Littleton Public Schools Foundation: GiveSmart Success Story

The Littleton Public Schools Foundation (LPSF) has been dedicated to filling district funding gaps that Littleton Public Schools (LPS) has faced for 30+ years. During their tenure, LPSF staff, volunteers, and board members have established and grown several cornerstone events.    

The trouble was, they were fueling fundraising at those events through several different vendors, leaving their data, guest management, and communication tools scattered and disjointed. Some event setups were insufficient and clunky. Others made reporting unnecessarily challenging with ill-formatted spreadsheets. The foundation desired to consolidate its technology and eliminate manual work to better serve its team, volunteers, board, students, and teachers.    

The foundation evaluated several options and concluded that it could fully leverage GiveSmart’s connected platform to support its gala, The Spirit Celebration and its golf outing. GiveSmart offered the best value and opportunities for growth.  

Challenge & Solution

LPSF quickly saw how GiveSmart automated tracking and reporting, significantly reducing errors and manual work. Additionally, the guest management tools, easy seat assignments, sponsorship activation, paddle raise management, and day-of donor experience at their Spirit Celebration confirmed that GiveSmart was the best choice to support their small staff and large mission.    

They’ve seen consistent growth in their Spirit Celebration since using GiveSmart, in part because they can text attendees about giving opportunities, sell out their revenue enhancers, and grow silent auction funds raised from donors in the room and online. They also coordinate with a Smart Partner at their Spirit Celebration.   

They have also consolidated workloads and purchasing opportunities for their golf outing, creating early sign-ups and freeing up time on the day of the outing for board members and staff.  

Results

From the beginning, LPSF has found the full functionality of the GiveSmart platform easy to use for their team, volunteers, board members, and supporters.    

At their most recent Spirit Celebration, the check-in experience received only five-star ratings from donors in their post-event survey, and the checkout experience received a majority of five-star ratings, along with a few four-star ratings. Because they have streamlined the golf-outing registration experience, golfers, board members, and staff can look forward to a more engaging, mission-centered experience.    

Since adopting GiveSmart, LPSF has been able to spend more time telling its story and less time on behind-the-scenes, manual work. The team continues to be empowered to expand their unlimited access to the platform, specifically with peer-to-peer fundraising and text-to-donate, leaning into their creativity to find new ways to best support LPS students and staff and grow even more.    

The foundation’s use of a connected, automated GiveSmart platform has enabled them to fund teacher grants, technology purchases, and scholarships, as well as establish an as-needed rainy-day fund.