CHANA
Chana Charity has seen an increase of 25% in returning donations since switching to Access Charity CRM
Challenge
- Wanted a system that could handle the fundraising requirements of the organisation
- Ability to integrate with existing inhouse software
Approach
- Required a robust database structure
- Accurately organise and store data
- Ability to segment database for effective targeting
Results
- 25% increase in ‘return’ donors – those who don’t regularly donate
- 40% increase in regular donations on an on-going basis
- Improvements in relationship management, events and other fundraising activities
- User friendly and adaptable allowing each user to tailor the system for their own needs and requirements
The challenges facing Chana Charity
When Ben Robbins, Business Manager for Chana Charity, joined the charity 4 years ago, one of his first tasks was to look for a fundraising solution that allowed them to move away from their custom-made database which wasn’t functioning how they wanted or needed. Ben did a lot of research into what solutions were available on the market, and ‘stumbled across’ Access Charity CRM by mistake. ‘I invited Access in for a demo and was taken back by the look and feel as well as the user-friendly interface of the system and since then, never looked back’, Ben said.
Read about fundraising management software.
New system has allowed us to do more and saved time
With Access Charity CRM in place, Ben and his team started noticing very quickly that they were on top of their donor management as the solution allowed them to search contacts and to report in more detail. The functionality that they found especially useful was the ability to follow up with their donor base such as checking on pledges against payments and run gift aid reporting. Ben mentions, ‘what’s been a real game changer for us has been the introduction of social media and the mail merger integration modules. With the recent change in legislation with GDPR, sending out letters via the mail merger has been so easy and such a pleasure to use – before this, we would have had to do all of this manually.’
Read more donor management software.
Access Charity CRM has allowed us to be more professional
‘The first thing we noticed about having Access Charity CRM has been how it has allowed us to be more organised and more robust in the way we went about with our fundraising and donor management, especially in our communications. We realised that with this software, we were able to monitor how we were reaching out to our donor base, so we weren’t bombarding our donors with calls and requests which is really important when people are giving you large amounts of money – the software has helped make us look more professional.’
Access Charity CRM has given us flexibility
‘The beauty of Access Charity CRM is that it allows our staff and volunteers to use the software in their own unique way, letting them to get the relevant data that they require, giving them flexibility to tailor specific details on a particular donor or events. Plus, it has allowed us to easily create reports of who we want to approach, invite to specific events and to the finer details for example, where we want to host our charity boxes.’ ‘The most important thing for us as an organisation is that everyone uses Access Charity CRM , from our fundraisers to our accounts team - everyone finds it easy and intuitive to use,’ says Ben. Another benefit felt by Chana Charity was that Access Access Charity CRM was quick and easy to integrate with their existing accounting software, meaning that they could get their data in and out of the system quickly. This allowed them more visibility over their own cash flow as well as seeing how pledges were converted into actual money, helping them streamlined the way they ran their gift-aid programme since it was so easy to use to help claim gift-aid money.
So easy to work with the Access
‘Working with the Access team has been great,’ Ben praised. ‘We had very out dated data, especially in terms of matching up fields, so we had a lot of cleaning up work to do on our own data before we could even start the implementation process and Access really helped us with that – from our consultant coming onsite to over the phone help but also all the training they gave us on how to do the imports and data runs, allowing us to be in control of the process.’ ‘The robust test environment gave us confidence that we could upload, change and import data without worrying that we were going to mess up the live data. It allowed us the freedom to truly understand our data and what it could do for us.’
It just works, making life easy for us
‘We are very happy with the system – it does what it says on the tin. The intuitive interface means that it is super user-friendly meaning that we spend minimal time retraining our users. It’s not overly complicated unless you want it to be. And the best part, it’s customisable for each user, allowing us to have greater control on how they can interact and use the system – meaning we don’t have issues with users accidentally deleting data or inputting incorrect information, which is paramount for us.’