Hounds of Prison Education Raises Funds Using Nonprofix

Hounds of Prison Education Supports Donors Using Nonprofix tells the story of a charitable organization named HOPE that builds financial capacity using our sector’s newest donor management platform. Here’s what Nonprofix Co-Founder Nicholas Louckes has to share about Hounds of Prison Education:

For years now I have teamed up with Nicole Brose, co-founder of Nonprofix, on various nonprofit consultancy projects to help organizations build better fundraising strategies. This work consisted of creating new websites, putting in place digital online fundraising and grant strategies, cultivating recurring and major gift supporters, as well as working together on business plan and leadership road maps. All of our efforts have helped nonprofits raise millions of dollars over the past several years. Our goal for the organization’s new website was also to help effectively manage their supporters, so choosing which software application was best for donors, prospects, volunteers, events, and peer-to-peer campaigns was a big part of our work. We often noticed that the leadership of these nonprofits struggled with what they could afford versus what they really needed in order to do the required tasks. Many would have to purchase two or more applications to handle specific needs, like events or volunteers. Each new application added complexity, another database for their supporters, another login for their team, and more money spent each month.

One of these groups was a small animal welfare organization in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania called the Central Pennsylvania Animal Alliance (CPAA). CPAA  needed our help with their program, Hounds of Prison Education (HOPE). HOPE is a unique, life saving program that to date has served hundreds of dogs through this collaborative program that partners animal shelters, rescues, correctional institutions, and entire communities.

HOPE currently works in conjunction with the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill. This program pairs carefully screened inmates with shelter dogs who have been evaluated for their sociability. The inmates work together with a professional trainer, prison staff, and the HOPE team to provide the dogs with basic obedience training, socialization, and behavior modification. Following an eight to ten week program, the dogs involved in the program graduate with a wealth of valuable skills that help give them a paw up on finding a home. By the time the HOPE dogs are paroled, the dogs have become more confident and better behaved, and they are looking forward to starting a new life on the outside.

Hounds of Prison Education Raises Funds Using Nonprofix

The HOPE website was a one page site with limited information and a link to the CPAA donation page for any donations. Our team created a new WordPress website that was mobile ready, and after looking at various options for a donation page, we decided to build a custom donation page directly on their website. This gave them a fast loading, mobile friendly donation page with the ability to save donor information in the website’s database. Pleased by the results of the donation page, we also created a custom volunteer section, and a custom event page with a ticket sales form.

Over the next few years, we watched as HOPE grew their supporter base. Their new website provided them with the opportunity to share inmate blogs with website visitors. These blogs are written weekly by the inmates that are training each dog and offer insight into the progress of each animal up to the time they are ready for adoption. Our event ticket forms were also a great help in raising money with fundraising events, and though this group does not use many volunteers, it was extremely convenient to have donors and volunteers together in the same database.

This year, Nonprofix completed the latest version of the application that started with the HOPE site. The main difference between the original design and our current offering is that the current version is in the form of a plugin and not built directly into the website’s theme. Other improvements have been made to the database performance and user interface, and we have added peer-to-peer campaigns and donor prospects. Nonprofix is thrilled to now offer these features and more…

• Donor and donation tracking and reporting
• Donor prospect tools
• Peer-to-peer fundraising campaign creation
• Volunteer tracking and reporting
• Event ticket form and online event page creation

When we compare our new supporter management plugin with our competition, we feel that we have the same (if not more) features than most have, but we have the advantage of offering all these features directly on (or local to) the nonprofit organization’s website. All of the landing pages that supporters can interact with, including the donation pages, are local to the organization’s WordPress website. This gives these pages a faster load time over external landing pages and embedded external landing pages. It’s a well known best practice to have local landing pages that load quickly, as a poorly branded slow loading page has been shown to lose donations. The other advantage is the local database. All of the organization’s supporters are in one local database with exclusive access by members of that organization.

Our competition is also fond of lengthy contracts and higher price points. We understand that this is how a business ensures maximum revenue from existing clients, but we also know that nonprofit organizations are not typical clients and every penny they can save is a penny toward their cause. So to the astonishment of our competition, we offer our plugin at a low fixed monthly price – with no contract.

HOPE was, of course, one of our first customers using our new plugin, and it helps them to continue to grow their supporter base. Last month they raised thousands of dollars through the Nonprofix ticket form, which also made planning this annual event easier and more streamlined. HOPE and their parent organization (CPAA) are enjoying a fresh start as our plugin has equipped them with the tools they need to grow their organization. We can’t be more thrilled to have started with this life saving organization, and can’t wait to serve many more on the road to their success too!

Hounds of Prison Education Supports Donors Using Nonprofix was first posted at 501c3.Buzz

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