FundRaiser Blog
Three years later-- WJIE's experience
When WJIE switched to FundRaiser, they were close to the memory of a very bad experience with other software. They were so happy to be rid of that software and they hoped that they had solved their problem. Shortly after their switch to FundRaiser, I wrote a case study. You can see the complete case study here. This blog is just about what they are experiencing now, after three years of using FundRaiser. Did FundRaiser continue to meet their expectations? This is what Calvin Bader, Engineer at WJIE, had to say: 
“Things have gone very well. We just came through our spring fundraiser. Our staff continues to be very happy that we’ve switched to the system. They like the ease of use regarding pledge entries and other gift entries.
“One of the things we like best is the Custom page. It saves us a ton of time during a pledge drive. It’s one of the main reasons that we are able to get things entered so quickly. In the past, with our previous system, it took a long time to enter pledges into the system. Everyone was staying late at night during the fundraising drive; and the following week, people were still entering information. Using the custom page in FundRaiser, we are done a half hour after going off the air. We’ve designed that page so that it allows us to do everything that we need to do on a fundraiser right on that one page. That way we don’t need to switch from tab to tab,” says Calvin.
Help with recurring donations
WJIE is also using FundRaiser to process recurring donations and it’s given them a significant boost in funds. “With donors’ permission, we set pledges up to be automatically debited to their credit card every month. We are processing 250 recurring donations a month, which is a significant increase. It has been a huge addition to our incoming funds. In FundRaiser we are also able to set up a start and stop date for pledge donations that are charged through the recurring donations system. That prevents us from charging donors after they’ve fulfilled their pledge,” says Calvin.
‘When we started using FR we weren’t processing that many recurring donations. We were doing a lot of the ACH, but not a lot of credit card donations. In the previous software, it was hard for us to go in and set up recurring gifts,” says Calvin.
Excellent tech support
“The tech support behind the software is amazing,” says Calvin. "We’ve had issues, but there hasn’t been anything that the tech staff hasn’t been quick to resolve. Sometimes, when I’ve had an issue, the tech team will even initiate a follow-up call to me to check if everything has been resolved and things are going well.”
