No sooner had Tom reported the grim facts contained in the AFP’s 2012 Fundraising Effectiveness Report than we received news that should brighten many hearts.

Before delivering the good news, here’s a nutshell summary of what the AFP found that, in Tom’s words, “drives home the futility of pouring newly acquired donors into leaky buckets.”

• Every $100 gained in 2011 was offset by $100 in losses through gift attrition — a net gain of $0.
• Every 100 donors gained in 2011 was offset by 107 in lost donors through attrition — a net gain of -7.
• Overall donor attrition in 2010 was 59% — that is, 59% of 2009 donors did not give again to participating nonprofits in 2010.
• Last year new donor retention was only 27%!

That’s why my eyes brightened as I thumbed through the week’s press releases only to discover that Jay Love, the founder of eTapestry, has launched an online constituent relationship management system (CRM) to help small and mid-size nonprofits focus on engagement and retention.

You can see the press release here.

The new system is called Bloomerang. As soon as I saw that Jay had not only enlisted Dr. Adrian Sargeant, the loyalty and retention guru of whom we’re big fans, as an adviser, but had incorporated the concepts of Adrian’s classic, Building Donor Loyalty, into the software design, I decided to pick up the phone and ask Jay for a demonstration.

Before I share what I discovered, let me be candid. I’m of a generation where ‘software’ was once something found in lingerie departments. Consequently, more than most, I’ve suffered through the long and tedious march to create donor management software that is truly ‘user-friendly’ as they say in the jargon of that trade.

Jay’s eTapestry system hit the market 15 years ago as one of the first of the online systems. It was revolutionary for its time, was quickly adopted, grew and was purchased by Blackbaud in 2007. Today there are more than 10,000 eTapestry users.

Jay has done it again. If you’re interested in a low-cost, easy-to-use CRM that is built for fundraising results based on engagement and retention, I predict you’ll love Bloomerang. [‘Bloomerang’ is a lilac-like bush that blooms not once, but twice a year. Jay tells me the name was actually an extension of the original name ‘Bloom’ because he could not garner the URL’s needed to launch and because the kinship to a boomerang was obvious for returning donors year after year.]

In his plain-speaking Hoosier manner, and like the proud papa he is, Jay guided me through Bloomerang’s key features.

First of all, an elegantly simple, clean and informative user interface that clearly was designed by an artist, not a programmer. If you intuitively learned to use an iPad you’ll find Bloomerang works the same way. Click here to take a look.

The Bloomerang designers have wisely avoided the pitfall of multiple software features that clutter and confuse and generally benefit only a tiny minority of users.

• Retention tools. Bloomerang automatically determines who among your donors are the best candidates for upgrading and proper segmentation, then shows you how to engage donors via multiple channels. And…as an essential part of retention the system identifies ‘at risk’ or lapsing donors and suggests ways to re-engage them. Click here to see an illustration of this feature.

• As far as I could tell from the demo, all of the essentials of an effective CRM are here. Tracking of constituent communications, financial transactions, pledges, recurring donations, credit card processing, tribute gifts and soft credits as well as information on Households, Campaigns and Fund.   Click here,  here, and here for a brief look at features.

• As you can imagine, given Tom’s and my constant carping about retention, I was delighted to see Bloomerang’s Dashboard is designed like a ‘retention cockpit’.  Not only does it show you what your retention rates and revenues are, but it alerts you to what your revenue could be if you followed some best practices.

• The Dashboard doesn’t stop there. It also notifies you what workflows need attention, and with a click takes you to the appropriate action screen.

• Bloomerang is a pleasant nag and fire alarm. Its Constituent Summary features show you the giving trends on your file, alerts you to upcoming tasks (along with recommendations), contains simple ‘tags’ and defined user fields and keeps you posted on the most recent file activity. Click here and here for a look.

• My two favorite features – and you’ll no doubt find your own favorites – are the Constituent Timeline and the system’s Query/Report functions.

The Constitutent Timeline is brilliantly inspired by the Facebook Timeline (familiar to 80% of the US population) showing your donors’ engagement over time, the history of every action your organization has had with the donor, and it focuses on important upgrade/downgrade information and highlights key communications. Click here to take a look.

Queries and Reports, the classic pain point of most CRMs, is designed for simplicity and ease of use, with results exportable to Excel files. Samples here and here.

As noted earlier, Bloomerang is designed to meet the needs of small and mid-sized organizations and the prices (based on size of donor file) range from $99 to $499 a month.

As part of its launch, Bloomerang is looking for 50 nonprofits – one from each state – to beta test the software for FREE. To learn more, visit this site.

Roger