Case Study: 500 Festival Foundation grows annual fundraising by 50% with Bloomerang

500 Festival Foundation - Customer Case Study

The 500 Festival Foundation, which brings meaningful and positive experiences to Indianapolis through celebrations of the Indianapolis 500, needed a better way to manage fundraising. According to Executive Director Christine Swarm, the team had been relying on spreadsheets and reactive fundraising, making it difficult to coordinate donor information, run campaigns, and support an ambitious $5 million capital campaign.

The 500 Festival Foundation implemented Bloomerang with DonorSearch to create a unified, user-friendly system for donor management and wealth screening. Using data-driven insights to set targeted ask amounts, the foundation has raised nearly $3 million for its capital campaign, grown annual fundraising from $200,000 to $300,000, and expanded from about 30 annual donors to nearly 5,000 donors overall, with an average of 1,600 annual donors.

500 Festival Foundation

Christine Swarm

Executive Director