Empowering compassionate care: How Emmanuel Hospice elevated donor management with Bonterra Que in Network for Good

Overview

The challenge

Navigating operational complexity and workflow barriers

Emmanuel Hospice faced mounting challenges as its previous fundraising and donor management systems struggled to keep pace with the organization’s evolving needs. While existing tools covered core tasks, the absence of innovation and a consolidated platform made daily operations unnecessarily complex.

The team relied on a fragmented system consisting of one donor CRM, two credit card processors, and additional platforms for auctions and fundraising pages. Staff members often spent significant time piecing together reports and cross-referencing data from separate sources. For a small organization with limited resources, the burden of navigating disparate systems led to lost efficiency and frustration, pulling vital focus away from the mission. Adding to these operational hurdles was a customer service experience that, at times, failed to meet the organization’s needs for timely and effective support.

Separate from their vendor struggles, manual workflows, particularly related to donor segmentation, compounded the team’s frustrations. Grouping donors, tracking relationships, and understanding the right approach for stewardship all required time-intensive, hands-on work. While the Emmanuel Hospice team wanted to focus on high-value activities such as building donor relationships and sharing stories that inspired giving, they were stuck in a cycle of addressing demanding administrative tasks.

When it comes to the data we have to report to the board, it becomes a very difficult process when you have a very small team and around 1,500 donors. That’s a lot for a two-person team.

Merrin Bethel Jacobson

Director of Marketing and Philanthropy at Emmanuel Hospice

Ultimately, Emmanuel Hospice sought a partner offering innovation, consolidation, and strategic support. Effective technology would empower their small team to streamline workflows, optimize moves management and gift categorization, and ultimately achieve a holistic view of their donor base.

The solution

Embracing innovation with a unified fundraising partner

To address the operational and strategic barriers that distracted from focusing on their mission, Emmanuel Hospice implemented Bonterra Que for Network for Good. With a centralized fundraising platform in place, the Emmanuel Hospice team could execute its key workflows with speed and confidence while gaining a consultative partner that offered far more than generic fundraising best practices.

“The tasks that previously slowed our team down can now be done in the blink of an eye, because of Que. The one-stop shop effect is really valuable,” said Merrin.

Team members now tap into Que, which references their entire donor base and provides tailored recommendations that are aligned with the organization’s goals. Furthermore, Que offers insights into fundraising strategies employed by similarly sized organizations.  Previously, this would have required the Emmanuel Hospice team to invest significant resources to produce this type of benchmarking analysis.

Que’s best-practice coaching skill challenged the organization to take a fresh look at its fundraising strategies. Through year-over-year analysis of specific fundraising metrics and comprehensive strategy reviews, the platform enabled Emmanuel Hospice to identify areas for improvement and refine its approach.

Additionally, Que’s personalized coaching skill delivered even more value, leveraging the organization’s donor history to generate instant summaries of its top ten contributors. Within seconds, Emmanuel Hospice team members had access to the list, along with detailed giving histories, their alignment with organizational values, and their most recent contributions.

Equipped with these insights, staff members could now engage in more informed and personalized outreach discussions with their highest-priority donors.

“As a team that is short on human resources, we can easily get stuck in the data doing the work that needs to be done, but it’s the same work that is taking us away from the stewardship aspect,” said Merrin.

Being able to spend more time learning what our donors value and making sure they feel our gratitude and appreciation in a very specific and heartfelt way is important to us because we are a very high-touch organization. Que has helped us streamline administrative tasks that we spent so much of our time doing before, as well as question our approach to some of our processes.

Merrin Bethel Jacobson

Director of Marketing and Philanthropy at Emmanuel Hospice

Outcomes

Transforming donor engagement and team capacity

By harnessing the capabilities of Que for Network for Good, Emmanuel Hospice streamlined donor segmentation, executed personalized outreach at scale, and launched an extremely successful end-of-year appeal campaign. 

Merrin and her team used Que’s donor segmentation and stewardship skills to craft custom engagement plans for the campaign. In 2025, a more focused appeal list of 1,225 recipients was created, down from the 2,112 individuals contacted the year prior. Yet, the organization achieved a 41 percent increase in total funds raised, from $46,000 in 2024 to $65,000 in 2025. This outcome highlighted the power of Que’s data-driven donor targeting and its contextual strategic guidance.

Que was a game changer during the annual appeal campaign, cutting time invested in half while driving stronger revenue growth. In particular, the instantly generated top 10 donor lists served as a critical time-saving mechanism.

The platform functioned as an extension of the team, handling the bulk of administrative tasks so that the staff could deliver high-touch, timely engagements to priority donors and board members. This boost in efficiency also freed up Merrin’s philanthropy team to consider volunteer stewardship efforts, a strategic expansion that was previously not possible. The philanthropy team has seen significant value in stewarding volunteers as donors as well.

Que’s insights spurred new creativity within the organization, enabling the team to activate campaigns around seasonal giving opportunities and ensure their communications are resonating with donors, most of whom are local community members.

“Que almost feels like another team member to us,” said Merrin. “The human element will remain indispensable to our work, but by asking those challenging or probing questions, Que allows us to enhance our processes and strategies. In a matter of moments, it gives us such important information in a really intelligent and data-driven way.”

The organization’s ability to launch an additional appeal campaign and event in 2025 was a direct result of the time and resources saved through Que, as was the development of the Celebration of Life Tree. Family members can now honor loved ones with commemorative metal leaves that are placed on a larger art piece that is on display at Emmanuel Hospice’s headquarters.  Proceeds from the program go toward benefiting critical patient services like music therapy, the pet visitor program, virtual reality services, veteran care, and grief support.

Looking ahead, Merrin and her team are assessing the possibility of running appeal campaigns year-round — an idea once viewed as wishful thinking is now a serious consideration, thanks to Que.

“This new program that we’ve added is so heartwarming for me, our staff, and the families that we’ve served. To keep them as a part of the Emmanuel Hospice family and to remember their loved ones alongside them in a way that will last for years to come is just incredible,” said Merrin.