Case Study
MSDA boosts donations with
school-branded online forms.
School profile
Mount Saint Dominic Academy (MSDA), established by the Sisters of Saint Dominic of Caldwell, is a Catholic, college preparatory school for young women. MSDA was founded in 1892 and is located in northern New Jersey.
“It’s really impossible to quantify the full value of Diamond Mind CampusPay. The first year we used Diamond Mind for our major annual fundraiser, we increased donations 5-fold compared to the previous year.”
— George Hayes, Director of Development, Mount Saint Dominic Academy
In a nutshell
Increase donations
Online forms empower more families and friends to donate
Complete flexibility
Easily and quickly customize donation forms and website pages for each giving campaign and/or audience
Accelerate campaign launch and success
Speed campaign delivery with an intuitive, easy-to-use payment solution. Edit campaign pages “on the fly” to create targeted compelling content
Lower cost
Online solution saves time and there are no hidden processing or customization fees
Exceptional donor experience
Offer a more trusted, secure payment process with school branded campaign donation pages
The challenges
Modernize donation processing with online payments
Most private schools count on donations to ensure they have the funds necessary to meet budget requirements. Without an efficient, easy-to-use giving process, schools may not get the money they need to fund day-to-day operations, payroll or major capital-intensive projects.
According to George Hayes, Business Manager for MSDA, “before CampusPay, we were using a terminal at MSDA, writing out each person’s credit card information and had no online procedures – all and all, a pretty archaic and time consuming process.” Given the small size of the staff coupled with how long it took to process donations, George needed a more efficient donation collection process.
“What really sold me on Diamond Mind was the simplicity and flexibility of the payment solution. CampusPay look no different than any other page and completely integrate with our website.”
— George Hayes, Director of Development, Mount Saint Dominic Academy
Flexibility and creating an exceptional donor experience
It was important to MSDA that payment solution was “online-based” and integrates with the school website and provides an easy, seamless payment experience for parents and school staff alike.
“We looked at many different payment solutions including those that are dedicated to not-for-profit organizations as well as services that integrate with general payment processing services such as Pay Pal. Each one had significant drawbacks.”
According to George, one competing vendor only directed people where to send the donation rather than processing the payment directly online. “I noticed while reviewing its features that people started the process, but then stopped in the middle. The donation page could not integrate easily with our website, nor could we brand it to look like an MSDA page. I could see that some donors might feel the site was untrustworthy,” said George.
After seeing a demonstration of Diamond Mind’s CampusPay, an online application to create custom forms for all types of school payments, George was quickly convinced that this is the ideal solution for MSDA. “It is simple, simple, simple – and the page looks just like our own website. I can customize online forms for each of our giving campaigns and for each audience as well. Comparable products did not give MSDA the flexibility to easily customize campaign pages, and they cost almost double in ongoing fees,” said George.
The solution
Simplicity and seamless donation experience accelerates time to market of giving campaigns
When MSDA launched CampusPay they were in the midst of a website re-design. As a result, they needed to create forms for both websites. “Diamond Mind was great to work with. Not only did they answer all of my questions, they quickly worked on helping me create the necessary online forms for both website designs,” said George.
Once MSDA started using CampusPay, the school realized how easy it was to customize donation pages. Today, MSDA uses a unique online form for each giving campaign. MSDA has a standard donation page that is always on the website; at different times of the year the school adds custom pages for specific programs. Donation pages are also tailored for each audience. This customization is done in-house by the MSDA staff. As George emphasizes, “what makes CampusPay so easy is that it has an intuitive interface that allows me to easily edit online forms in real time, without requiring any coding knowledge. If I find that a particular message resonates with a specific audience, or if I want to just run an alumni campaign, I can customize a page for that constituency and be up and running in minutes.”
The result
Rapid growth in donations drives additional uses for Diamond Mind solutions
“The first year of using Diamond Mind was amazing,” said George. “Not only did my staff get back lots of time to do more important tasks, we actually saw exponential growth in our giving. Also, once we started using CampusPay for donations, we found lots of other uses for it.” For example, MSDA started to use online forms to promote campaigns and events to the community. They realized they could use the forms to solicit community sponsors for school events as well.
MSDA also began to look at other Diamond Mind solutions such as Balance, an online application that makes reconciling campus-wide payments easier and more efficient. “Balance is an extension of our deployment of CampusPay. We were having trouble reconciling all of our donations and event sponsorships. Now, reconciling payments is a breeze and saves our accounting staff many hours each month.”
Now that Balance is integrated with the MSDA general ledger system, George’s team and the accounting office get an immediate notification that someone has signed up for a sponsorship or made a donation. As a result, the business office can more quickly capture and log the payments, and reconciliation is a much faster process.
The system was easy to set up, and tailoring payment options to our needs was simple as well. In no time, we had much more control and flexibility over our payment process and management.”
— Stéphanie Reyna, Finance Assistant and Financial Aid Coordinator, French American School of New York