Bourgade Catholic High School: Data-Driven Advancement Strategy

Background

When Robyn Bridgeo joined Bourgade Catholic High School as Head of Advancement and Alumni Relations, he faced a challenging situation. As a one-person team responsible for development and alumni engagement, Robyn  inherited minimal donor records—just 200 contacts on an Excel spreadsheet and a haphazard collection of thumb drives and paper documents. The school was in search of a new CRM and  had been without anyone in the position for close to  ten years. This created  a significant gap in donor cultivation and alumni relations.

“ I came [to Bourgade]  a year ago and  there were no records or no [usable] CRM. They had maybe 200 contacts on an excel sheet. I looked through so many thumb drives and so many things. All  together I came up with over 7000 contacts now. Without [ChalkBooks],  I would have had no way to process all of that.”

The Challenge

With limited resources and a massive backlog of unorganized data, Robyn needed a solution that could help:

• Organize and deduplicate thousands of alumni records scattered across various sources
• Develop targeted fundraising strategies based on data analytics
• Efficiently manage donor communications and acknowledgments
• Execute effective campaigns despite being a one-person department

After reaching out to seven different CRM providers, Robyn chose ChalkBooks based on the personalized approach, automated donor stewardship, AI integrations,  and analytic capabilities. 

Data Transformation

Through collaboration with ChalkBooks, Robyn transformed his advancement operations from the ground up. Starting with scattered information across numerous thumb drives and spreadsheets, he painstakingly gathered and consolidated over 7,000 alumni records into a single, cohesive database. The ChalkBooks team helped eliminate numerous duplicates that resulted from combining multiple sources and ran background verification to ensure mailing addresses were current. They also enhanced the data with professional information about alumni career paths, providing valuable insights into potential giving capacity without requiring a formal wealth screening process.

Critical to Robyn's needs, the system organized alumni by graduation year, allowing him to quickly segment communications by class. This structured approach to data management established a foundation for tracking meaningful engagement metrics and donor interactions that had been impossible before. With clean, organized data at his fingertips, Robyn could finally begin making informed decisions about advancement strategy.

"Before I had ChalkBooks I could not do anything related to data management, and now I can!"

Data-Driven Strategy Shift

The most significant impact came when Robyn used ChalkBooks’  analytics to evaluate his first major campaign effort. Despite a comprehensive outreach approach including mass texts, emails, and student callers, a mailing to nearly 5,000 alumni yielded responses from only 20 people.

With ChalkBooks, Robyn discovered a critical insight: only 4.6% of the school's 7,000+ alumni had ever made a donation—just 330 people total. Even more concerning, only five individuals were recurring donors.

"Without ChalkBooks, I would have never known these metrics, so I changed my complete strategy to be different.”

The New Approach

Based on this data, Robyn completely reimagined his fundraising strategy:

1. Peer-to-Peer Engagement: Rather than sending identical appeals to all alumni, he created ten targeted groups starting with three representatives from each graduating class.
2. Class-Specific Messaging: Each letter now specifically mentions the recipient's graduation year and contains messages from their classmates.
3. Accessible Ask Amounts: Instead of general appeals, Robyn asks alumni to donate one dollar for each year since their graduation—making the request tangible and personalized.
4. Focus on Participation: The primary goal shifted from raising large amounts to increasing the percentage of alumni who give any amount.
5. Building Recurring Support: Each appeal aims to convert first-time donors into recurring supporters, building a sustainable foundation.

"We are not asking for large gifts, we are asking for engagement. So I am able to measure specifically how many people are willing to give."

Results and Future Direction

While the new campaign was still launching at the time of the interview, Robyn expressed confidence that the data-driven approach would deliver significantly better results:

“This campaign I know is going to perform well. It is going to be night and day different.”

With ChalkBooks providing the analytical foundation, Robyn continues to refine his advancement strategy, focusing on:

• Tracking donor cultivation cycles and planning  for next steps
• Developing class-specific communications including newsletters and birthday recognitions
• Building long-term alumni engagement before focusing on major gifts
• Creating custom landing pages for specific campaigns

Conclusion

Through strategic use of data analytics through ChalksBooks CRM  and a complete reimagining of his advancement approach, Robyn transformed Bourgade Catholic's fundraising operations from a disparate list of donors to a dynamic, segmented database of 7,000+ alumni with customized engagement strategies.

The shift from mass, generic appeals to personalized, peer-driven campaigns with accessible giving levels demonstrates how even a one-person advancement team can leverage data to create sophisticated, effective fundraising programs with ChalkBooks.

"ChalkBooks gives you a team. It gives you a team so you can get all the work you wanted [to complete] done!"