© February 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive, Charleston, SC 29492 T 800.443.9441 E solutions@blackbaud.com W www.blackbaud.com

Founded in 1987, Gull Wings Children’s Museum serves the children of Ventura County and their families

by offering education and outreach programs at a hands-on discovery museum located in downtown

Oxnard, Calif. Gull Wings Children’s Museum is a registered 501(c)3 educational nonprofit organization

whose mission is to partner with parents and educators to teach children about the world around them,

with an emphasis on California, by developing an up-to-date environment that is sustainable, engaging,

fun and inspiring.

Challenge

Gull Wings Children’s Museum was using a very archaic and primitive donor and visitor tracking system.

The system utilized three by five cards and binders of paper to track museum attendance, identify donor

locale, and manage events and programs. As you can imagine, this system wasn’t very effective and did

not provide accurate data. This led to numerous problems such as the inability to provide the necessary

information required on many grant applications, an inability to effectively cultivate or solicit donors, the

inability to easily report back to stakeholders, and a lot of wasted time. Additionally, this system inhibited

the museum from moving forward. Gull Wings Children’s Museum is striving to become the premier

children’s discovery museum in California.

Solution

Gull Wings selected Altru™ by Blackbaud because it would provide an easy way to have reliable data at

its fingertips. Altru gives Gull Wings the functionality needed to move the organization forward by enabling

the Museum to gather and collect accurate data that will eventually increase funds. Altru addresses the

various needs of Gull Wings such as constituent tracking, museum attendance, volunteer management,

and event management all in one system.

Gull Wings also selected Altru because it provided merchandise

sales management functionality that will enable the Museum to

track its gift shop inventory.

“Now we can track what performs best,” said Melissa Baffa,

executive director for Gull Wings Children’s Museum. “If I want

to add a program or change our offerings, I can look at our

data and find out what is the best time to do so and make a

case for it.”

“Now we can track what performs best. If I want to add a program or change our offerings, I can look at our data and find out what is the best time to do so and make a case for it.”

— Melissa Baffa Executive Director

Gull Wings Children’s Museum

Gull Wings Children’s Museum

Continued on following page

Altru™ by Blackbaud Gives Gull Wings Children’s Museum Cleaner Data to Increase

Funding and Help Become the Premier Children’s Discovery Museum in California

© March 2011

© February 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive, Charleston, SC 29492 T 800.443.9441 E solutions@blackbaud.com W www.blackbaud.com

Results

Altru has enabled the Museum to better manage

its operations and constituents. For example,

the Museum has only done one large fundraising

event in recent history. The limitations of its paper

system made event fundraising very inefficient.

Now with Altru, Gull Wings will be doing a

fundraiser in the spring.

Additionally, the Museum now has cleaner data that will enable it to apply for more grants. Before

Altru, the Museum found it difficult to deliver its data as fact or didn’t have the data required on some

applications. With Altru that is no longer the case.

“We can now show the information and substantiate our claims, so we can deliver the data we have as

fact and work to get more funding, particularly from grants,” Baffa said.

Overall, Altru has helped Gull Wings expand and will help lead it into the future. The Museum will be

using the solution to track volunteers, membership, sell admission tickets, check in groups for events

and much, much more.

“Altru has allowed us as an

organization to function more

efficiently and professionalize

our system so that we can do

things cleaner, faster, and with

better results,” Baffa concluded.

“Altru has allowed us as an organization to function more efficiently and professionalize our system so that we can do things cleaner, faster, and with better results.”

— Melissa Baffa Executive Director

Gull Wings Children’s Museum

To find out more, contact us today at solutions@blackbaud.com.

Gull Wings Children’s Museum

© March 2011