Work smarter by automating your workflows with Zapier, and build customized integrations without a developer. Learn how to connect your Bloomerang database to thousands of incredible tools with Zapier.
Diana: Alright, good afternoon, and welcome to Bloomerang Academy! Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Diana, and I am the Learning Experience Manager here at Bloomerang. You might recognize me from attending Bloomerang Academy classes or listening to some our release and help videos; but either way, thanks for joining us, we’re glad to have you here with us.
Today, we’re talking about Bloomerang and Zapier, and these are gonna be Integrations for Your Favorite Apps.
I’d like to introduce our Presenter today, Jeff Haguewood (Hay-g-wood).
Jeff is a Zapier Certified Expert and Bloomerang Integrations Consultant at Sidekick Solutions. Sidekick Solutions is a Bloomerang Partner, specializing in system automations for Bloomerang. Jeff has been a Bloomerang user since 2013 and most recently was part of the Bloomerang team that launched the Bloomerang Zapier app, which is the focus of today’s webinar.
We’re excited to have Jeff here today to share his expertise and explore the Bloomerang Zapier app. Welcome, Jeff!
Jeff: Great, thank you Diana.
Hello everyone! It’s great to be here.
In planning this webinar, Diana and I brainstormed how to best approach the topic of integrations. As you might imagine, it’s a big topic. Today’s session will offer actionable tips and best practices you can apply to your Bloomerang database right away!
If we surveyed the group, we would likely find that in addition to Bloomerang, most of us are using various other software.
Tools for…
Email marketing
Event coordination
Online giving
Major gift pipeline
Volunteers
Accounting
Email and calendars
Tasks and to-dos
Peer to peer
Reporting and analytics
…and even that likely isn’t a comprehensive list.
Today, we want to show you how Bloomerang integrations and workflow automation streamline processes, save time, and reduce effort.
The more we can lean on technology to streamline the busy work of our day-to-day operations, the more time we can spend engaging constituents, decreasing attrition, and cultivating passion for our causes.
That is even more relevant as most of us have moved to remote work and virtual collaboration with constituents and among our teams.
Our agenda today will…
Introduce Zapier, how it works and what you can do with it
Explore popular Zapier-enabled integrations between Bloomerang and Eventbrite, QuickBooks Online, PayPal, and G Suite
Wrap up with some key details on how to get started with Zapier-enabled integrations for Bloomerang
And then we will open up for a larger Q&A at the end. As Diana mentioned, feel free to submit any questions. We’ll take a couple of breaks during the presentation to answer questions.
Alright, let’s dive in.
Let’s take a quick poll to see how many have heard of Zapier before.
Diana: Alright, so we’ve had the poll up for about a minute; we have 51% who haven’t heard of Zapier before, this is their first time. 41 who’ve heard of it but haven’t used it, and about 9% who have used it. Thanks, everyone!
Jeff: Awesome. Great, thank you!
What is Zapier?
Zapier is automation software. Zapier sits in between your Bloomerang database and any other apps, helping them to “talk” to each other. Zapier is the middleware that enables many integrations with Bloomerang.
In fact, Bloomerang’s Zapier app enables integration with over 2,000 other apps in Zapier’s directory.
I like to think of it like this. Zapier is throwing an integration party. Since they are hosting the party, those that join the party have to follow some basic rules (we’ll talk more about those in a bit). But once you’re in the party, you can connect to any other apps at the party. It’s a neat concept and makes integrations for your Bloomerang highly accessible through a single platform.
Zapier is a builder that lets you design integrations using steps. Zapier integrations are like lego blocks, each block is a task in the integration workflow.
A single integration workflow is called a Zap. Zaps start with a trigger and then proceed to complete one or many actions.
Let’s look at this in practice with a simple Zap.
Let’s say I want to notify my team in a Slack channel when a constituent in Bloomerang has a transaction greater than $1,000.
In this scenario, the trigger is “a transaction from Bloomerang,” when that’s added to Bloomerang, this zap will run. Once that zap begins running, we’ll send a channel message in slack for each transaction that’s entered in Bloomerang.
Every time a new transaction is entered in Bloomerang and matches the $1,000 criteria, this Zap will trigger to run and complete the action of sending a Slack channel message.
Zaps are linear flowing from top to bottom based on an initial trigger and then a subsequent set of actions.
The output would look like this. Our Slack message merges data from the Bloomerang transaction and includes a link so my team can quickly navigate to that transaction in Bloomerang.
Zaps can be simple like this example, but they can also expand to include:
Zaps with multiple steps and multiple apps;
Zaps with filters, paths, and conditional logic; and
Zaps with data transformation and formatting.
Why get excited about Bloomerang + Zapier?
Three reasons…
First and most important, Zapier connects to 2,000+ other apps. Any apps in Zapier’s directory can be connected to Bloomerang. Within the directory you’ll find a long list of apps that you likely use every day. If it’s on Zapier’s list it can be integrated with Bloomerang.
Second, Zapier was designed for anyone to build integrations. You don’t need to know how to code to build Zaps. Anyone can build and maintain a Zap.
Third, Zapier let’s users design their own integrations. You aren’t limited to one-size fits all workflows, mapping, or formatting. You can build the integration that is perfect for you and your organization.
How do you get started?
First, you’ll need a Zapier account and link Bloomerang to Zapier. The process is easy to do.
Go to Zapier.com and sign up for a free trial
Nonprofits get a discount
Once you have a Zapier account, connect your account to Bloomerang.
Go to the My Apps
Search for Bloomerang
Log into Bloomerang and select Grant Access
Now you’re ready to start building Zaps!
What can you do with Bloomerang and Zapier?
With the Bloomerang Zapier app, you can build integrations with data flowing out of Bloomerang and also build integrations with data flowing into Bloomerang.
Let’s look at the triggers, actions, and searches for Bloomerang that you can use as steps to build Zaps.
First, triggers…
A trigger is an event in Bloomerang.
When the event happens, the trigger starts a Zap. Each trigger event starts a Zap to run. If I enter three New Constituents, my Zap will run three times, once for each New Constituent.
The time it takes for a trigger to run in Zapier based on a trigger event in Bloomerang will depend on your Zapier plan, but generally your Zap will trigger to run in less than 15 minutes from the time of the event in Bloomerang.
Integrations from Bloomerang can start a Zap based on the following Bloomerang events.
New Constituent
Updated Constituent
New Transaction
New Transaction Payment
New Constituent will trigger a Zap to run when you create a new Constituent and save it.
In Bloomerang, select Constituents and New. Create a new constituent and this trigger will run a Zap.
You can filter this trigger to run for Individual Constituents, Organization Constituents, or both Individual and Organization Constituents.
Updated Constituent will trigger a Zap to run when you update a Constituent and save it.
In Bloomerang, any update to a constituent’s names, contact information, or custom fields will trigger a Zap to run, basically anything on the Profile page.
You can filter this trigger to run for Individual Constituents, Organization Constituents, or both Individual and Organization Constituents.
You can also set the trigger to bring in additional data for the Constituent’s Giving Summary, which includes the Constituent’s 10-year giving history, average giving, lifetime giving, and first, last, and largest transactions and the Constituent’s Household information if the Constituent is in a Household. These additional data pulls allow more capability when building Zaps. You can leave them as False if you aren’t using them.
New Transaction will trigger a Zap to run when you create a new Transaction and save it.
In Bloomerang, create a new Donation, Pledge, Pledge Payment, Recurring Donation Schedule, or Recurring Donation Payment. Depending on the settings of your Zap, each transaction you create will trigger a Zap to run.
You can filter this trigger to run for different types of transactions, including Donations, Pledges, Pledge Payments, Recurring Donations, and Recurring Donation Schedules.
You can also filter on the range of amount with a minimum and maximum amount and like Updated Constituent bring in additional data for the Constituent’s Giving Summary or Household information.
New Transaction Payment will trigger a Zap to run when you create a new Transaction and save it, but only for Donation, Pledge Payment, and Recurring Donation Payments.
Unlike the New Transaction trigger which will trigger to run once when a transaction is created, the New Transaction Payment will trigger a Zap to run for each payment on a newly created transaction. Use this trigger when you need to run a Zap for each payment individually when a transaction has multiple split payments.
For example, if I have a donation with two payments. New Transaction Payment will trigger the Zap to run twice, once for the first payment and a second time for the second payment. The New Transaction trigger would only run once for the entire transaction.
The Bloomerang Zapier app also includes four actions.
An action is an event a Zap performs after it is triggered. An action is a task. You can think of an action like this. If you were to complete the steps of the Zap manually, each step in the Zap would be a task that you would be required to do. Zapier is automating that process by completing those same manual steps in an automated way. Each task is an action completed by Zapier.
The actions in the Bloomerang Zapier app are creating new or updating existing items in your Bloomerang database.
Integrations to Bloomerang can run based on the following Bloomerang actions:
Create Constituent
Update Constituent
Create Donation
Create Interaction
Create Constituent creates a new Constituent record.
Create Constituent requires that you select a Constituent type of either Individual or Organization and allows the ability to define Constituent names, contact information, preferences, and custom fields.
In Bloomerang, the fields mapped in Zapier will be written to the new Constituent profile.
Create Donation creates a new Donation record for a specific Constituent. Create Donation has the ability to create single Donations or Donations with split payments.
Split payments might come into play if you take orders from an ecommerce store like Shopify or WooCommerce and want to log each item as a split payment for a single transaction in Bloomerang.
You’ll notice the mapping for the Constituent ID here and the Designations area to create split payments.
The Constituent ID is what appends this donation to a specific Constituent’s timeline in Bloomerang. Like with Create Constituent, the fields shown in Zapier map directly into the fields in a Bloomerang donation record.
Create Interaction creates a new Interaction record for a specific Constituent. The configuration is similar to Create Donation.
Update Constituent updates the names, contact information, and custom fields for a specific Constituent.
This action can overwrite data of existing Constituents, so be careful with it.
Important to note that writing a new address, phone, or email will promote the new address, phone, or email to the primary but will not remove previous address, phone, or email data.
Blank fields in Zapier are ignored and DO NOT overwrite by nullifying existing data in Bloomerang.
The Bloomerang Zapier app also includes a search step, which is essential to every Zap that creates Donations, creates Interactions, or updates Constituents.
Find Constituent completes a search for existing Constituent records based on a Name and contact information duplicate check. If none are found, you can optionally Create Constituent.
The search looks for a single match.
We recommend that you include as much information about the Constituent as is available from previous steps in the Zap or the trigger app. Adding multiple pieces of information will conduct a broad search for an existing constituent record.
Bloomerang then makes a search based on the data you’d submitted.
Those are the building blocks we can use to design Zaps that integrate Bloomerang with over 2,000 other apps in Zapier’s directory.
Zapier enables app integrations, go to zapier.com/apps to search for available apps.
This also opens a range of automation use cases that aren’t app specific:
Send follow-up emails to team members
Notify Board of major gifts
Set calendar events for to-dos
Run real-time dashboard in spreadsheet
Publish giving data on your website
Just to give you a flavor of additional things we can do, we can:
Send follow-up emails to team members
Notify Board of major gifts
Set calendar events for to-dos
Run real-time dashboard in spreadsheet
Publish giving data on your website
There’s a plethora of use cases that we can put together in Bloomerang, and we’re curious which of these might be interesting to you. So we’re gonna do a quick poll, Diana, if you wanna pull that up, and we can see where people’s attentions are with respect to these use cases. And, Diana, while we’re doing that, maybe we open up for some questions, as well, because it’s likely that this all feels a bit overwhelming so we want to make sure that we answer some questions and get people’s questions answered.
Diana: Absolutely. I think you touched on this a little bit, talking about use cases for automation and things like that, but we have gotten questions around why would I need to set up a zap instead of manually creating it in Bloomerang? I mean, it’s easy enough to create something in Bloomerang, why would I want to use Zapier for it?
Jeff: That’s a great question. It is easy to enter data into Bloomerang; I would say where the tipping point starts to occur is when you need automation for some volume, so for instance, if you’re taking a Paypal transaction and entering it into Bloomerang, if you’re getting 20 transactions a month, it may not be that difficult to enter it into Bloomerang. But if you’re getting a hundred a month, or you hit a busy period where you’re getting 200 a month, maybe during your Annual Campaign, that’s where you start to reach some of those breaking points, and Zapier can automate that process for you.
Diana: Wonderful, thank you, Jeff. We’ve also had a couple of questions earlier about whether or not you can only zap to a constituent in Bloomerang if they’re already in there, and I wanted to emphasize that we do have that action to Find Constituent, or Create Constituent if they’re not already there.
Jeff: Yeah, and this is very… When we think about integrations, I often get the question, can I create a constituent if I don’t find them? And the answer is that Zapier does the work for you, it really does the heavy lifting. So with Zapier, we have the ability to find, which is step 1, and if we cannot find one, to create one, and that helps us consolidate that chain of activities that we need to do to ensure that constituents are in the database or appending donations to the timeline, or appending an interaction to the timeline.
Diana: Absolutely, thanks, Jeff. And it looks like from our polls, a majority of our attendees are interested in integrating with a payment processor, like Square, Stripe or Paypal, followed by drip campaigns and email marketing automation. We had a question about that earlier about how to set that up, but I think that might get us a little bit into the weeds so we’ll follow up with that via email.
Jeff: Yeah, you better be careful! You get me talking about drip campaigns for 30 minutes, we don’t want to do that. I get pretty excited about this.
Diana: Absolutely, we can set up a whole other class just on drip campaigns, but yes, it looks like a lot of you are interested in integrating a payment processor, followed by drip campaigns and building dashboards, notifications, as well. So lot of interest and we’ve gotten a lot of write-in answers, as well, thank you for all your feedback. We’re excited to take a look into that and dig into it a little bit more, but I’ll let Jeff continue for now.
Jeff: Great! Let’s actually dive into some use cases. We’ve talked high level about what Zapier can do, some of the possibilities, let’s look at some templates. Now, I’m sure when we think about Zapier and we talk about it, it may feel exciting, maybe a bit intimidating at the same time. I do want to emphasize that to help you get into Zapier and integrate with Bloomerang, Diana and Jon have developed a number of Zap Templates that you can use. We are going to look at a few of those templates next.
Alright, let’s take a look at some Zap templates that are pre-built and require little effort to get up and running. They include integrations for…
Eventbrite
QuickBooks Online
PayPal
G Suite (including Gmail and Google Sheets)
So, Diana, let’s take a quick poll and see how people stack against those apps, just to get a feel for where people are at and where the most interest is. While those questions are coming in, why don’t we go in and dive into a couple of these.
First, Eventbrite.
We recognize that most organizations are not hosting in-person events. We went back and forth on whether we would cover Eventbrite, wanting to be sensitive to current events. We decided to include Eventbrite for a few reasons.
First, we are hopeful that we will be able to host in-person events safely in the near future because they are great ways to build community and engage with the constituents that are most passionate about our causes.
Second, Eventbrite can be used for virtual events. Eventbrite simplifies registration and check-in whether those events are in-person or virtual.
Zapier-enabled Eventbrite integration with Eventbrite makes event registrations and attendance a breeze. Instead of spreadsheets and paper forms, use integration to sync event data with your Bloomerang database so you know who registered, who paid for tickets, and who attended the event.
Eventbrite offers three triggers in its Zapier connection, each of which starts one of the three workflows with Bloomerang.
New order
New attendee registered (which can include guests)
New attendee check-in (day of event attendance)
These are what start the Zaps.
Zapier-enabled integration with Eventbrite generally includes three Zaps, each handled in real-time based on a new entry in Eventbrite.
Zap 1 – New order
Trigger: New order in Eventbrite
Action: Find or Create Constituent in Bloomerang
Action: Create Donation for the Purchaser
The Zap looks like this.
I want to highlight two pieces.
The Bloomerang app in Zapier lets you search for an existing constituent using a standard duplicate check. You can map in the registrant name and one or more other pieces of contact information to complete a duplicate check. Optionally, this Zapier action can create a constituent if none are found. That’s what ensures you append the donation to the right individual.
The event order is appended to the found or created constituent account with mapping for both standard and custom fields. If multiple ticket types are purchased, one donation can be logged per type so that proper Fund, Campaign, Appeal, and Custom Fields are logged to Bloomerang for reporting.
Zap 2 – New attendee registered (including guests)
Trigger: New attendee registered in Eventbrite
Action: Find or Create Constituent in Bloomerang
Action: Create Interaction (for registration), which includes guests
For registration, interaction records are logged to the Constituent’s timeline, even for guests. This allows you to run reports in Bloomerang on complete event rosters. Custom mapping is available for standard and custom fields so you can identify the event name, participation type, whether the record is a registered or attended record, and even who purchased the ticket for a guest.
Zap 3 – New attendee check-in
Trigger: New attendee check-in
Action: Find or Create Constituent in Bloomerang
Action: Create Interaction (for attendance), which includes guests
This Zap is the same as registrations except a different Eventbrite trigger and we would likely want to flag a custom field on the Interaction for Attended to differentiate it from the Interaction we created for registration.
In total…
There are no more post-event imports or data cleanup projects
Log both the primary registrant and guests as separate accounts in
Bloomerang (if you run events with guest registration, you’ll likely
agree that creating accounts for guests in Bloomerang is a gamechanger)
Log both the primary registrant and guests as separate accounts in
Bloomerang (if you run events with guest registration, you’ll likely
agree that creating accounts for guests in Bloomerang is a gamechanger)
Use mobile apps for registration and check-in
Start reporting on registrations immediately
Manage paid and free events all with Eventbrite and a single automation
system in Zapier
But the power of Zapier-enabled integration doesn’t stop there. In addition to the core Eventbrite setup, you could also tag subscribers in Mailchimp as registered and attended for communications to your event roster, add registrants to a real-time roster report in Google Sheets, notify staff of new registrations in Slack, send custom confirmation emails to each registrant, and draft invoices in QuickBooks Online for registrations that are sponsorships all within the same integration workflow.
It is hard to over emphasize how powerful this tool can be when we consider multi-app automation in Zapier.
Next, QuickBooks Online, which is an important integration for many Bloomerang users.
QuickBooks Online integration for Bloomerang has one goal: sync transactions so that development and accounting are on the same page.
The Zap adds revenue transactions from Bloomerang to QuickBooks Online as customers and sales receipts.
The workflow starts when a new transaction is created in Bloomerang. We will use the New Transaction trigger to create one sales receipt for each transaction in Bloomerang. We could optionally use the New Transaction Payment trigger for a slightly different configuration.
From there, we generally need one or multiple custom mapping steps to convert Bloomerang Fund, Campaign, Appeal, Gift Type, and custom field values into corresponding income accounts, classes, and payment methods.
You can map any field from Bloomerang to any field in QuickBooks Online, so even if you do things differently in Bloomerang Zapier supports custom mapping for any use case.
You can see that we are converting the Bloomerang Campaigns to Product/Service, which is synonymous with Income Account, and we could convert Campaign to Class codes for QuickBooks Online.
With the mapping fully defined, the integration find or creates a customer profile. This is generally done with a duplicate check in QuickBooks Online of the Customer Name.
And then the integration appends a sales receipt to that customer and tagged with the proper income account and class. By default sales receipts added to QuickBooks Online go to the Undeposited Funds asset account awaiting deposit.
At which point, when you’re ready to make a deposit, you can select sales receipts to deposit, subtract and fees deducted from payment processors, and now your deposits will reconcile with your bank statements every month.
In summary, with this integration…
There is no more double data entry, sync in real time
Map any field from Bloomerang to Class and Income Account, not limited
to a cookie cutter setup
Deposit and statement reconciliations are faster and easier
Reporting can be run immediately from both systems
Accounting and development will have the same data
The great part about Zapier-enabled integration for Bloomerang to QuickBooks Online is that you can customize the mapping for your Income Accounts and Classes. This ensures that everything sent from Bloomerang to QuickBooks Online is coded properly and reconciled accordingly.
For those that would like more control over their data, a more hands-on option is available.
Instead of going straight to QuickBooks Online from Bloomerang, you can adopt a clearinghouse approach. This integration would require two Zaps.
One Zap will write transactions to a Google Sheet (i.e. the “clearinghouse). The second Zap will take those Google Sheet items and write them to QuickBooks Online as customers and sales receipts, but only when a user approves them to be sent to QuickBooks Online.
The two Zaps look like this.
The interface with Google Sheets can be as simple as an approval “Yes” or “Go” tag to send the item through to QuickBooks Online.
So Diana, let’s take a quick pause and take a few questions and see where people are at.
Diana: Absolutely, thanks Jeff. We have a question here of it looks like it’s easy enough but at the same time there might be some complex concepts to grasp, what kind of a person do you need someone with a computer science degree to be building your zaps for you.
Jeff: ON the computer science end, absolutely not. Zapier is designed for a non-developer user to build integrations. I would say that it requires some skills in understanding workflows so where things start, where they end, and potentially the conditions involved in those workflows. I would also say that I would not recommend new users dive straight into building custom zaps. I would strongly encourage you to use one of the templates that we’ve designed for specific use cases as a way to recognize whether there are gaps or questions or things that you might improve upon but it’ll at least give you a baseline level. ANd as of right now, there will be 15 Zap templates covering Eventbrite, Paypal, Google Sheets, Gmail, QuickBooks, and a couple of others. Good questions, I would start with templates.
Diana: Absolutely, that’s why the templates are there. This is how we recommend that you use them, you can always customize them, as needed, but it’s a good starting point. And if you’re looking to do something similar for an app that we haven’t built a template for, for example, you’re not using Eventbrite, you’re using another app for event registration and ticket sales, you could still follow the same process in the templates.
Jeff: Let’s do one more, Diana, see if there’s a good one.
Diana: Absolutely, we’re getting some questions as well… I’ll put a link in the chat of where to find the list of apps that Zapier integrates with, but we’re also getting some questions about… we have some customers who use some apps who advertise that they integrate with Zapier but are not finding them when they search for them on Zapier. What’s happening there?
Jeff: Great question! YEs, so some apps have not launched publicly. If a vendor says that they have an app, they most likely do, and you will need to get a private invite link from that vendor that allows you access to their app. Not every app is public like Bloomerang’s app and you’ll need to get the invite link in order to access it. Now it’s important to also keep in mind that even if the app that you’re looking for is not in Zapier, there are still ways to integrate it with Bloomerang, I don’t want people to think that this is, that only these apps apply. There’s lots of expansive opportunities to integrate other applications that may not have a Zapier. But for those that market that they do have one, you need to ask for their private Zapier link and that will get you connected to their app.
Diana: Great, thank you so much, I think those are the questions at the moment.
Jeff: Great! Well let’s get to two other zap templates – one with Paypal and one with G Suite and we can wrap with more questions.
PayPal will use a similar configuration to Eventbrite, although a single Zap is all that’s needed to log PayPal transactions in Bloomerang as Donations.
The Zap starts with a trigger when a Successful Sale is completed in PayPal and continues to log that transaction to Bloomerang as a donation.
Any Zap that begins with a non-Bloomerang trigger will likely include Find or Create Constituent, and this Zap is no different. We need to search for an existing Constituent based on the information provided for the Successful Sale in PayPal or Create a Constituent if no existing Constituent can be found.
Next, append a donation with the Create Donation action to the Constituent just found or created. Use the Constituent ID to ensure you’re dynamically adding the donation to the proper constituent account.
Finally, add an Update Constituent action at the end of a Zap if you would like to update the information of an existing Constituent. Be careful though, in some cases this action will overwrite what’s in Bloomerang.
Benefits of PayPal integration include:
Reduction in data entry
If PayPal has item-level data, map that to Bloomerang Campaigns and Appeals or custom fields
Scale your online payment options
You can even use PayPal to sell ecommerce products and diversify giving options
G Suite and Office 365 are some of the most popular software suites out there. That status means they are well represented in Zapier’s app directory. Everything from Google Forms to Google Tasks and Calendars as well as Excel, Office 365 Email, and Microsoft Teams.
Let’s explore a Zap that includes two G Suite apps: Gmail and GSheets.
Note: The templates we will review today for G Suite are synonymous with integrations and Zaps you can build for Office 365 in Outlooks and Excel 365.
When you operate a large team and many individuals are entering information into Bloomerang, it is helpful to be notified when items entered in Bloomerang require action among the team or the team simply needs to be kept in the loop. We explored Slack integration earlier, but email notifications are equally powerful.
This Zap is a merge of two Zap templates, but illustrates the scalability of Zapier to handle multi-step and multi-app workflows.
Use the New Transaction trigger. We’ll use this trigger instead of New Transaction Payment because it allows additional filtering options. We’ll set the trigger to require a minimum amount of $0.01 (in case there are in kind transactions of $0.00. Note that we can also limit this trigger to specific types of transactions. For example, if you only wanted to send this email notification when a new Recurring Donation Schedule is created of a specific amount. We will also set up this trigger to include the Constituent’s Giving History and Household information as we will include some key details from those data sets to populate our email notification.
From the trigger, we are going to complete two actions. First, we will send an email in Gmail. This could be an email to yourself from your own account or an email to someone else from your account. Customize every detail of the email include what goes in the body. We’ll map in data from the Bloomerang trigger to round out the message body. Here is what that looks like when it comes through.
Following the email send we will add another action to Create a Spreadsheet Row in a Google Sheet to log this transaction and some key details about the Constituent. We could then use this Google Sheet to create a real-time dashboard, share the sheet with non-Bloomerang users to use as information lookup, or populate for import into another software that doesn’t have a Zapier app.
Benefits include:
Send updates without running a report
Build a spreadsheet for this year’s giving
Notify people that don’t use Bloomerang
Use notifications as a reminder for to-dos
Other popular apps that can be integrated with Bloomerang via Zapier include:
Shopify
WooCommerce
Square
Stripe
Constant Contact
Survey Monkey
Gravity Forms
HubSpot
Zapier also enables Bloomerang to Bloomerang integrations. Two examples might include:
Donor gives over a cumulative amount this year, tag their account with a Constituent custom field for your giving circle.
New donor added to your Bloomerang database, send a personal email and log an interaction for that email to that Constituent’s timeline.
Bloomerang to Bloomerang workflows are an exciting opportunity to have technology do the work that would normally be assigned to data entry staff or volunteers.
Next step is getting started.
I recommend this 5-step process.
Sign up for a Zapier account, it’s free with a trial and free up to certain limits, nonprofits get a discount
Connect your Bloomerang account to Zapier
Connect your other apps to Zapier
Grab a Bloomerang template and customize it to match your workflow and mapping requirements
Turn on your Zap and monitor it, watch as tasks queue in your task history, resolve errors and high-five for successes
To wrap up today’s presentation, I’ll leave you with a way to think about your technology stack and how Bloomerang fits.
We see Bloomerang as your central database of record. Bloomerang is the hub in the wheel. As you add more apps and other software to your technology ecosystem, Bloomerang holds the central spot. Data will flow into Bloomerang and out of Bloomerang to support your overall fundraising strategy. When you begin to develop integrations for your Bloomerang, remember this image as it will help you maintain a tight network of system automation around your Bloomerang database.
Again, my name is Jeff Haguewood. My email is here. If you’d like to work with a consultant to set up Zaps or develop a custom Bloomerang integration to address a unique use case, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
I do want to emphasize using Zapier, using templates is included in your Bloomerang license. The Bloomerang app is available for you to use in your Zapier account. Consulting is not required. So we don’t want to make you think that you can’t do this with templates, you absolutely can, so please use those templates and get engaged with Zapier because we think it’s a great tool.
Great! Diana, I’m happy to stay on as long as people want for questions.
Diana: Thank you so much Jeff, that was a lot of information that you gave us today. We did get some questions about, can we start using Zapier now with Bloomerang?
Jeff: Absolutely, so you can actually go to… let’s go here… if you go to zapier.com/apps and search for Bloomerang, here’s the Bloomerang page. You can sign up for a Zapier account here or you can click this plus button. Why don’t I go ahead and put this into the chat… There we go.
Diana: Absolutely, thank you, Jeff! And we’ve also gotten questions around pricing, can you show us on Zapier’s page where that is?
Jeff: Yup, zapier.com/pricing The pricing information is laid out by the number of tasks that you process per month. Tasks are based on actions. So if we look at a zap workflow, let’s say… let’s do… this one here. Ok, so this zap here is from Bloomerang new transaction to QuickBooks Online. If you ran this zap, it would count for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 tasks per zap run. So if you processed 5 transactions, 5 steps, you would need a plan with at least 25 tasks, and the plans go up incrementally from there. One of the things about Zapier that’s important to consider is that you’ll likely find the number of hours you’re saving to considerably outpace the cost of your Zapier account. Our team uses over 40 zaps internally and we’ve estimated that we’ve saved over 20 hours a month worth of busywork and it more than pays for itself.
Diana: Absolutely! There is, of course, your time costs money as well. So for me, personally, Bloomerang uses Zapier, as well, and it saves us a lot of hours. That automation really saves us a lot of hours, so that’s great!
Thank you so much to everyone for attending today. We have one last question here that I think we haven’t gotten to, does Zapier integrate API accounts?
Jeff: Great question. So I mentioned earlier that Zapier will integrate with apps that are not in the Zapier app directory. If an app has an API and there are other options even if they don’t have an API, there are still possibilities for integrating with Zapier. So if you don’t find the zap that you’re looking for in the Zapier app directory, please do reach out, there’s a very high likelihood that it can still be integrated with Zapier, which takes into consideration Bloomeranrg’s integrated functionality in Zapier. It’s a much more economical way to build integrations by using Zapier with Bloomerang.
Diana: Awesome! Thank you so much, Jeff, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. We, at Bloomerang, are very excited for this Zapier integration and we’re very excited for our customers to see where you guys will take it, because we’ve mentioned several times that Zapier has an integration with over 2,000 different apps so whatever it is that you’re using, we hope that you can find some way to better automate your processes and work better with Bloomerang. And thank you so much, Jeff and your team. They have been wonderful helping us develop this integration. We’ve already had some customers who have been consulting with them and have been very happy with the consulting process, so thank you very much!
Jeff: Thanks, Diana! Thank you, everyone!
Diana: Alright, thanks, everyone, have a great rest of your afternoon. Bye!
