Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County was investing significant time and resources into an annual fundraising event that brought in roughly $30,000–$40,000. Melissa Goodson, Chief Development & Communications Officer, saw an opportunity to do something different.
When Melissa joined Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County(opens in new tab) (JFS), fundraising events were a big part of its development strategy. Major giving wasn’t.
With more than 20 years of nonprofit experience, Melissa began looking closely at where JFS was investing its fundraising capacity. One annual event stood out.
It was familiar, well-established, and supported by the board. But it required considerable staff time and resources, and roughly 75% of attendees were the same people year after year.
Melissa began asking what could happen if JFS invested more of that time in major gifts instead.
The organization ultimately let the event go. Melissa shifted more of her time toward major giving and used Giveffect’s CRM, wealth screening, and moves management capabilities to identify and cultivate opportunities among people JFS had already engaged.
“Using Giveffect’s CRM, wealth screening, and moves management helped us focus our time on major gifts. We went from $30,000 to over a million.”
Melissa Goodson
Chief Development & Communications Officer
Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County
Making the shift
Moving away from an established event wasn’t an easy decision.
Some board members worried about losing a familiar community touchpoint. Instead of pushing past that resistance, Melissa invited them into the new strategy.
She met individually with some of the most hesitant members, reminded them why they cared about JFS, and asked them to think about others in their networks who might share that passion. Could they make an introduction? Join a conversation?
As the board began opening doors, Melissa and her team used Giveffect to look more deeply at people who already had a relationship with JFS, understand their potential, and build a plan around those relationships.
“Through deep diving into the CRM, especially with wealth screening and the moves management work we were able to do, we were able to put together this beautiful plan and gift pyramid of what was available with the people we had already engaged.”
Giveffect didn’t replace the relationship-building major gifts require. It helped JFS understand where to focus it.
From nine systems to a more complete picture
That kind of visibility hadn’t always been possible.
When JFS moved to Giveffect approximately three years earlier, the organization was working across nine different technologies that weren’t communicating with one another. Donor data lived in one system, volunteer information in another, with separate tools for email marketing, peer-to-peer fundraising, and other activities.
JFS chose Giveffect to bring that information together. The organization migrated data from its existing systems and completed an expedited onboarding process in approximately six weeks.
At the time, Melissa described what JFS was trying to accomplish:
“The one source is really important and especially for the institutional knowledge side of things. We really wanted to focus on having one landing place for how we work with all of our people.”
Read the case study: Seamless Data Migration & Onboarding in 6 Weeks → to see how JFS consolidated data from nine technologies and got its team up and running in Giveffect.
Several years later, one supporter relationship illustrates why bringing that information together mattered.
A potential major donor was already volunteering
One supporter regularly volunteered in JFS’s pantry. People across the organization knew him and interacted with him.
What they hadn’t connected was that this same person had significant philanthropic capacity and was associated with a foundation.
For years, JFS had been engaging a potential major donor primarily as a volunteer.
Once JFS brought its supporter information together in Giveffect, the team connected the dots.
“We said, ‘Oh my gosh, John Smith, wait, that’s John Smith in the pantry? Wait, that John Smith?’ We had lost out on three years of opportunity of stewarding this person differently or getting to know this person differently.”
JFS knew the supporter. What it couldn’t see was the complete relationship.
Today, the organization is much more intentional about making sure those connections don’t depend on chance.
A different way of working
JFS’s volunteer and development teams now meet monthly to review relationships together. They look at volunteers alongside donor information, use wealth screening, and discuss how individual supporters might be cultivated.
Staff also record interactions in Giveffect and reference supporter histories before meetings, helping preserve knowledge that once could have lived only in someone’s notebook or memory.
For JFS, with approximately 150 employees, more than 700 active volunteers each year, and numerous programs and services, that shared visibility has become part of how the organization approaches its relationships.
The evolution is significant: JFS went from nine disconnected technologies and missed connections between donors and volunteers to a more intentional approach to understanding supporters and prioritizing major-gift opportunities.
And for Melissa, that has meant being able to focus more fundraising capacity where she believes it can have the greatest impact.
What opportunities could be hiding in your supporter data?
JFS’s experience raises a question worth asking: Who is already connected to your organization that your development team doesn’t fully know?
A Giveffect Strategy Call is a 30-minute working conversation focused on your organization, not a product demo. We’ll look at how you’re managing supporter relationships today, where information or opportunities may be getting disconnected, and what a more connected approach could look like.