Sobell House Hospice

About Sobell House

Charity Profile

Migrated from: Raiser's Edge
No of Constituents: 54,000 +
Annual Income: 4,800,000 +
Charity type: Hospice
Donorfy Edition: Professional

Sobell House provides palliative and end of life care in Oxfordshire. They offer physical, psychological, social and spiritual care to those facing life threatening illness, death and bereavement.

The focus is on quality of life, respecting the uniqueness of each person, and respect for the dignity of all users of the service.

Automation: To save time

Looking for a solution that had integrations with MailChimp, Eventbrite and JustGiving to save time.

Transform Gift Processing

With income from tribute and in-memory giving, as well as general high volumes of gift processing, the charity needed a new approach.

Fundraiser friendly

The team wanted a CRM that was easy to use and intuitive.

An agile CRM for now and the future

The Challenge

Having been with their previous CRM system for some 10 years, the Sobell House fundraising team identified the need for a CRM that was easier to use, better connected to the other digital platforms, and one that is fit for the future. They also wanted a solution that was cost effective, eventually reducing the costs currently being paid.

Lindsey, Individual Giving Manager at Sobell House says “We wanted a CRM that would help each and every member of the team to be more efficient and effective, and which we would enjoy using to help embed good data management practices within the organisation. We wanted an agile system that would work for us both now, and in the future as our fundraising methods evolve.”

Sobell House had been using Raiser’s Edge 7 for the previous 10 years. It was important that the data was not only migrated from RE but also transformed and improved during the migration.

A powerful solution with a broad range of great features

SOLUTION

After a selection process involving 5 short-listed suppliers, Sobell House chose Donorfy as their CRM solution, for the following reasons:

Ease of use. Donorfy’s likeable appearance and usability was a key factor in the decision. The team enjoy using Donorfy and it is being more widely used than the previous CRM.
Cost. The cost of moving to Donorfy was competitive compared to other options Sobell House explored. In the long run, when taking into account savings in staff time they expect to save money and feel they are getting more for their money with Donorfy.
Integration. As a modern, cloud-based solution Donorfy integrates with and automates the data flow between popular tools such as JustGiving, Eventbrite and Mailchimp. And the API ensures that Donorfy remains future-proof.
Partnership. Sobell House liked that the Donorfy team were keen to work with them, and have involved them in new product feature development.
Product. As well as being easy to use Donorfy is powerful, with a broad and growing range of great features for charities managing many fundraising activities.

“Donorfy was a clear winner in our eyes.” says Lindsey. “They were, and have remained really keen to work with us in the long term to make sure Donorfy fits our needs, as well as those of other charities.”

Sobell House opted to deploy Donorfy in their own Microsoft Azure database, providing access to back-end data tables and the ability to scale the performance up and down on demand.

In-house onboarding by a Donorfy expert

IMPLEMENTATION

Donorfy consultant Graham Dunn worked with Lindsey and the team at Sobell House to implement the solution. This started with scoping the project, and then involved configuration, data migration, training and go-live support. Apart from a few face to face meetings the solution was delivered remotely, reducing costs and the environmental impact.

Concurrently Sobell House worked with the Donorfy software development team, along with other Donorfy users, to help in the development of new product features that would become available to all users of Donorfy. This included enhancements to the JustGiving and Eventbrite integrations.

An integrated solution

Integrations

The team wanted their CRM to be connected to their favourite platforms and automate as many processes as possible. Here is a selection of the integrations they now use.

IMPACT

Tools to increase donor engagement

Lindsey from Sobell House said "We love the product. It’s much friendlier to use and it saves a lot of time processing gifts, and the integrations to the other tools we use will be increasingly important as donors engage with us online. As for the company, they’ve been a pleasure to work with. Flexible, responsive and keen to get our input on things, we really feel we have a voice.”

As a result of migrating to Donorfy, Sobell House have seen the following benefits:

Improved team morale
Improved data quality
Staff time savings
Long term cost savings expected
We expect to be able to deliver improvements to our supporter care and stewardship thanks to the tools available within Donorfy.

Project feedback

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Lindsay

Sobell House

We love the product. It’s much friendlier to use and it saves a lot of time processing gifts, and the integrations to the other tools we use will be increasingly important as donors engage with us online.

Graham Dunn

Donorfy

We loved working on the Sobell House project. It is incredible to see how using Donorfy has given them so much power to do so much more.

A CRM the team wanted to use

Sobell House choose Donorfy for ease of use, team morale and time-saving features