Raising Millions to Change Lives – The Dynamic Catholic Institute Case Study 

Client: Dynamic Catholic

Industry: Faith-Based 

“What people need to realize is that you’re not just purchasing a product. You’re actually choosing a partner to help you in your fundraising journey.”

At A Glance

• Challenges
  • Needed funding to make life-changing resources available to its beneficiaries 
  • Lacked accuracy in insights from other potential vendors
  • Needed a product that could integrate with Salesforce 
• Results
  • Raised $25 million for a large-scale campaign  
  • Received constant support from the DonorSearch team
  • Tapped into a bidirectional API integration with Salesforce 
  • Gained access to a library of nonprofit learning resources 

Client Overview 

Founded in 2009, The Dynamic Catholic Institute’s mission is to re-energize the Catholic Church in the United States by developing world-class resources that inspire people to learn more about Catholicism. The organization is known for its Parish Book Program, which provides books to parishes for only $1 per copy, and encourages them to hand the books out to parishioners mainly around Christmas and Easter.   

The organization began working with DonorSearch in 2015 and has become more efficient and effective in its fundraising efforts as a result. In particular, the Dynamic Catholic Institute has used the DonorSearch platform to raise $25 million for a large-scale campaign. 

Background 

The Dynamic Catholic Institute relies on fundraising dollars to make its resources—books, videos, journals, guides, and more—available to Catholic parishes around the U.S. The institute knew it needed a robust prospect research and screening tool to be more successful in its fundraising work. 

Strategy

To make an informed decision about the vendor they wanted to work with, The Dynamic Catholic Institute decided to conduct an experiment. 

“We sent a batch of sample records, which included some people we knew very well—from our board, from members of our team—to DonorSearch and some other vendors,” said Sarah Richards, who has served as the coordinator of prospect research for the Dynamic Catholic Institute for the past 11 years. “What came back was that DonorSearch had the most accurate results. We picked people that we knew so that we could really validate those [results]…And the accuracy…made choosing DonorSearch pretty much a no-brainer.”  

The Dynamic Catholic Institute runs a number of programs, including Catholic Moments, which is a collection of short films that empowers believers to celebrate and make the most of important moments in their religious lives. With DonorSearch’s help, the Dynamic Catholic Institute raised $25 million in a large-scale campaign to make the creation of the Catholic Moments program possible and its resources free for users. 

“That just makes us more confident about our next campaign, our Holy Moments campaign,” Richards said. “DonorSearch is going to help make that possible as well.” 

Benefits

• Accurate insights the Dynamic Catholic Institute can be confident in. The Dynamic Catholic Institute knew that it wasn’t just important to get information about its donors—it was important to have accurate and actionable information about its donors. That’s why they put DonorSearch and other prospecting and screening vendors to the test, ultimately choosing DonorSearch for its next-level accuracy. 

• A true partnership with DonorSearch. “You’re not just purchasing a product,” Richards explained. “You are actually choosing a partner to help you in your fundraising journey.” Richards said that her team has frequently emailed the DonorSearch support team and typically gets a response in 24 hours or less. “That customer service really helps to keep things moving and we are really grateful for the partnership.” 

• Access to high-quality resources and learning materials. Richards referenced DonorSearch’s many online resources (including blog posts, industry guides, webinars, and more) as a perk of partnering with the company. She explained that these were especially helpful for those new to development roles at the Dynamic Catholic Institute. 

• Seamless integration with Salesforce. The Dynamic Catholic Institute uses Salesforce to manage data and has utilized DonorSearch’s bidirectional API integration to keep all of its data in one place and streamline its workflow. “We can run our data…right up next to the information that we get from DonorSearch. And one of the great things is DonorSearch’s integration with Salesforce is that we can actually batch records seamlessly all at the same time. We can basically, in a couple of clicks of a button, get the information that we need, which is great for both efficiency and accuracy..”

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