Our conversations with Far Brook School, a private, coeducational PK-8 in New Jersey, began with a simple diagnosis—the team needed a tool to help them drive annual giving and prepare for future capital campaigns. The Far Brook development team sets ambitious fundraising goals each year, but it’s challenging for them to reach those goals due to a small staff and a limited pool of alumni.
Now, just a few months after purchasing GivingTree, the platform has changed the way they work. Led by Director of Development Suzanne Glatt, Far Brook is using GivingTree to efficiently manage prospects, identify new donors, and improve the accessibility and accuracy of their constituent data.
So why has GivingTree been “a huge win” for Far Brook? Learn about the team’s early successes in this case study. Then check out our Q&A with Joanna Vinick, Far Brook’s customer success manager, below.
It seems like Far Brook has been off to a great start with GivingTree. To what would you attribute their early success?
From the very beginning of our relationship with Far Brook, they’ve been incredibly excited about embracing GivingTree and experimenting with ways that it can help them be a more efficient team. They had a good understanding of how the product would help them be successful and, most importantly, were willing to put in the time to learn it’s power. As a customer success manager, I am here to empower them, share best practices, and help where I can but, ultimately, it’s up to the team to take action and capitalize on the power/data/insights that lie in GivingTree. They understood that and dove in immediately.
Suzanne Glatt [director of development] has really been the driving force for our initial partnership with Far Brook and their early success. She not only understands the product and it’s value, but she is a real advocate. Having an internal champion like Suzanne to facilitate conversations and to challenge her team to think through new ways of utilizing this data… that is a huge reason they have been successful and will continue to be successful.
What’s an exciting initiative you’ve been working with the Far Brook team on?
While Far Brook was still in onboarding, I had the chance to hop on a call with the entire team. Suzanne thought it was important that the group understand the product before even getting it in their hands (a testament to the advocate Suzanne has been for us). We didn’t even show them GivingTree; it was more of a “here’s what EverTrue considers when building our products.” In that conversation, we were discussing Facebook and LinkedIn, and it opened up a real dialogue about their social media strategy and how to tie that work back to fundraising.
A big part of this was about Facebook. They only had one Facebook page at the time, and we talked through the potential of them creating a second one. To help them strategize, I sent them a bunch of materials from our blog or in whitepapers. They read every single piece of documentation I sent, created a Facebook page, and it has done really well. It has definitely proven helpful in GivingTree because we have been able to see more people engaging with their Facebook content, and ultimately tie engagement back to fundraising numbers. But this hasn’t only benefited their data in GivingTree… it has benefited their presence, the way they are communicating with their network. It’s been about helping their entire team begin to cultivate relationships with constituents where they are already spending their time.
What’s your favorite part about partnering with Far Brook so far?
They have tangible goals they are working towards, which I think is really important. If you just say, “Go into the product and have fun,” it becomes really difficult to ingratiate the product into your workflow. But the Far Brook team has real projects, real initiatives, and real ways that they can see this being immediately beneficial for them.