Classy to Bloomerang: A Simple Zapier Solution Saves 25 Staff Hours
The Challenge
A nonprofit organization providing low-cost car repairs needed to manually transfer ~500 monthly donations from Classy to their Bloomerang CRM. If each donation requires 3 minutes of staff time to process manually, this would consume roughly 25 hours monthly that could have been spent serving their community.
"Part of the sales pitch was, they were explicit that Bloomerang was not a CRM that they use to feed it information. And so they were like, 'Oh, get Zapier, and you'll be able to create a bunch of zaps and tasks and send everything over to the database,'" explained the nonprofit's representative. "A month later of us trying to build these and stuff, we've learned that the skill level that is needed for it is above our knowledge base, and we might have been oversold on the simplicity of sending over information."
The Solution
The organization implemented a straightforward Zapier integration between Classy and Bloomerang. While the workflow itself was simple, it required expertise to implement one key technical component: an API call to retrieve custom form responses from Classy that weren't available in the standard Zapier trigger.
The solution included:
- Automatic constituent matching and donation record creation in Bloomerang
- Custom field mapping for form responses (birthdays, pronouns, etc.)
- Simple tracking system for failed transactions using Zapier Tables
- Handling of tribute donations and dedication messages
Key nonprofit-specific features included:
- Support for acknowledgment tracking ("Send acknowledgment" flags)
- Campaign and appeal tracking
- Constituent record deduplication
- Tribute gift processing with notification cards
- Recurring donation handling
Implementation took just 3 hours of development time, including training for staff.
The Results
Before Automation:
- Manual data entry
- Hours monthly spent on donation processing
- Risk of data entry errors
After Automation:
- Instant donation processing
- Near-zero manual data entry
- Improved data accuracy
"We needed Zapier to work, pull information from Classy from our donation processor and put it into our database CRM, so that we don't have to create reports and duplicate," explained the organization's representative.
A key technical consideration was handling failed transactions. As their automation expert explained: "If the transaction fails the first time, that second try didn't trigger the workflow because Classy takes that as an update and not as a new transaction." This was solved by implementing a tracking system using Zapier Tables.
The implemented solution achieved exactly what was needed, allowing the organization to head into their busy donation season with confidence. As their representative noted,
"We're about to enter major donation season right now, Giving Tuesday is just around the corner," making the timing of the automation critical for their operations.
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