How New Life Academy Streamlined their Annual Fundraiser with OneCause

Background

Background

New Life Academy Success Story

Since 1977, New Life Academy (NLA) has partnered with Christian parents to help their children grow and develop a love for learning. The school serves more than 775 students from preschool to grade 12, with teachers and staff dedicated to building strong relationships through faith-filled education meant to inspire future-ready leaders. NLA supports their students through unity around shared beliefs, values of the Christian faith, and their commitment to community.

Opportunity

Every year, NLA hosts the Celebration Auction to unite the students, families, and faculty for an evening of celebrating the NLA community. As the school’s largest fundraiser of the year, the proceeds benefit school programs, variable tuition, and advancing New Life Academy’s mission.

Heading into this year’s auction, Event Manager Leslie Kuckler and Advancement Program Manager Pam McDermott had one main goal: a night of seamless giving.

Solution

Solution

As a long-time OneCause customer, NLA knew the fundraising platform would help them achieve their goals for the Celebration Auction. Having made the switch from the classic mobile bidding software to the all-new fundraising platform, they were excited to try out the easy-to-use, innovative features to make their auction a hit for their school’s community.

“The OneCause Fundraising Platform is a one-stop shop for your whole event,” Pam says. “You don’t need multiple spreadsheets or systems; it has everything you need to have an awesome event.”

Thanks to their dedicated team and the robust features of the OneCause Fundraising Platform, NLA had a record-breaking year! The keys to their success included:

  • Streamlined Registration & Check-In
  • Time-Saving AI Auction Descriptions
  • User-Friendly Event Site
  • World-Class Consulting & Customer Support

Streamlined Registration & Check-In

NLA was excited to get supporters through the door to begin their night of generosity. Their event included student volunteers to interact with guests, a silent auction, live auction, fund-a-need, and a program with a keynote speaker and dinner.

A streamlined registration process helped guests prepare for the event by creating personalized attendee profiles where they could load in their contact and payment information before the event.

“Having donor information preloaded in the software was amazing,” Leslie says. “We had the ability to contact people through the information in there and utilized instant texts, emails, and communication all through the platform. It saved us so much time.”

Because of the gala’s popularity with the community, the check-in line often stretched out the door. This year, the OneCause software helped NLA staff move 365 guests through the door faster than ever before and checked into the event in no time at all!

“The software is just so slick, it made check-in so easy for us,” Pam says. “We had record short check-in lines this year. I don’t know how you’d run an event without OneCause.”

Time-Saving AI Auction Descriptions

With 135 silent auction items and 8 live auction items, the OneCause Auction AI™ Description Generator helped the NLA team create wow-worthy descriptions for each item in minutes.

“My favorite thing about the platform is the AI features,” Pam says. “Writing auction item descriptions took a quarter of the time that it took me last year.”

The NLA team began promoting the auction with item previews 5 hours prior to event check-in. This helped New Life Academy stir up excitement, bids, and revenue before the event began!

User-Friendly Event Site

The NLA staff loved the variety of fundraising features offered by OneCause to make their auction stand out. Not only were they able to create a site for the Celebration Auction, but they could also keep it on brand with their school’s colors, logos, and theme.

“Every year we have a theme for our auction, and we loved that we could incorporate it into our event site,” says Leslie, who added they chose Denim and Diamonds for this year’s theme.

OneCause made it easy to execute interactive fundraising activities through their event site and throughout the evening of the event. NLA had fixed price items; 11 sign-up parties; a medallion scavenger hunt; and a pick pocket game, where people paid $20 to pick a gift card, valued at $20 or more, out of a denim pocket.

“It was our first year doing the medallion hunt and we will do it again,” Leslie says. “People enjoyed it. We put one scavenger hunt clue on our event site every day leading up to the auction. The final clue was printed in the event program.”

Leslie and Pam also leveraged the event site to enter the winning bids during their live auction so it was easy to see all of the collective proceeds from their fundraiser.

World-Class Consulting & Customer Support

Leading up to the event, the NLA staff trained their volunteers with the OneCause University knowledge base.

“The training videos for volunteers were helpful,” says Leslie, adding that she and Pam also leveraged the articles and videos, along with OneCause support, to help them learn the new features in the software and address any questions as they planned for their event.

Prior to using OneCause, Leslie says she used different systems, rather than having an all-in-one solution.

“The OneCause Fundraising Platform is great,” Leslie says. “When you attend some of the classes, it just gets easier and easier to use. I recommend investing in one solution, especially if you plan to use it in subsequent years for fundraising. There’s nothing as comprehensive as OneCause.”

On the day of the Celebration Auction, they relied on the OneCause team onsite to ensure the technology ran smoothly.

“To have fundraising experts at your event gives you peace of mind. It was so nice to have confident people who knew the software so that we could focus on connecting with our donors,” Pam says.

Leslie agrees: “The support and software together made it an investment worth the return.”

Results

Results

Thanks to the support of the OneCause Fundraising Platform, New Life Academy had a record-breaking year, raising $581,113, 80.8% more than last year! Leslie and Pam say they look forward to continuing to utilize OneCause for future events to raise more for their school.

“We exceeded our expectations and surpassed our donation goal,” Leslie says.

Connect with a Cause

To learn more about New Life Academy, please visit their website.

Wrapping Up!

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