Achieving Capital Campaign Success – Dubois Central Catholic Case Study 

Client: Dubois Central Catholic

Industry: K-12 Education  

“I couldn’t imagine doing our capital campaign without [DonorSearch] because it would almost literally be like looking for a needle in [a] haystack. And DonorSearch make[s] the haystack much, much smaller in order to find the needle and connect with people.”

At A Glance

• Challenges
  • Limited prospect research budget
  • Large, widespread alumni base
  • Desire to find and locate qualified prospects for the school’s capital campaign 
• Results
  • Identification of alumni who have the potential to become donors
  • Insights into appropriate ask amounts and ranges for each prospect
  • Proactive, personalized support from the DonorSearch team

Client Overview 

Dubois Central Catholic is a K-12 Catholic school in West Central Pennsylvania. As Director of Advancement Mark Barchony stated, their mission is “to empower [students] in academics, faith, and leadership.”

Since the school is over 60 years old, Dubois Central Catholic has a large alumni network that DonorSearch has helped them tap into for their ongoing capital campaign.

Background

Dubois Central Catholic started its capital campaign about three months ago. In the midst of the quiet phase—a critical time for prospect research and cultivation—the school needed a tool that could expand upon their existing knowledge of the process to help them find potential donors. 

The school turned to DonorSearch in hopes that their prospect research tools would launch Dubois Central Catholic’s capital campaign to success.

Strategy

Since Dubois Central Catholic has such a large, widespread alumni network, they were looking to work with a company that could easily pinpoint potential donors, including alumni who graduated many years ago and have since moved away from the school’s local area. 

To engage these hard-to-reach alumni in their capital campaign, Dubois Central Catholic has leaned on DonorSearch’s prospect research expertise and resources: “For example, the [alum] who graduated in 1966 and has moved out of the area and might be living in California or Oregon or wherever the case may be—DonorSearch has allowed us to number one, help locate that person, number two, confirm that that person is actually the person we are seeking, and then number three…give us a real good insight into some of the person’s charitable contribution[s], their net worth, so on and so forth,” Barchony said.

With this prospect information in mind, Dubois Central Catholic can develop more personalized ask amounts and cultivate a successful gift solicitation process. Barchony further explained that the team at Dubois Central Catholic considers their capital campaign part art and part science. “DonorSearch provides the science part where we can look at the number of very objective variables, and it helps confirm the ask amount or the ask range we should be considering.”

Beyond improving outreach for potential donors on the school’s radar, DonorSearch has also helped Dubois Central Catholic delve even deeper into the prospect research process. As Barchony explained, “DonorSearch has actually allowed us to in a way stumble upon different alumni we weren’t even aware of.”

Benefits

• Affordability. While Dubois Central Catholic’s budget was limited when searching for a prospect research tool, they found that DonorSearch’s solution was extremely cost-effective. Barchony noted how stunned the team was by DonorSearch’s affordability when comparing different solutions.

• Ease of use. “Of course, when you get anything new, you’re always a bit nervous about—okay, there’s a lot of data in here…a lot of data,” Barchony said. “Can we really…easily find what we need? And through the online tutorials and some of the [DonorSearch] support, it was pretty easy to learn a number of things about the people we were trying to contact.”

• Actionable insights. The prospect information Dubois Central Catholic has acquired with DonorSearch’s help has allowed the school to better strategize about their communications with potential alumni donors and steer their capital campaign toward success: “DonorSearch, I think, helps take the guesswork out of as much of it as possible in terms of locating alumni [and] helping quantify ask amounts or ask ranges.”

• Stand-out customer support. Barchony explained that Dubois Central Catholic worked with Mark Parker, a member of the DonorSearch team, who on top of explaining all that DonorSearch has to offer, really got to know the school and its needs. Additionally, Barchony commended the DonorSearch team on their efforts to consistently check in with Dubois Central Catholic: “It’s done in a proactive way and, again, that’s very refreshing and helpful…this is a long process and knowing that we have that type of support not only now, but when we are 18, 24 months into this, that’s very reassuring.”

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