Fundraising, Digitally Composed: How the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg Builds Closeness to Its Supporters with the starmate EMS

starmate EMS fundraising module: management, segmentation and outreach in one system, donation receipts fully automated.

• Document creation: 100% automated
• Data synchronicity: real time
• Effort for donation receipts: −90%
• Segmentation: flexible by donor rank

Fundraising, CRM and marketing communication were spread across several systems. This led to media breaks, redundant records and high manual effort, especially for receipts and targeted outreach. Loyal major and recurring donors could not be identified automatically.

• Fundraising administration in a separate legacy system
• Donor data and communication decoupled from each other
• Thank-you letters and donation receipts created manually
• No central overview of donor status and segments

The EMS fundraising module replaces the legacy systems and consolidates administration, contact management and communication:

• Donor categorization: Donors are recorded on the contact and automatically categorized by rank (e.g. one-time donor, recurring donor, VIP supporter).
• Segment-based outreach: Based on the ranks, the Elbphilharmonie runs tailored campaigns, from invitations to special thank-you formats.
• Document generation: Thank-you letters and donation receipts are created via placeholders, directly after the donation or collectively at the end of the fiscal year.
• Traceability: All documents and historical data are stored on the contact.

The Elbphilharmonie saves time in the back office and gains room for personal communication.

• Data reconciliation between CRM, communication and fundraising without media breaks
• Automated creation of tax-relevant donation receipts and thank-you letters
• Campaigns based on dynamic donor data
• 360-degree view of all donor relationships

“Switching to starmate has revolutionized our fundraising. Instead of getting lost in different systems and manual Excel lists, we now manage the entire donor journey from a single source. Automating the donation receipts saves us countless working hours, while the precise donor ranks allow us to communicate more personally and appreciatively than ever before.”

Dr. Anja Wagner, Head of Fundraising & Development, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

The Elbphilharmonie stands for excellence and precision. Our goal was for fundraising behind the scenes to reflect that standard. The team spent a lot of time on manual donation receipts and reconciling mountains of data.

We tailored the fundraising module to the Elbphilharmonie's workflows with custom developments. When the first donation receipts ran through error-free and automatically documented on the contact, it was a real goosebump moment.

Consulting team

1. Kick-off & specification: Definition of the interfaces and the migration path with the Elbphilharmonie.
2. Customizing & development: Adapting the fundraising module to the Elbphilharmonie's workflows.
3. Data migration: Cleaned transfer of the donor data, ranks and documents from the legacy system.
4. Automation & template setup: Dynamic templates for thank-you letters and donation receipts.
5. Go-live & Running: Launch and first segment-based fundraising campaigns from the CRM.