Fisk and Brett create cloud-based supporter management system Donorfy
Howard Lake | 9 March 2015 | News
Charity technology experts Robin Fisk and Ben Brett have developed a new charity customer relationship management (CRM) system designed, unusually, to serve large and small charities.
The cloud-based Donorfy will offer fundraisers and other staff access to their database, campaign management and stewardship programmes from wherever they want, whether they use a desktop, tablet or smartphone. UK Fundraising’s preview of the system was carried out entirely on a smartphone.
Its creators built and developed ProgressCRM which was sold to ASI in 2008. They have focused on Donorfy’s usability with the aim of making it very easy to use, “just like most apps we use in our everyday ‘online’ lives. Indeed, they go as far to claim that it will be a “joy-to-use”.
Donorfy’s strapline is “doing good just got better”.
Automatic collection of Gift Aid
Donorfy will automatically collect Gift Aid on all donations as part of its income management function, the first donor CRM system to do so, according to Fisk and Brett.
Integration with third party services
Donorfy is integrated with popular services such as Mailchimp, JustGiving and Eventbrite, ensuring data is synchronised between services. More integrations are planned to help remove the common frustrations of exporting and merging datasets.
Donorfy launches with three founding partners. There are:
• FB2 Consulting – Fisk and Brett’s consulting business
• MAST-ICT – who provide expert data migration and configuration services, along with integration of Donorfy with other applications
• MakeItAPlan – who provide web-based and in-person training courses, and ongoing support and advice to help charities get the most out of Donorfy.
Donorfy runs on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform.
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Community learning
An online user community is also being established, offering users the chance to share advice and ideas with users at other organisations, including via a live chatroom function.
Donorfy Community will eventually offer learning and development opportunities through benchmarking, trends and peer-to-peer comparisons via anonymised data held within the system itself.
Freemium model
Donorfy offers an unlimited number of users so there is no per-user charge.
It will be available on a subscription model, based on the number of constituents in the database. Very small charities will be able to use it for free, to help them grow their charity.
Larger and international charities can make use of bespoke, scalable options appropriate to their more sophisticated requirements.
‘Disruptive technology’
Robin Fisk describes Donorfy as “‘disruptive’ technology in the sense that it’s really easy to use, very smart and truly affordable, so it’s bringing about change by creating a level playing field; a universal platform suitable for every charity of every size”.
He explained why they had built a new, cloud-based CRM from scratch:
“We saw the need for a CRM system that is state-of-the-art in its sophistication and functionality, being able to accomplish the most complex fundraising tasks, yet one that is a simple joy to use.
“Too often, small charities are still having to rely on home-made donor databases, and larger charities are running expensive systems that don’t work well in today’s world, or just won’t integrate well with other systems.
“We have created Donorfy so that it is really easy and intuitive like the apps we all use every day; but above all it enhances and amplifies the work of fundraisers and supporter care teams. Being in the cloud means we can now make that affordable to small charities (free for the very small) as well as scalable and accomplished for the largest of NGOs.”
Donorfy is being used by some early adopter organisations and will be launched in Spring/Summer this year. Previews of the product are available prior to launch through registration at Donorfy.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.