Donations increased 21% with Donorfy

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Why a new CRM?

the challenge

A cost effective solution for a small team

Annette Fettes has been the Development Director at St Andrew’s Club for a year and half. As the development director, she’s always looking for ways to bring in income for the charity. “St Andrew’s is the oldest youth club in the world. We’re a registered charity, so we get no statutory funding and have to raise around £400,000 annually for running costs.”

“When I joined, we had an Access database and it was a bit haphazard. It had been built up over 5 or 6 years. There wasn't a huge amount of consistency in the data. People were on there and forgotten about.”

St Andrew’s Club has a strong supporter base in terms of wealth, so it made sense for them get a more modern CRM that helped them to access supporter information quickly and easily when needed, make sure they weren't missing people and add at a consistent level.

St Andrew’s Club is a small charity and they are careful with how they spend money. They have just over 2,000 records and there are only two people to manage the system. A key concern was a CRM that was cost effective and easy to use.

“We looked at Salesforce and eTapestry, but they both actually worked out to be very expensive for us. Although Salesforce does sound good at first as it’s “free up front”, I did get advice from a database consultant that once you customise the platform, which you need to do, the costs soon add up. Donorfy was ready to go the moment you signed up to it.”

solution

An easy to use, powerful CRM

Annette had an online demo with the Donorfy team and found the platform looked very straightforward and intuitive.

“Donorfy has lots of features that link in other services that we already use, like Mailchimp, which was very appealing. We’ve now gone on to sync Mailchimp with Donorfy and it now works very well with our email newsletters.”

“The automated Gift Aid claim feature was a very important consideration as we were previously having to compile claims and upload them manually, which has lots of room for error and takes up a lot of time for a hard-pressed fundraising team. Now we just check if entries are valid, rather than having to upload manually.”

“There was also an important need around data protection and who we can contact that Donorfy provides. We did have a few issues [with data protection] previously, as we didn’t have a way of capturing that data consistently.”

Although St Andrew’s Club is still exploring Donorfy’s full range of features, with opportunity tracking and major donor development, the basic features are all helpful tools for the team.

“All the basic features are very intuitive, work very well and are easy to use. Donorfy does everything we need. We’re using the essential bits daily, frequently and to great effect.”

impact

Better supporter relations has increased income

• Funds raised increased by 21%year-on- year

• Time savings of 10% for fundraising team

• Data protection in place and GDPR compliance ready with Donorfy

Improved supporter communications with help from the Donorfy team

With Donorfy, Annette now feels really on top of their supporter base, what they need and the next step for them in communications. “In terms of communication with our supporters, it’s been wonderful. Before we had Donorfy, we were forgetting people, we weren't necessarily thanking people, we didn't have a way to track who had been thanked and inevitably things get filed away in different areas. Now it’s all in once place. You can look at a record and see who has been sent something and what has been sent to them. All of that is brilliant and we couldn't have possibly done that before.”

“The Donorfy team is lovely and always very helpful. They’re always quick to respond and we’ve had no problems with them at all. Sometimes I feel stupid contacting them as the question may be obvious, but they’re always very helpful, courteous and always come back with a solution, so that’s excellent.”

“I’m very happy with Donorfy and the fact it is cloud-based means accessing it from any the laptop is excellent, so we can always keep track of our supporters no matter where we are.”

A 21% increase in funds raised with help from Donorfy

St Andrew’s Club have increased their funds raised this year from £370,000 to £446,000 - a 21% increase that Donorfy was a key part in making happen. In terms of work time, Annette estimated that the charity has saved at least 10% of their time, freeing up their fundraising team for more vital work.

“Donorfy has helped us meet our fundraising goal this year partly as a result of this year's campaigns being run through Donorfy. From events through to mailings, from Gift Aid claims through to our marketing communications. It’s all been hinged on Donorfy. Without it, we probably would be in a bit of a muddle.”