CALAGRY DROP –IN CENTRE: DONOR INFORMATION

SYSTEM
Group 6 – Charanpreet, Arpit , Aditya ,Prateek, Pritish

FACT -:
 The director was frustrated with the organization's legacy donor and volunteer information system.
 The technology platform was outdated, data integrity was out of control, costs were spiraling, and
most importantly, required information was not available on demand.
 The director was concerned that these issues with the organization's information systems would
interfere with its ability to maintain positive relationships with existing donors and to secure new
financial supporters-ultimately, that it could have an impact on the agency's efforts to achieve better
in the community.
 He was contemplating three options to solve this problem:
 Build a new in-house system to replace the current Microsoft Access database system.
 Purchase customer relationship management software specifically developed for non-profit
fundraising and relationship management and install this on personal computers and servers
in the offices
 Adopt a cloud-based fundraising solution, where the organization's data would be stored on
a secure, shared platform administered by the vendor.

Analysis: -
 Donors Contributed 46 percent of DI Funding.
 Regular communication with volunteer and donors was an important component of fundraising and
donor stewardship strategy.
 They were using Microsoft Access database which has a limit of 55,000 donors and that threshold
limit has already crossed by DI. As a result they were creating new databases to accommodate more
donor’s information which led to multiple historical instances.
 Sheer number of donors and separate database caused the following issue -:
1. Donor data could not be easily mined to assis with fundraising campaigns , provide analytics on
the effectiveness of existing strategies or identify the most loyal volunteers and donors. In other
words, donor data were not accessible.
2. Open and unrestricted data entry fields presented a primary source of errors. This led to
frustrated end user with negative feedback about DI capability in managing the communication.

Recommendation -:
 DI should adopt cloud based fundraising solutions such as Raiser’s Edge NXT.
 Its cost $ 32,000 for professional version, whereas in house system will cost around $
1,50,000(moreover Yearly maintenance cost will be additional to one time development cost).
Second and third option for database has an additional server and security cost which is included in
Raiser Edge NXT annual charges of $ 32,000.
 Its Open design will allow customization and integration with other systems and application easy.
 Cloud based solution will Ensure optimum database performance, access, protection, compliance,
availability, and scalability plus continuously manage the environment to ensure database
optimization and maximum performance.
 It will take 7-9 months to implement whereas in house system will take 8-12 months to implement.