Key Nonprofit Highlights
ShowerUp is a Nashville-based nonprofit delivering mobile showers and personal care to individuals experiencing homelessness. They selected Bloomerang’s Giving Platform to integrate their fundraising, donor management, and volunteer coordination, resolving issues with their previous fragmented systems. The transition provided immediate benefits, particularly in data segmentation, communication, and volunteer management. The platform’s ease of use led to significant growth: ShowerUp has seen a 50% increase in volunteers annually and now has over 5,000 total volunteers.
Challenge
Disconnected nonprofit systems slowed donor and volunteer management
As ShowerUp expanded into multiple cities, so did the complexity of managing donors, volunteers, and communications. Their lean team was committed to growth, but they needed technology that could keep pace with their mission. They simply didn’t have time or budget for complicated, poorly integrated tools. “As a small nonprofit, we were looking for something that could really do it all,” Co-Founder and Executive Director Paul Schmitz explained. They needed a solution that could support the full donor lifecycle, without forcing them to stitch together multiple platforms.
Before Bloomerang, their systems were fragmented and frustrating. “You had to work with different products and try to make those products integrate with one another,” Schmitz explained. “But they never do. It’s never clean. It’s never easy. It never does what it intuitively should do.” Managing separate CRM, fundraising, and volunteer platforms created communication gaps and operational headaches. “We were very clunky, clumsy, and it was expensive because as we started to grow, it was costing us more money to do all of these add-ons,” said Schmitz. The volunteer experience suffered, too.
ShowerUp had previously invested thousands of dollars and three months building out a volunteer platform, only to face frustration for both staff and volunteers. “People couldn’t figure out the system,” shared Chief Operating Officer Taylor Reed. “I would have to manually add volunteers and coordinate dates because the volunteer platform couldn’t do it.” For a mission built on dignity and human connection, technology shouldn’t be the barrier.
Solution
An integrated nonprofit CRM, fundraising, and volunteer platform built for purpose
ShowerUp chose Bloomerang’s Giving Platform to unify fundraising, donor management, and volunteer coordination in one intuitive system. What stood out immediately was the power behind the simplicity. “What Bloomerang solves for me is being able to communicate to donors and volunteers. And oftentimes, volunteers are potential donors and vice versa,” Schmitz shared. “So you can cross communicate, you can be very specific, you can drill down as deep as you want to go.”
Segmentation, often clunky and complicated in other systems, became effortless. “Bloomerang has made it so easy and that’s what I love about it. It solves the question of how to communicate with our supporters.” From dashboards to reporting, the team gained real-time clarity into their fundraising health. Schmitz checks the Bloomerang app daily to monitor donations, new donors, and performance trends across markets. “The powerful thing about the reporting for me is that it’s not just a matter of, ‘Who are my donors today?’ I can also break it out by every conceivable filter, and I’ve done it for so many different things.”
On the volunteer side, the transformation was immediate. “When we signed up with Bloomerang Volunteer, our sign-up page was live in about 45 minutes.” Equally important was the support behind the software. “Customer support has been tremendous,” Schmitz said. “I can get an almost instant response in the chat and solve a problem right there when I’m in the middle of trying to work on it.” Instead of juggling vendors, ShowerUp has in Bloomerang one cohesive, purpose-built partner aligned with their mission.
Results
Over 5,000 volunteers powered by easy-to-use nonprofit software
With Bloomerang in place, ShowerUp accelerated both volunteer and donor engagement. The ease of use on both the front and back end directly fueled growth: “Everyone tells us it’s so easy to register as a volunteer and see what’s available. And on the back end, it’s very easy for us.”
That simplicity translated into measurable impact. “We are seeing at least a 50% increase in volunteers annually,” Schmitz reported. “We’re over 5,000 volunteers total now.” Beyond volunteer growth, Bloomerang also strengthened supporter engagement by enabling targeted, meaningful outreach—converting volunteers into donors, and cultivating long-term relationships. “Bloomerang Giving Platform is an ideal marriage of volunteer and donor management,” said Reed. “The deeper we get into it, the more we love it.”
For ShowerUp, Bloomerang wasn’t just software. It was a catalyst—connecting donors and volunteers, simplifying operations, and helping the organization push its purpose higher.
