St. Leonard: Driving Powerful Fundraising Results with OneCause Fundraising Platform

Background

Background

For more than 60 years, St. Leonard Catholic Church and School has been helping their community of 1,750 families in Muskego, Wisconsin grow closer to their faith.

Founded in the late 1950s as a small parish to a primarily rural population, St. Leonard has since expanded their community and their mission. Today, St Leonard has grown to also include a private school which provides a faith-based education grounded in spiritual, intellectual, and social growth.

To sustain the growing needs of their community, St. Leonard leverages fundraising as a main source of financial support.

With major enhancements planned for the school building and other education needs, St. Leonard needed to have a record-breaking fundraising year to support their parish.

Challenge

Challenge

St. Leonard relies on the generosity of their donors to achieve the funding they need to make an impact. For the past ten years, the parish has hosted a spring fundraiser to help ignite the community in supporting various educational and community-based initiatives.

After hosting virtual fundraisers for the last two years, St. Leonard was eager to transition back to an in-person experience.

“Virtual fundraisers were completely new for us. Even though we’d seen great success for both types of events, we really wanted to have an in-person element this year. We have been doing this fundraiser in-person for many years, so we were excited to bring the community back together again,” explained Mia Kurudza, the current year’s Auction Chair.

With the addition of an in-person component to their hybrid fundraiser, St. Leonard wanted to ensure they had flexible options for all their participants. They knew they needed to have an impactful experience for both in-person and virtual attendees. The St. Leonard team was excited to start their hybrid event planning but needed a solution that would give them options and deliver a seamless giving experience, anytime – anywhere.

Solution

Solution

St. Leonard found the perfect hybrid solution with the OneCause Fundraising Platform. Kurudza and the St. Leonard team were confident it would provide them the ease and support they needed to host a successful event.

With the right team and technology in place, St. Leonard was ready to host their Roaring 20’s themed auction and dinner. With the backing of the OneCause Fundraising Platform, St. Leonard’s team was able to:

  1. Engage in-person and virtual attendees
  2. Manage the event with ease
  3. Leverage top tier event support

Personalized Donor Engagement

After two years of virtual fundraising, St. Leonard was ready and eager to engage with their donor base in person, while also maintaining ease and participation for remote attendees. However, the team wanted to make sure they created a personalized and easy engagement experience for both types of attendees to boost excitement and maximize donations.

With raffle items and live auction solely for in-person attendees, St. Leonard’s team was able to:

  • Utilize attendee registration types to customize their auction experience
  • Monitor donors’ registrations in real-time and serve up audience specific auction items, based on preferences of in-person and virtual donor preferences.
  • For example, they made signed memorabilia or trip experiences, available for in-person live auction only, knowing those donors tended to bid more (and raise more) revenue in a life format.
  • Tailor offerings for those not attending in-person to have a personalized online bidding experience.

With the team’s knowledge on their donor base and the easy-to-use OneCause Fundraising Platform, St. Leonard was able to create personalized giving experiences which boosted the traction of their auctions and helped sell every auction item!

“The software made it easy to add or change our auctions based on how our donors were attending, even days before our event. This helped us cater our in-person and virtual offerings to ones that would get the most donations,” explained Kurudza.

PRO TIP: If you are looking to personalize your event for onsite-only or virtual-only experiences, consider using OneCause slideshows to showcase event information by attendee type. This helps increase participation by attendee type, helps all donors feel included, and reduces confusion around participation.

Ease of Event Management

Nonprofits know how much goes into planning and executing any fundraiser. St. Leonard needed a way to easily manage it all. Prior to connecting with OneCause, St. Leonard had to use different solutions for event management and planning. Still, nothing was easy, and every year the event taxed and stressed the team and volunteers.

With the OneCause Fundraising Platform, the St. Leonard team was able to quickly set up the fundraiser and manage the event elements in real time. Even with limited technology experience, their team was able to easily manage their registration, silent auction, and raffle all in the same place and with ease.

“Most of my role is not spent within technology, but I rarely had to ask how to use something within the OneCause software. If I could do it, anyone could do it,” stated Kurudza.

Adding OneCause software made St. Leonard’s event planning easier, reducing the time and energy needed to build their event.

Because of the user-friendly software, the St. Leonard team was able to:

  1. Spend less time setting up their event.
  2. Quickly make last minute changes.
  3. Keep all event information organized in one place.

“Our event went so smoothly because of the OneCause software. At the end of the night, we were able to leave the event knowing that the platform tracked all the data we needed. We did not have to spend extra time finding the who won any of the auction items or take extra steps to plan pick-up times for virtual winners. It was all within the software, which allowed us to easily communicate this information to our donors,” said Kurudza

Using the OneCause Fundraising Platform allowed the St. Leonard team to dedicate more time to promoting their event and engaging with their donors, amplifying the fundraiser’s reach and deepening their connection to the community they serve.

PRO TIP: Make sure you have enough time to promote your event once you’ve created your event site. OneCause recommends at least 120 days or more to plan, build out, and promote your fundraising site. This helps maximize your reach and ensures your event is set up for success.

Leveraging Event Support

With any fundraising event, having the necessary support throughout the process can drastically improve your event execution and results. Knowing that their event had a lot of moving parts, the St. Leonard team was able to leverage the OneCause support team to ensure that nothing was missed on or prior to event day!

Because of their partnership with OneCause, St. Leonard had access to:

  • Phone Support
  • Event Consulting
  • Customer Success Manager
  • Onsite Support
  • A vast library of knowledge base resources

This vast spectrum of support meant that any question that arose during the planning and set-up process was promptly addressed.

“As I was setting up our online event site, it was so nice to know that I had easy access to the OneCause team and their helpful resources. I could pick up the phone anytime I had a question, and their support would always have a solution, no matter if the question was big or small,” stated Kurudza.

With the help of the OneCause team and software, St. Leonard’s team was ready for event day. However, the support from OneCause did not end there.

On event day, a certified OneCause Event Manager and trained event staff were there to:

  • Answer any attendee and volunteer questions
  • Train volunteers on the software
  • Assist in last minute event changes
  • Address all software needs

“I truly loved having the onsite event team during our fundraiser. They were able to help with last-minute requests from our staff and attendees, which meant my team and I did not have to run around and address every fire that came up,” stated Kurudza.

Having onsite assistance meant the St. Leonard team could execute their event with confidence and focus on their guests, their mission, and their event experience.

PRO TIP: When using onsite event support, be sure that your attendees know how to access your support representatives during your event. This will help reduce the number of questions you receive, and the time spent directing guests!

Results

Results

With the help of the flexible and powerful OneCause Fundraising Platform, St. Leonard not only executed a seamless hybrid fundraiser, they grew the impact of their fundraising!

  • $52,000 in total proceeds
  • 1035 auction bids
  • 194 total auction lots
  • 295 total in-person and virtual attendees
  • Raised the most money in the event’s 10-year history!

Connect with a Cause

To learn more about St. Leonard’s Catholic Church and School, please visit their website.

Wrapping Up!

More fundraising resources are just a click away.

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