Bloomerang + Zapier: How to Automate Donor Stewardship Tasks
Bloomerang is one of the best donor management CRMs available for small to mid sized nonprofits—and as a preferred partner and featured Bloomerang presenter, it's the platform we recommend most.
The organizations that get the most out of it are the ones who go beyond data storage. They connect it to the rest of their tech stack to automate the stewardship work that usually falls through the cracks.
Organizations like H.O.P.E. Inc went from 35% to 50% donor retention in 10 months after building out this kind of system. Their open rates nearly doubled and their admin said it made everything easier.
This post walks through how Bloomerang and Zapier work together, what you can automate, and what it looks like when it's built right.
What is journey automation in Bloomerang?
Bloomerang's native automation (called Journey Automation) lets you trigger actions—like sending a task, logging an interaction, or updating a constituent record—based on activity inside Bloomerang itself.
Common uses include:
Creating a follow-up task when a new gift is recorded
Flagging a donor record when they hit a giving milestone
Assigning stewardship tasks to a specific team member based on gift size or fund
Journey Automation is powerful for internal task management. But when you want to send emails, trigger a handwritten note, update a Google Sheet, or connect to your email marketing platform—that's where Zapier comes in.
How does Bloomerang work with Zapier?
Zapier sits between Bloomerang and the other tools in your tech stack. It listens for a trigger in Bloomerang—a new transaction, a new constituent, a tag being added—and then tells another app what to do with that information.
You don't need to know how to code. Zapier was built for non-developers, and the Bloomerang Zapier app is free to use (you'll just need a Zapier account).
Common Bloomerang triggers in Zapier:
New transaction created
New constituent created
Constituent updated
New interaction logged
New task created
Common actions you can automate from those triggers:
Add the donor to a welcome series in Kit, Mailchimp, or another email platform
Send a handwritten note through a service like Handwrytten
Create a task in Bloomerang or a project management tool
Log an interaction record automatically
Update a Google Sheet for reporting
5 Bloomerang + Zapier automations for donor stewardship
These are the automations that consistently move the needle on donor retention.
1. New donor welcome series
Trigger: New transaction in Bloomerang → Action: Add constituent to a welcome email sequence in your email platform
Most nonprofits lose 60–70% of first-time donors. Almost always, it's the silence after the gift that costs them. A welcome series closes that gap fast.
Organizations we work with that have an automated welcome flow see first-time donor retention climb from roughly 18% to the 35–48% range. One nonprofit now onboards 85% of new donors within six minutes of their gift being recorded.
Before automation, that same team was manually sending welcome emails days later—sometimes never. Now the first thing a new donor experiences is a warm, personal welcome.
2. Automated gift acknowledgement
Trigger: New transaction → Action: Create a Bloomerang task for a personal thank-you call + add donor to an acknowledgment email sequence
The thank-you is the most important stewardship touchpoint— and the most likely to get delayed. One client told us they used to find thank-you drafts sitting unsent from months earlier. Now every donor hears back within 24 hours.
3. Lapsed donor re-engagement
Trigger: Constituent tag updated to "Lapsed" → Action: Add to re-engagement email sequence in your email platform
One nonprofit we worked with recovered $18,500 in lapsed gifts within 90 days of launching a targeted re-engagement campaign connected to their Bloomerang data.
Many of those donors had been lapsed for 12+ months. The sequence re-introduced the organization the way we write everything—like a real conversation—before making any ask.
4. Monthly donor stewardship sequence
Trigger: Recurring gift created → Action: Add constituent to a monthly donor welcome and nurture sequence
Monthly donors are your most valuable segment. They deserve their own communication track—not the same emails that go to one-time donors.
A dedicated monthly donor sequence we built for one client runs at a 57% open rate.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit industry average hovers around 26%. That gap is what a well-built, segment-specific sequence creates.
Want to go deeper on monthly donor automation? Rachel walked through this live with Bloomerang →"
5. Automated year-end and campaign follow-up
Trigger: Transaction during a specific fund or date range → Action: Add to a post-campaign follow-up sequence
Mosaic Youth Theatre nearly doubled their year-end results—from $23K to $41,893—on a 48% smaller email list by using targeted, automated follow-up.
The list was smaller because it was more targeted. Rather than sending a broad blast to everyone, we segmented donors who had already signaled intent.
Want to see these workflows in action? Rachel walked through all five live with Bloomerang. Watch the recording→
Is Bloomerang a good CRM for nonprofits?
Yes—especially for small-to-mid-sized organizations with annual budgets between $500K and $10M. Bloomerang was built specifically for donor management and retention, with built-in engagement scoring, retention dashboards, and a straightforward interface that development staff can actually use.
Where Bloomerang shines most is when it's connected to an email platform and giving tool so data flows automatically between systems. That's when you stop managing your CRM and start letting it do the work for you.
What does Bloomerang cost?
Bloomerang's pricing is based on the number of constituent records in your database. Current pricing starts around $119/month for smaller databases. You can find updated pricing at bloomerang.com/pricing.
What are CRM workflows for nonprofits?
A CRM workflow is an automated sequence of actions that gets triggered by a specific event in your database. In Bloomerang, workflows can include:
Task creation and assignment
Email sends (via integration with your email platform)
Interaction logging
Tag updates
Handwritten note triggers
The goal isn't to replace relationship-building—it's to make sure the relationship-building actually happens consistently, even when your team is stretched thin.
How to get started with Bloomerang automations
Audit your current tech stack — What tools are you using alongside Bloomerang? (Email platform, giving platform, etc.)
Identify your biggest gap — Where does donor follow-up consistently fall through the cracks?
Start with one automation — A new donor welcome series is the highest-impact place to start.
Set up your Zapier account — Connect Bloomerang and your email platform. The Bloomerang Zapier app is free.
Build, test, and turn it on.
If you want someone to build it for you—and make sure it's actually connected correctly—that's what we do at Nonprofit Automation Agency.
Work with us
We build done-for-you donor stewardship automation systems for nonprofits using Bloomerang.
Our work includes full tech stack integration, automated welcome and re-engagement workflows, monthly donor programs, and email sequences that run while your team focuses on the mission.
Organizations like H.O.P.E. Inc have seen dramatic retention gains. Want to see what this could look like for yours?
Book a call →
Rachel Bearbower is the founder of Nonprofit Automation Agency and a featured presenter at Bloomerang's GiveCon conference. She specializes in donor stewardship automation for small-to-mid-sized nonprofits.