Altru by Blackbaud Gives Gull Wings Children’s Museum Cleaner
Transcript of Altru by Blackbaud Gives Gull Wings Children’s Museum Cleaner
© February 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive, Charleston, SC 29492 T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
Founded in 1987, Gull Wings Children’s Museum serves the children of Ventura County and their families
by offering education and outreach programs at a hands-on discovery museum located in downtown
Oxnard, Calif. Gull Wings Children’s Museum is a registered 501(c)3 educational nonprofit organization
whose mission is to partner with parents and educators to teach children about the world around them,
with an emphasis on California, by developing an up-to-date environment that is sustainable, engaging,
fun and inspiring.
Challenge
Gull Wings Children’s Museum was using a very archaic and primitive donor and visitor tracking system.
The system utilized three by five cards and binders of paper to track museum attendance, identify donor
locale, and manage events and programs. As you can imagine, this system wasn’t very effective and did
not provide accurate data. This led to numerous problems such as the inability to provide the necessary
information required on many grant applications, an inability to effectively cultivate or solicit donors, the
inability to easily report back to stakeholders, and a lot of wasted time. Additionally, this system inhibited
the museum from moving forward. Gull Wings Children’s Museum is striving to become the premier
children’s discovery museum in California.
Solution
Gull Wings selected Altru™ by Blackbaud because it would provide an easy way to have reliable data at
its fingertips. Altru gives Gull Wings the functionality needed to move the organization forward by enabling
the Museum to gather and collect accurate data that will eventually increase funds. Altru addresses the
various needs of Gull Wings such as constituent tracking, museum attendance, volunteer management,
and event management all in one system.
Gull Wings also selected Altru because it provided merchandise
sales management functionality that will enable the Museum to
track its gift shop inventory.
“Now we can track what performs best,” said Melissa Baffa,
executive director for Gull Wings Children’s Museum. “If I want
to add a program or change our offerings, I can look at our
data and find out what is the best time to do so and make a
case for it.”
“Now we can track what performs best. If I want to add a program or change our offerings, I can look at our data and find out what is the best time to do so and make a case for it.”
— Melissa Baffa Executive Director
Gull Wings Children’s Museum
Gull Wings Children’s Museum
Continued on following page
Altru™ by Blackbaud Gives Gull Wings Children’s Museum Cleaner Data to Increase
Funding and Help Become the Premier Children’s Discovery Museum in California
© March 2011
© February 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive, Charleston, SC 29492 T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
Results
Altru has enabled the Museum to better manage
its operations and constituents. For example,
the Museum has only done one large fundraising
event in recent history. The limitations of its paper
system made event fundraising very inefficient.
Now with Altru, Gull Wings will be doing a
fundraiser in the spring.
Additionally, the Museum now has cleaner data that will enable it to apply for more grants. Before
Altru, the Museum found it difficult to deliver its data as fact or didn’t have the data required on some
applications. With Altru that is no longer the case.
“We can now show the information and substantiate our claims, so we can deliver the data we have as
fact and work to get more funding, particularly from grants,” Baffa said.
Overall, Altru has helped Gull Wings expand and will help lead it into the future. The Museum will be
using the solution to track volunteers, membership, sell admission tickets, check in groups for events
and much, much more.
“Altru has allowed us as an
organization to function more
efficiently and professionalize
our system so that we can do
things cleaner, faster, and with
better results,” Baffa concluded.
“Altru has allowed us as an organization to function more efficiently and professionalize our system so that we can do things cleaner, faster, and with better results.”
— Melissa Baffa Executive Director
Gull Wings Children’s Museum
To find out more, contact us today at [email protected].
Gull Wings Children’s Museum
© March 2011