More analytics, less data entry

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Why a new CRM?

the challenge

Replace an ageing CRM and transform fundraising

Steve Deall works in Supporter Relations for A Rocha UK and is responsible for much of the detail of implementation and day-to-day use of their CRM. He explains the need for a new CRM system: “The charity had run for the previous 12-13 years on a dBase system that was designed and developed by our former IT manager. This was starting to creak and was very dependent on our IT manager for updates and data requests.”

The team describes what is was like managing the database and working with constituent data before they switched to Donorfy: “It was a real challenge! There was no segmentation of audiences. There was some functionality for recording donor histories but this was just done by entering notes in a freeform box. This was not always done and - even if it was recorded - didn’t work as a great resource for quickly understanding the history of a donor. Even things like thank you letters couldn’t be stored on our old database.”

They were put in touch with someone who had been through the process of scoping and implementing a CRM for another (much larger) organisation. They recommended a number of solutions as well as important considerations A Rocha UK should factor into their decision making process.

• A number of factors went into the decision of which CRM to use, including:
• Track record of the designers of the solution.
• A solution that was targeted at the specific sub-niche of the UK charity sector.
• Quality of fundraising architecture wired into the solution.
• Affordability of the solution.
• Flexibility of a monthly contract meaning that the pressure was on the solution to deliver to retain custom rather than relying on a long contractual tie-in.
• Confidence in the ability of the Donorfy / implementation partners to get us through what I knew would be a challenging migration process.
• A flexible approach to user training.
• Over user-friendliness of the solution.

From a shortlist of 10, Donorfy was chosen by A Rocha UK to be their Fundraising CRM and Donorfy Management Database for its strong performance across all of the factors the charity were looking at.

solution

User friendly and easy to understand

When Steve and his team heard about Donorfy, he knew that the opportunity to move to a cloud-based platform - which had expanded functionality and would allow more of the team to access and use the system - was vital to the continued success of the charity.

As the main user of the CRM, Steve found that learning the interface and functions of Donorfy has been easy due to it being user-friendly and the intuitive features. 

“Donorfy contains features that don’t have equivalents on our previous database, so we have spent time on developing new procedures and practices to incorporate these new features in the operations of the charity. The changing over systems is not always straightforward, but the Donorfy knowledge base has been and is a great resource. The Donorfy support team has been helpful and quick to respond to requests, and during the transfer to Donorfy, they spent time with us to make sure we got what we wanted.” 

Steve mentions that the feedback from the rest of the A Rocha team has also been positive, with the team noting that the database is ‘user-friendly and easy to understand’. It is also helpful for the team to have a knowledge base where everyone can seek answers to questions and learn more about the functions of Donorfy.

impact

Positive impact for the charity from the beginning

The biggest impact for the charity has been better availability of data and analytics to all of their supporters, and a reduction in time spent on entering data for some of our supporters.

Also, the many integrations Donorfy offers has meant being able to connect their database to other products like MailChimp and Stripe, which has a great impact on the efficiency and quality of the communications with their supporters.

The team has also saved money in terms of people power. When their old IT manager left, they didn’t need to replace him, as much of his job was doing database-related work. Having a more user-friendly solution like Donorfy has meant database-related work is less labour intensive.

“We obviously have the monthly running costs of Donorfy and need some outsourced support for other aspects of IT. However, we have still saved money overall. I think there are even more cost savings that we will make, such as from the efficiency of collecting donations from giving platforms.”

“The key thing is having a long view for this type of project – especially with the level of culture change it involved for us. We will have bigger wins over the coming months than we’ve had so far.”