The Fundraising People

The Fundraising People recruits regular givers to Australia’s major Not for Profit (NFP) organizations. Up until a couple of years ago the company was adding spreadsheets as it grew until more than 40,000 records were periodically crashing Excel.

Introducing Salesforce resolved the immediate problem, providing a stable foundation for integrating data on fundraisers, payroll and donors providing a complete view of the business. “Previously, we were triple handling data,” says director Matthew Brine. “The operating efficiencies of a single Salesforce platform were instantaneous.”

Since then, The Fundraising People has begun transitioning all of its major business processes to the cloud. Recruitment is one such process. Previously structured around paper applications, today fundraisers are engaged online via a simple web form. Workflow assists with applicant screening and interview scheduling. PDF contracts are forwarded to successful applicants by email – as are OHNS policy, vehicle policy documents, and pre-training materials.”Sharing information in this way has reduced training time by one and a half days per month,” says Brine.

Competitive culture

Once on board, fundraisers join a culture of healthy competition made possible by a collaborative Salesforce environment – it’s driving performance skywards! Currently with 180 permanent staff on the books, year on year sales growth sits at 40 percent.

The Fundraising People habitually recognizes and benchmarks top performers in Chatter, which is revolutionizing the way people interact with each other internally. Enterprise social networking application Chatter is The Fundraising People’s preferred channel for communicating results to the team to keep them motivated – “Chatter brings us together,” says Brine. “Its how we motivate each other and celebrate our successes.”

Measured success

Everything that’s possible to measure is presented in dashboards, including actuals against targets, campaign performance, individual performance against KPIs, and year on year growth. This allows for planning two to three years in advance.

From paper to iPads

The transition to a mobile data environment fulfils a long awaited goal for Brine, who is keen to eliminate every last vestige of a paper driven operation. His vision is for all employees to have access to current data wherever they go, on iPads.

Transitioning to mobile in the field is a current project, according to Brine: “We are replacing clipboards with iPads for signups on the street,” he explains. “This requires integration with a fully compliant PCI gateway to safeguard people’s bank details.” Salesforce implementation partner Arxxus is custom building a compliant mobile application to roll out to the field workforce. Once live, it is expected to save one full day’s admin per week. “Saturday has traditionally been our day to collate and input the week’s records. Basically, on the spot sign ups in iPads will give us back our Saturdays,” says Brine.

Add to that the shorter processing times associated with real time mobile signups – same day versus weekly – which are set to reduce attrition.

Accuracy is also a key factor. Six to ten percent of donor forms are currently rejected through inaccuracies – in bank details for example. Removing an entire layer of manual inputting will help accuracy soar.

Improved donor communications

The Fundraising People’s cloud transformation doesn’t stop at signup. It is also focusing on improving communication with donors and extending its relationship with them beyond signup.