I got involved with the Lauren McCluskey Foundation the way many others get involved with nonprofits: as a volunteer. After graduating from college, I briefly worked in banking, before receiving a call asking if I’d like to move back to Washington State and take over as the Executive Director of the Lauren McCluskey Foundation, guiding its national expansion.
About Lauren McCluskey Foundation
Following the murder of Lauren McCluskey at the University of Utah in 2018, her parents, Jill and Matthew McCluskey, knew change was necessary. Lauren had repeatedly reported her concerns about stalking, extortion, and threats from a man she briefly dated, but police failed to listen, believe, and respond to her concerns. After calling police 22 times in a period of 10 days, she was murdered on October 22, 2018. The story would go on to reach millions through coverage from ABC’s 20/20, Dateline, ESPN’s “LISTEN” documentary, and more.
In the aftermath of their daughter’s death, Jill and Matthew McCluskey realized that Lauren’s experience was not an isolated incident. Across the country, especially on college campuses, people seek help for relationship violence and stalking, but the systems meant to protect them often fail to respond. When these reports are ignored or dismissed, the situation can escalate—sometimes with tragic outcomes. The Lauren McCluskey Foundation was created to change this culture and work to educate, advocate, and conduct research for an improved response to relationship violence and stalking.
How Donors Tripled Through Fundraising Efforts
Annually on February 12, in place of GivingTuesday, we host a campaign in honor of Lauren’s birthday to expand awareness of the Lauren’s Promise pledge: “I will listen and believe you if someone is threatening you.” For Lauren’s 28th birthday in 2025, our campaign exceeded its goal, raising more than $20,000. It was our first time using Qgiv by Bloomerang’s peer-to-peer feature, and we almost tripled the number of donors who got involved. The success of that peer-to-peer campaign was largely due to the platform’s personalized campaign pages that could integrate with Facebook and its ease of user experience.
Managing Donor Data
We started using Bloomerang’s Nonprofit CRM because we were a small team disappointed with our previous provider. When I onboarded, our donor data was in need of much improvement. Solving our data hygiene issues was a priority, and Bloomerang’s onboarding team and merging and duplication tools have been a blessing in helping us accomplish that. For example, we host races for about 2,000 people annually, and often when participants register, it creates duplicate data. Historically, we had to manually search the system to find and merge duplicates. Now, Bloomerang flags those records automatically for us, and little things like that go miles in terms of saving time so we can focus on more important work. With limited staff, we only have so much time to get everything done, so all automation matters.
How Bloomerang Helped Us Grow
At the heart of everything we do is a deep commitment to people—our donors, participants, and the individuals our mission serves. That’s why Bloomerang has been such a natural fit for us. Their platform isn’t just about processing transactions or managing data; it’s designed with people at the center, making it intuitive, responsive, and effective for organizations like ours that value human connection in every step of the process. Their approach differentiates them from competitors by ensuring that technology enhances relationships, rather than replaces them. This alignment in values—prioritizing people in both process and mission—has made all the difference in our ability to scale impact while maintaining the authenticity and trust that drive our work forward.
The key to running a successful nonprofit is management and operations. Bloomerang has helped us grow as we face the challenge of continually innovating new sources of fundraising and ways to reach new donor audiences. Every time our races expand, so does the foundation’s reach. People see the impact and reach out to get involved. We more than doubled the number of race participants from 2023 to 2024, and Bloomerang has been an invaluable resource to help us manage that growth while strengthening our donor relationships. I have nothing but great things to say about the software, company, and people in all its departments. The process has not always been easy, but their team has always been willing to put in the effort to make it so.
Share the love!
