Lessons in digital transformation and fundraising from Comic Relief

When to build, and when to buy

A question facing many charity digital leaders is when to build proprietary software and when to procure. From a budgeting perspective, the question is really around how much the software costs to build from a resourcing side, as opposed to the on-going licensing cost. Key questions for charity digital leaders when thinking of digital investment include:

• Can you justify the cost of new software across many functions or workstreams?
• Is the operational need unique enough that off-the-shelf software cannot accommodate?
• Does the software you intend to build going to result in a competitive advantage?

Sharing experiences with the charitable sector, Ms Rennie underscores Comic Relief’s journey. The charity had initially invested its own fundraising platform, with a view to taking full ownership of the platform itself and donation data. At the same time, industry-leading platforms were already available and known to the digital tech team.

“Are we able to capture, is the data quality from our own platform that much more valuable than what we’ll get from what the end-users think of as the default choice? If the description of our own product is ‘it’s our own version of JustGiving’ something’s gone wrong,”

 

- Caroline Rennie on the decision to move onto JustGiving

JustGiving, now the leader in crowdfunding and digital fundraising had already surpassed the charity’s in-house platform. While difficult, the team accepted the sunk costs of investment, retired the platform, and moved onto a better functioning product.

Decision making on software purchases isn’t straight forward

While charity digital transformation might seem straight forward, decisions on software aren’t in reality. Comic Relief’s learnings can be leveraged across charities large and small:

• Go for software as a service rather than in-house wherever possible
• For smaller charities, use nimbler software providers like Zendesk for CRM rather than entire infrastructure systems like Salesforce
• Look for software not targeted to charities – you might find better cost savings

Before making a commitment, bear in mind that many software providers offer trials, online tutorials, sample works, and other benefits which can sway decisions.

Tech teams can drive digital fundraising decisions with data

Much more than support teams, digital teams can help drive data decision making. Collecting data and drawing conclusions can help charity digital leaders make choices on where to spend – on advertising, social media, marketing and communications – data helps support that choice.

Charity digital leader Ms. Rennie describes Comic Relief’s diverse range of digital fundraising platform use. She offers some advice on how to narrow down which platforms to focus on for those with smaller budgets:

“From a data ingestion point of view, we wish there were fewer (platforms). To be honest, I think, getting within a market share, and really honing in and optimising your largest possible area is probably a better use of time rather than having your fingers in too many pots…When you have your conversion point when you get the money, simplify that.”

In other words, digital leaders should focus on where digital fundraising efforts have converted into donations, hone in, and specialise.