Charity Success Story: Alberta Registered Nurses Educational Trust (ARNET)

The Alberta Registered Nurses Educational Trust, (ARNET) was founded 37 years ago to enhance patient and family care in Alberta by empowering nurses and nurse practitioners with nursing education and research.

For the last 16 years and counting, ARNET has utilized CanadaHelps’ online fundraising tools to collect donations online and has seen a significant and consistent increase in donations year-over-year with the support of CanadaHelps.

Overview

Meet ARNET

ARNET supports nurses with advancing their skills through education. With a goal to fund the growth of knowledge and skills of nurses to improve health care for Albertans, ARNET provides educational and research grants and scholarships to registered nurses and nurse practitioners in Alberta.

Over 50,000 RNs and 600 NPs across Alberta are eligible to apply for this funding, and ARNET supports these funding needs via different avenues, including online donations.

Meet Doreen

With over 20 years in the fundraising sector, Doreen Slessor, CFRE, the Director of Development at ARNET, plays a pivotal role in orchestrating fundraising efforts, including the major gifts program, annual fund, planned giving, special events, communications and marketing, strategic partnerships and research funding.

Relationship with CanadaHelps

For the last 16 years and counting, ARNET has utilized CanadaHelps’ online fundraising tools to collect donations online and has seen a significant and consistent increase in donations year-over-year with the support of CanadaHelps.

ARNET uses CanadaHelps’ Customizable Donation Forms (CDFs) on their website for their digital fundraising campaigns across different funds. The embedded forms provide a seamless donor experience, help donors choose the specific pillar of work or campaign they would like to donate to, and complete their contribution swiftly.

I love how simple it is to make your donation forms … I don't want to learn coding to make a donation form. Whereas with CanadaHelps, I can insert a photo, replace an image here, add my text, do my thank you letter, and it's done. I can whip one through in half an hour! — Doreen Slessor, CFRE, Director of Development, ARNET

ARNET also utilizes CanadaHelps’ Events tool extensively, leveraging the platform for the different types of events they host, including luncheons and galas. They especially appreciate the customizable options the tool provides - from different ticket levels to running promotions, split receipting, automated reminder emails, and more.

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Challenges Before CanadaHelps

Before CanadaHelps, ARNET’s primary funding source was from a portion of registration fees. Every time one of the 50,000-strong community of nurses registered in Alberta renewed their registration, ARNET received $10 of that fee.

However, a new legislation passed by the government of Alberta mandated that an organization cannot be both an association and a college. ARNET, which is a foundation, was also considered 3rd party.

“Overnight we lost $350,000 in annual revenue, which was our operational funding. We were basically this 30-year charity/ foundation that had to start from square one with fundraising again”, shared Doreen.

Additionally, ARNET struggled with the technological demands of modern fundraising, such as creating a robust online presence, managing credit card processing, issuing tax receipts, and engaging with donors through social media.

These challenges set the charity on the digital and offline fundraising track.

ARNET was looking for an easy-to-use and launch, and robust and compliant platform that could boost their digital fundraising.

This included both increasing online donations as well as helping ease everyday tasks such as tax receipting and data entry - a platform that allowed the team to carry out their strategic fundraising efforts without spending too much resources, time, and money on a platform.

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Digital Fundraising with CanadaHelps

With CanadaHelps, ARNET found a comprehensive solution that addressed these fundraising needs. CanadaHelps’ donation forms, Events tool, automated tax receipting and donor communications, and efficient donation processing and deposits simplified the fundraising process for ARNET.

User-Friendly Donation Forms

For ARNET, CanadaHelps’ CDFs have been incredibly useful from the very beginning. ARNET has leveraged these forms for general donations, holiday campaigns as well and specific campaigns associated with different funds, such as nursing research and education funds and scholarships. ARNET appreciated how easy it was to design and implement these forms, complete with branding, automated thank you emails and tax receipts, and being able to embed the forms directly on their site to improve the donor experience.

Because of her prior experience with CanadaHelps, Doreen was also able to ensure the team carried out all the best practices for digital fundraising, including setting up different forms and campaigns for the varied funds, linking and driving traffic from social media platforms to the embedded forms, as well as ensuring ARNET ambassadors also drove their audience to these forms.

Hosting and Managing Events

ARNET also leverages the CanadaHelps Events tool and appreciates the user-friendly interface and the easy setup process. The simplified ticketing setup, whether selling tables or individual tickets or providing promotional offers, split ticketing options, and the robust branding capabilities of the tool have been useful for the charity. Additionally, ARNET utilizes the tool to send automated event reminders to attendees, provide online check-in options, and track ticket sales and revenue easily.

Efficient Tax Receipting

CanadaHelps' automated tax receipting is another feature that has saved ARNET valuable time and resources. With CDFs, ARNET can send automated tax receipts to donors, while with the Events tool, ARNET can offer split-receipting and post-event receipting, when applicable, to event attendees. ARNET noted that it was more cost-effective than hiring additional staff to handle these tasks manually. Additionally, ARNET appreciates the peace of mind that comes with the confidence that CanadaHelps receipting is completely CRA-compliant and secure.

Different Donation Types

ARNET has also leveraged CanadaHelps to facilitate various types of donations, including monthly donations and securities donations, as well as cryptocurrency donations at one time. Doreen recounted how two substantial stock donations were also managed seamlessly through CanadaHelps in one of the prior charities she used to work with, eliminating the need for external investment specialists. And that ARNET too has received stock donations via CDFs.

"Sometimes those donations are the most substantial a charity has ever received and they're a little overwhelmed. So just to know CanadaHelps got it handled was awesome." — Doreen Slessor, CFRE, Director of Development, ARNET

Easy Reporting

CanadaHelps' donor insights and reporting tools allowed ARNET to access both a quick view and detailed reports about donations made. It also helps create custom reports to present to the board when needed or import that data.

Compliance and Security

CanadaHelps' adherence to Canadian fundraising regulations ensures that ARNET remains compliant, providing peace of mind to donors and the organization.

Doreen shared that CanadaHelps “understands fundraising in Canada… That's huge because being a Canadian charity, and in Alberta, we have the toughest fundraising regulations that we need to comply with, and CanadaHelps gets it. If we do our online donations with you, we're in compliance … Especially for the small to mid-sized charities that have a one-person shop or a less than five-person shop, that is something we definitely need.”

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Impact and Results

Since starting with CanadaHelps, ARNET has seen a significant and consistent increase in online donations YoY. This upward trend highlights the effectiveness of CanadaHelps' platform.

In 2022, ARNET saw a 700% increase in online donations from the previous year and a subsequent increase in donation revenue over the past two years.

Increase in Monthly Donors

ARNET has seen a consistent increase in monthly donors since starting with CanadaHelps. This increase has been further supported by the Monthly Donation Pop-Up feature that CanadaHelps offers, with which every time someone makes a one-time donation, there is a pop-up asking the donor if they’d like to make their donation monthly.

ARNET appreciates how the gentle reminder that a pop-up prompt asking one-time donors to consider becoming monthly supporters has helped significantly increase monthly donors.

Sometimes we struggled because we don't have a marketing team to do a whole project around monthly donors, but with CanadaHelps providing this, it works ... I absolutely love it. — Doreen Slessor, CFRE, Director of Development, ARNET

Saving on Transaction Fees with Embedded Forms

The ability to embed the donation form directly into ARNET’s website has helped enhance the user experience by offering a seamless and integrated process. Donors can contribute without leaving ARNET’s website, which in turn increases donor conversion rates. This convenience and straightforwardness have been crucial for retaining potential donors who might abandon a more cumbersome process.

Plus, with embedded forms, ARNET saves 0.25% in transaction fees for every donation made through its website.

ARNET has these embedded CDFs across the different pages on their site, which ensures that donors can access the CDFs on both the donation page, as well as other fund-specific pages as needed.

I love how we can embed the link, embed the donation page in our website so it looks seamless. I also like how we can put a link in our newsletter. — Doreen Slessor, CFRE, Director of Development, ARNET

Leveraging Annual Campaigns to Increase Donations

ARNET outlines how impactful CanadaHelps annual campaigns such as Make it Monthly or holiday campaigns have been.

For instance, with the annual giving season campaign, CanadaHelps’ option to offer a last-minute push, such as a 1% match on specific days, significantly boosted donor engagement and donations. Doreen noted that simply mentioning any matching amount excites their donors and encourages donations.

During their holiday campaign, ARNET utilized this feature in the final days, especially on December 31st, by emphasizing the urgency with "today's your last day to get matching." This strategy led to a noticeable increase in donations.

Additionally, the messaging and resources provided by CanadaHelps to ARNET to share with their donors for year-end campaigns were excellent and easy to use, further enhancing their fundraising efforts.

Additional Features that have Enhanced Fundraising

📅 Monthly Gift Management: ARNET appreciates the recent Manage Monthly features that enable ARNET to update monthly gift settings in seconds. This includes being able to sort and search all monthly gifts, quickly cancel, pause, and resume monthly gifts, as well as automated reminders about monthly donors.

This has enabled the ARNET team to better manage their monthly donors and provide an elevated donor stewardship opportunity.

Doreen shares how this has been especially helpful in managing donations from those who might want to change their donation schedule due to financial hardships or those who might to pause it for a while, and other scenarios. ARNET has leveraged it to build good donor relationships while being more in control of its revenue forecasts.

💡 Smart Sums: ARNET has recently started using the Smart Sums feature in CDFs that help guide donors by suggesting donation amounts for one-time donations. By providing recommended donation levels, the feature helps simplify the decision-making process for donors and has led to higher average donations for ARNET.

📑 Social Media Templates: Easy-to-use social media templates have been useful during annual campaigns for ARNET. It has allowed them to create and share professional-looking promotional content quickly and effectively. These templates help maintain a consistent and attractive brand presence across platforms, which is essential for engaging the audience and expanding reach.

Doreen noted how for smaller charities, these features are particularly beneficial as they provide powerful tools without the need for extensive resources or technical expertise.

The platform’s user-friendly nature ensures that these features or tools can be implemented and managed efficiently, and enhance fundraising capability. This accessibility helps charities compete with larger organizations and maximize fundraising potential despite having a smaller team and budget.

Why ARNET Recommends CanadaHelps

ARNET is a strong advocate for CanadaHelps, emphasizing its role in transforming ARNET's fundraising capabilities.

The charity’s continued use of CanadaHelps is driven by several factors, including:

• Increase in online donations
• Ease of setup and use
• Cost-effectiveness
• Enhanced donor experience

ARNET also appreciates the responsive and quick customer support from CanadaHelps. Doreen noted how she often reaches out to the CanadaHelps team in case she faces any difficulties setting up an event or a form via a quick email and phone call.

Additionally, the different channels of information, including in-app widgets and video tutorials as well as the help center have also helped resolve any issues swiftly and effectively.

ARNET looks forward to continuing its partnership with CanadaHelps, leveraging the platform's innovative features to enhance fundraising efforts and support the nursing community in Alberta.

Overall, ARNET highly recommends CanadaHelps to other charities, especially those with limited resources, emphasizing that the platform’s ease of use, integrated services, efficiency in increasing donations, and compliance with Canadian regulations make it an invaluable tool for effective and efficient fundraising.

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💡 Looking for more strategies to boost your fundraising? CanadaHelps has just released a new End-of-Year Campaign Guide with step-by-step advice to help you plan your best Giving Season yet. Check it out!