ArtsWave: donor acknowledgements in one day, not months

ArtsWave relies on tens of thousands of donors to support more than 100 local arts and community organizations. Keeping those donors close means communicating quickly and personally, and for a long time the technology got in the way.

The challenge: standalone systems, delayed communications

Donor management, email marketing, and other organizational functions each lived in a separate system, and none of them worked together. Donor communications lagged significantly, and personalization was out of reach: every send meant maintaining contact lists by hand and transferring data between systems.

The solution: enterprise CRM and marketing on one record

ArtsWave selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM and turned to StratusLIVE, which brings enterprise CRM, donor management, and fundraising functionality together. Paired with ClickDimensions for email marketing, the team built workflows and email templates personalized and segmented from live donor profiles.

The results: acknowledgements in a day, not months

• Donor acknowledgement communications went from a few months to one day.
• ArtsPass membership emails now send automatically, tailored to each donor’s current membership status.
• Web forms populate and update donor profiles on their own.
• One integrated view of donor and constituent data replaced the export-and-import routine.

Less time maintaining lists means more time on communications, analysis, and the mission itself.