Average annual donations
Active alumni website users
Alumni have engaged with them at least once post-Almabase
Merchant Taylors' School, founded in 1620 by John Harrison, has a long-standing tradition of excellence in education. Located in Crosby, north of Liverpool, the school serves as a family of independent day schools for prep, boys, and girls, and will transition to co-education for seniors starting in September 2025. With a community of 1,200 pupils across three sites, Merchant Taylors' combines strong academic achievement with a broad range of co-curricular activities, fostering a learning environment that emphasizes care and respect for others.
Being a one-person shop meant they were constrained by time and resources.
Much of their time was spent setting up fundraising campaigns and manually updating the database, which could have otherwise been spent on running multiple successful programs and enhancing their overall alumni and fundraising strategy.
When they switched to Almabase, everything changed for the better. They were reaching more alumni, streamlining operations, and bringing in 3X the donations every year.
They could now craft personalized email campaigns, effortlessly update alumni data, and set up giving pages with leaderboards and challenges in a snap. Plus, they could run multiple programs tailored to different alumni generations, making sure everyone felt involved.
Lisa Connor, Head of Development & Alumni Relations at Merchant Taylors' School, is a passionate fundraiser, a one-person shop, a wearer of many hats—in short, a champ.
However, being a one-person team restricted Lisa from running initiatives to engage different generations of her constituents. With Almabase, she could streamline her programming and offer something for everyone.
Running multiple alumni programs is no easy feat, let alone staying on top of each one. With Almabase, Lisa could put her programs on auto-pilot, allowing her to focus on strategy rather than getting bogged down in tedious tasks.
The alumni directory enables self-serve networking. Automated emails nudge mentees to take the next step or provide feedback, while weekly digests auto-populate with the latest happenings on the alumni network. Email communications can be scheduled and automated well in advance, saving Lisa valuable time and effort.
Merchant Taylors' School believes in engagement-driven fundraising. Alumni have various ways to give back, not just monetarily:
- Hosting online career sessions or events
- Mentoring fellow alumniProviding mock interview experiences
- Joining alumni associations or online interest groups
- Receiving messages from current students and other alumni through an alumni network
The result? Since Merchant Taylors' School started offering alumni multiple engagement opportunities using Almabase, their average annual donations have grown by 3X.
With the help of Almabase, Merchant Taylors' School has done an impressive job capturing and updating over 16k touchpoints for their alumni contacts. We're talking accurate emails, phone numbers, addresses, and even proper spellings. But here's the best part—all these details get automatically updated in Almabase without creating duplicate records, ensuring accurate contact information without any manual effort on their part.
✅ 3X increase in average anuual donations
✅ 3.4k active alumni website users
✅ 90% of alumni have engaged with them at least once post-Almabase
✅ 70+ active mentors
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