Tara Jacobsen

Fundraising and Grants Manager


BFAIR - Berkshire Family & Individual Resources

www.BFAIR.org

BFAIR is a nonprofit organization that provides individualized services and programs to people with developmental disabilities, autism, and acquired brain injuries in the Berkshire County and Pioneer Valley area of Massachusetts. As the Fundraising and Grants Manager, I’m responsible for cultivating and building partnerships within the community to further support our mission.

Several other stakeholders and I realized there was a need to have fundraising software that could support our development strategies for the coming year since we previously had not been using software specific to nonprofit fundraising and community engagement. What drew us to Qgiv was the platform’s usability and the flexibility of being able to add and remove packages depending on the strategies we planned to use each month. Additionally, the peer-to-peer fundraising platform was a key part of our plan to leverage community members, and we’re excited to offer various ways to engage our supporters through Qgiv.

The really unique thing about the Qgiv onboarding and training process was that it was not isolated to the first week–or even the first month–we started using the system. We had a variety of trainings for the first couple of months of having Qgiv, and our onboarding specialist even scheduled additional times for us to chat when we had questions or needed clarity on some of the platform’s functionality.  

Within the first couple months of having Qgiv, we hosted an online auction and launched our end-of-year campaign, so needless to say, it’s been busy. Accomplishing these campaigns was so much easier thanks to our onboarding experience, additional trainings, and utilizing the general call line for questions.

When I first started my nonprofit career over 10 years ago, I never thought ‘reporting’ would be one of my favorite features of anything; however, it definitely is when it comes to Qgiv. I find it so easy to use, and it gives such a comprehensive overview of when and how the donations are coming through. It has also streamlined our internal processes: the donations go directly into our BFAIR fundraising account, which is then allocated to programs and services as needed. This has made some of our administrative tasks for fundraising so much more efficient.

The features that we’ve used so far–the donor forms, auction platform, and mobile suite–have certainly met our expectations! Before switching to Qgiv, our donation process was utilizing a few different systems. Qgiv really has helped streamline the process so that we’re able to capture the same (and additional) information within one system. While formalizing our annual fundraising strategies, one of our goals was to have a solid foundation on which we could easily build. Having Qgiv has definitely made that easier because we can add or modify products to best fit our needs.

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