Identifying and integrating technology to drive sports charity income

Challenge

Sports charities generate the majority of their income through donations, fundraising and events. By finding cost-effective ways to build and nurture stronger direct relationships with these financial supporters – growing engagement, and in turn driving donations and participation in fundraising events – sports charities can grow income and have an even greater positive impact on society.

Insight

The Ruth Strauss Foundation was launched in 2019 to drive research into non-smoking lung cancers, and support families with dependent children facing the death of a parent. Following the high-profile launch of the #RedForRuth campaign in 2019, maintaining a personalised one-to-one relationship with each donor – critical to long-term growth – was becoming increasingly difficult and onerous, as was understanding how and where marketing activities were delivering greatest impact.

Solution

By using its experience building bespoke data-driven customer relationship technology solutions for sports properties, Two Circles would be able to recommend and implement a new technology solution that improved the Ruth Strauss Foundation’s understanding of its donors, fundraisers and marketing activities, and deliver a new ability to communicate with its growing audience without losing a personal touch.

Action

Two Circles delivered the Ruth Strauss Foundation an end-to-end customer relationship technology solution, identifying the right solution for the organisation’s needs all the way through to implementation and ongoing technical and strategic support.

Two Circles began by understanding the Ruth Strauss Foundation’s full needs, which were a technology solution that enhanced customer service capabilities; enabled it to gain more control of the lead management process; integrated all existing communications and marketing channels; and provided a joined-up approach for data collection and management across the organisation. The ability to synchronise operations with charity platforms Virgin Money and JustGiving was also a key priority.

After an assessment of the potential systems available, Salesforce’s Non-Profit Cloud solution was selected, and the Two Circles Sales and Service Automation team worked with the Ruth Strauss Foundation, through a series of workshops, to design both the business processes and the platform itself. It was then implemented and customised, Two Circles working closely with the Ruth Strauss Foundation team to upskill users following launch.

The Ruth Strauss Foundation now has all donation, fundraising and grant data centralised within a single system, giving a comprehensive view of all stakeholders; full visibility of donation history on an aggregated and individualised level; and the ability to track each stage of the donation process, from cultivation through to the final donation.

This has enabled the Ruth Strauss Foundation to create a rich data set of donor insights to maintain an end-to-end donor experience through personalised one-to-one communications. And through deep data-driven insight into donor behaviours, revenue tracking and reporting, the Ruth Strauss Foundation is able to optimise its marketing strategy and channels.

Two Circles continues to provide training and system support, enabling the Ruth Strauss Foundation to fully unlock the power of the technology as it continues to grow.

Karina Murtagh, Ruth Strauss Foundation CEO