Saving Time, Staying Personal

CHALLENGE

Reaching for the Cloud

Behind the scenes, Fundraising Manager Lydia McCutcheon helps power their vital work. Along with her team, she manages the membership programme, leads on fundraising appeals and trusts income, and keeps donor communications warm and personal. It’s no easy task for a small, hands-on team. 

Before Donorfy, their previous CRM was beginning to become a challenge. While it had served them well for a long time, it was clear they needed to move towards a cloud-based solution to support their big ambitions and growth. Lydia says:

We wanted a CRM that would make life easier. Something intuitive, that the whole team would actually want to use, and that would give us a full picture of our supporters and projects."

SOLUTION

A CRM That Speaks Fundraiser

After a careful tender process, Donorfy stood out as the clear choice. 

We loved that the team behind Donorfy came from charity backgrounds. They really understood the day-to-day realities charities face, and what charities actually need from a CRM." 

Another big plus was Donorfy's approach to continuous improvement and pricing, with new features included as part of the subscription - no bolt-on fees. Strong integrations were a major draw too. Lydia explains:

We were already using tools like MailChimp and Eventbrite, and Donorfy fitted in really naturally without us needing to completely overhaul everything." 

Connections with GoCardless and Stripe have also made managing donations and payments far smoother. 

While migrating data took careful preparation, they worked with implementation partner Mast to move their records over successfully. Lydia’s advice to other charities?

Give yourself more time than you think you’ll need, and do as much data cleaning as possible beforehand. That makes everything easier!" 

Today, Donorfy sits firmly at the heart of the charity’s work. They’re using it to manage fundraising, membership, communications, supporter journeys and training event attendance – all with the confidence of knowing support is on hand if needed. Lydia says:

It’s reassuring knowing that if we have a question or a new idea, there’s a team behind Donorfy who understands where we’re coming from."

IMPACT

More Time, More Focus

We’re pleased to say, since adopting Donorfy as their charity CRM, the change has been transformational across the organisation. Firstly, manual admin has been dramatically reduced, freeing up time for strategic fundraising and donor engagement.  

When I think about how much time we used to spend on spreadsheets and manual processes, it’s incredible. Our fundraising officer role used to be around 75% admin but now it's closer to 50%, which means more time for building new areas like legacy giving and commemorative donations." 

Appeals are much quicker and easier to manage too. Using Donorfy's batch templates, the team can process postal and email responses far more efficiently. Supporter communications have improved too, with segmentation tools allowing the team to easily run hybrid campaigns, matching supporter preferences for post or digital communications. Lydia adds:

Hybrid is definitely the way to go for our supporters." 

Reporting has also seen a big leap forward. Lydia recalls:

Before, even simple reports had to be created manually and circulated by email. Now we have greater visibility. We can track campaign performance, monitor engagement and make decisions based on up-to-date information.” 

Keeping the Personal Touch: 

One of Lydia’s favourite features is the ability to personalise acknowledgements easily within Donorfy. It’s a small detail, with a big emotional impact. Lydia explains:

Before Donorfy, I had a Word document where I’d write little notes to myself to personalise letters manually. Supporters would share wonderful stories, from visiting the church where their grandparents were married to remembering holidays spent exploring beautiful parish churches. We like to reflect that back to them, but it was so manual so took time.” 

Now, it’s much simpler. Lydia adds:

The ability to personalise acknowledgements easily means we can keep that warm, personal connection with every supporter, whether they're giving online, by post or over the phone. That matters to us, and to them." 

By making it easier to capture those heartfelt moments, Donorfy hasn’t just streamlined processes, it’s helped the National Churches Trust stay true to one of its core values: valuing every supporter as an individual, and making every gift - and every story - feel truly special.