Tech solutions

Question 1

Example of how you used technology to address a problem. Monitor and evaluate.

Answer 1

The tech solution was for storing our corporate prospect pipelines.
When I started at NHS Charities Together, very young org 2 years old establishing our processes. We had our corporate propsect pipelines on spreadsheets which isn’t the most effective way to store them. These spreadsheets are quite 2 dimensional, there was no function built in to record prospect data or track the cultivation of the relationship and development of partnership.
Whilst there would be a way to build this into excel, it isn’t the safest or most efficient way as files can get corrupted and it lacks the sophisticated technology of a CRM.
We knew that spreadsheets wouldn’t work in the long-term.
As an organisation we were using Raisers Edge to store and report on supporter information across all fundraising streams. My manager had past experience of using Raisers Edge for pipelines, so with the system in place our first point of call was to trial this.
I worked with the data team to set up the ‘opportunities’ function to reflect the new business cycle.
We now have a constituent code for corporate prospects from which we can pull reports on the whole pipeline.
Using the opportunities function we can track the partnership development against the new business cycle.
Within this space we store our interactions and insights with the prospects which supports the handover process to account management, as well as business continuity in unforeseen circumstances.
The system allows us to set up actions to remind us of next steps with a prospect to support solicitation, removing the reliance on memory and reducing space for human error.
There are also automations set up in the system which alerts the fundraiser when a prospect might need be lapsing and needs attention.
Also sophisticated reporting which provides us of an overview of our portfolio.
There is still room to improve this such as adding pledges to the opportunities to help the finance team see when we’re expecting income but we haven’t received it and streamline our budgeting process… so as you can see it’s continues to being evaluated and adapted for its efficiency.
But so far, this solution is working because it takes the friction out of the day-to-day fundraising. As a fundraiser I have oversight of my pipelines, both from an individual prospect level and as a portfolio.
As a new business team, we can use reporting tools to track all our opportunities against the budget.
Our pipelines sit within the wider reporting ecosystem so senior teams can easily access and analyse this data against the context of our organisations fundraising.
It is also cost-effective as Raisers Edge is in use across the organisation, and this ensures that we are efficient in our fundraising and more time and money resource can be invested into furthering our cause and giving grants to our members.
Was an alternative and how we evaluated that?!.