Q: Can you give an overview of St Ann’s Hospice’s
fundraising activity and existing team set-up?

Our support means different things to different people—some people
come to us for end-of-life care, whilst others receive support from the point
of diagnosis, through their illness and beyond. Our services look a little
different at the moment because of COVID-19, but typically as a charity, we
need to raise $34,000 every day to keep our doors open as only around a
third of our funding comes from the NHS. We fundraise through a variety
of activities and events, such as gifts in wills, a weekly lottery, and we have
charity shops across Greater Manchester and online.

Our fundraising is supported by a team of 15 people, all of which use
Raiser’s Edge NXT every day. We have been Blackbaud users for over 25
years—since 1995—but over the past few years we have made a conscious
effort to stop using spreadsheets and instead make sure that we use
Raiser’s Edge NXT for as much as we possibly can.

Q: Before joining our test partner program, how
were you capturing donor data and sharing it
with the wider St Ann’s team?

We have been using JustGiving for fundraising and donations for nearly
20 years, and, until now, our data management and import processes have
been very manual. If someone started fundraising for us on JustGiving then
we would manually check if they were already known to us on Raiser’s Edge
NXT, and if not, we would create a record assigned to them. We would also
add their JustGiving fundraising page details onto Raiser’s Edge NXT and
make sure that it was assigned the correct code so that any future donations
through that fundraiser would be set-up and reported on accurately.
We also used to do a weekly download of our JustGiving Donations
Report and match the amounts against our bank statements. It was timeconsuming and quite complex.

Q: How have you found the process of being
part of our test partner program and working
with Blackbaud on implementing the JustGiving
Integration for Raiser’s Edge NXT?

It’s been really good, and the Blackbaud team has been great! We had
weekly meetings in the run-up to switching on the integration, and all our
questions were answered quickly. Now that we’re more confident using
Raiser’s Edge NXT and JustGiving together, we only need to contact the
Blackbaud team occasionally, and they’re always helpful and quick to get
back to us.

Q: Have you faced any challenges whilst
adjusting to the integration?

There were a few little hiccups as initially new activities weren’t coded to the
right campaign, so we had to get into the habit of checking imported data
daily. We also found that a lot of our colleagues didn’t understand the admin
side and how their activities could affect our work in getting the integration
to work smoothly. That became a case of educating everybody internally so
that now, if someone is going to set up a new activity or campaign, then they
let the right people know so the back end can be coded.
We’ve gotten over most of the challenges now, and our goal of being able
to accept new import batches without changing codes is now happening
most of the time.

Q: Has the integration changed people’s
knowledge of Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT?

Yes, definitely. We have improved our internal communications, and the
wider team now has far more knowledge about both JustGiving and NXT.
Helping them to learn these new processes and embedding them in the
organisation has been important for us to get everything working together.

Q: How has using the JustGiving integration for
Raiser’s Edge NXT impacted your organisation?

From an admin perspective, the integration has saved us time and reduced
the amount of manual work. To be honest, we think it will save us quite a lot
of time in the long run, especially when we have big events. Every year we
organise a Midnight Walk in Manchester, and thousands of people signup to take part, but it was so manual to manage and became our biggest
reason for wanting to automate our processes.
We’re doing a virtual version of the walk this year from May 14th-17th, and
people can complete 10K their way. It’s going to be a big test run for us,
hopefully demonstrating the real impact of integrating JustGiving and
Raiser’s Edge NXT.

Q: Due to COVID-19, some of the St Ann’s
Hospice team have been working remotely.

How have the team found using Blackbaud
Raiser’s Edge NXT when out of the office?
It’s been a lifesaver; I don’t know how we would have coped without
Raiser’s Edge NXT. Our old CRM system had to be accessed from an office
computer, but as NXT is cloud-based it allowed team members to work
securely from home, which has been really good, as otherwise we would have had to come in every day. Raiser’s Edge NXT, combined with using
Office 365, has enabled us to work from home just as easily as working in
the office, which has been an absolute lifesaver, and throughout COVID-19,
we’ve been able to keep the hospice running almost like business as usual.

Q: Are there any specific features that you find
most helpful in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT?

Raiser’s Edge NXT is such an easy to use and intuitive CRM, which makes
it really simple for new starters to get up and running on the system.
Everything we need is all there in one place, giving us a complete overview
straight away—if someone rings up and wants to know how much they’ve
given, the information is right there. Before Raiser’s Edge NXT we couldn’t
take donations over the phone but having that functionality now has
proven to be so valuable. When we launched an urgent COVID-19 appeal,
we had so many phone calls with generous people wanting to support us—
NXT was brilliant as within five minutes the donation process was all done.
The JustGiving integration for Raiser’s Edge NXT just couldn’t have come at
a better time. It’s been so helpful for us over the last year.