Elevate Enables LA Family Housing to Run Concurrent Campaigns Without Straining Resources

Over the last 38 years, LA Family Housing (LAFH) has grown to become one of the largest housing and homeless service providers in Los Angeles. In 2020, the organization assisted 10,808 people while operating 26 properties. 

Scaling with Growing Demand

In 2019, LAFH transitioned to Salesforce and Pardot for donor management and marketing automation. While this move improved previous systems, its online fundraising platform required manual input for every donation, with a staff member dedicated solely to this effort. LAFH recognized a need for more automated gift processing, one that would grow all too urgent with the COVID-19 pandemic. During 2020, LAFH’s volume of donors doubled, and the gift processor was swamped with manual entries. 

Boosting Capacity and Simplifying Processes with Elevate Fundraising Suite 

While fortunate for the organization, the surge in donations compelled the organization to purchase Elevate, a suite of fundraising products with the power to improve and streamline LAFH’s systems and increase its capacity. In the spring of 2021, LAFH engaged KELL Partners to expedite Elevate implementation just in time for the agency’s live-streamed celebrity fundraiser, Home Together. LAFH’s goal was to have online donations directly entered into Salesforce to simplify its back-office processes and make donation data available for real-time dashboards and reporting.

Real-Time Reporting and Visibility, No More Manual Data Entry

LAFH raised over $1 million at its 2021 event. Using real-time donation dashboards, the organization was able to publicly recognize large donors and donations on screen during the live event. Instead of worrying about the overwhelming follow-up work, the team celebrated, knowing that Elevate allowed the data to flow right into Salesforce.

Lelan Fernando, Individual Giving Manager for LAFH, recalls, “It felt like night and day with how easy it was to run the event and manage payments.” Using Stripe for payment processing made things even easier because it could switch back and forth between test mode and live mode. He also loves how Elevate brings on recurring donors that process automatically with Stripe each month. LAFH has also added donor cover with Elevate and has seen 63% of donors opt to cover fees.

As LAFH strives to improve its systems, Fernando has found Elevate’s unique Giving Pages to be streamlined, easily customizable, and simple to create and embed. He has also noticed how easy it is to train his staff to create pages for events, products, and sponsorships. As a result, LAFH is now running three concurrent campaigns and has set up five Giving Pages in just six months. 

Thanks to Elevate, LAFH has the extra time and resources to engage in other critical fundraising activities, such as prospect research. Fernando and his team look forward to the next phase of implementation with KELL Partners and are especially excited to begin tracking marketing initiatives and pinpointing donor interest with Salesforce, as well as exploring nurture tracks in Pardot.