Junior Achievement of New York

Junior Achievement of New York Increases Donations and Streamlines Event Management with Friends Asking Friends

For over 80 years, Junior Achievement of New York (JA New York) has delivered economic empowerment programs to New York City and Long Island students. Through a dedicated volunteer network, JA New York provides free K-12 in-school and after-school programs. Founded in 1929, Junior Achievement of New York is the local affiliate of Junior Achievement Worldwide, the world’s largest and fastest-growing organization dedicated to inspiring and preparing young people to succeed in a global economy. Today Junior Achievement Worldwide reaches approximately 9.5 million students globally. Junior Achievement programs focus on three key content areas: work readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy — The Three Pillars of Student Success.

The Challenge:

• Junior Achievement of New York did not have the ability to accept donations online.
• The staff was spending hours manually entering donations, registrations, and various event-specific data.
• The organization was growing and so were the number of event fundraisers and constituents.
• Event participants wanted a simpler, more effective way to raise money through their networks and online for events.

The Solution:

• JA New York selected Friends Asking Friends to provide fundraising event participants with a simple-to-use online tool that enables each participant to set his or her own web page, solicit donations from contacts via email, and easily accept donations online.
• Friends Asking Friends gives the organization the ability to access historical donor and event data that can be repurposed year after year, saving the organization a lot of time.
• In just a few mouse clicks, the reporting features in Blackbaud Sphere enable JA New York to review reports, determine where donors come from, what they give to, how much they give,  what events they participate in, and what event teams they are on.

The Results:

• Enhanced web presence: Event participants are able to upload videos from YouTube® to make their web pages more appealing.
• More participants, more revenue: Now, more than 3,000 event participants utilize Friends Asking Friends to raise over $1,000,000 annually for the organization. For some event teams, donations have doubled or tripled in recent years.
• The gift of time: Junior Achievement of New York has streamlined processes, eliminated manual data entry, and decreased time spent on administrative tasks. The staff has more time to focus on fundraising and fulfilling the organization’s mission.