crowdfunding campaign and embed it onto any sign up form.
Monitor sign up participant activity from your NonProfitEasy CRM.
To learn more about how to use Lumaverse for your nonprofit, check out Lumaverse for Nonprofits.
