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Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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October 16, 2000 |
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CRM Becomes A Charitable Application
Canadian united way group turns to customer-management software to lower costs
By Marion Agnew
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hilip King, VP of E-business at the United Way of Greater Toronto, knows firsthand the value of implementing a customer-relationship management application. "In the next four years, we'll save about $200,000 in processing and printing costs," he says. That's significant money for King's $41.5 million organization.This sounds like a typical E-commerce success story, but it's not. King's organization isn't a deep-pocketed, high-tech company or nimble dot-com startup expected to take on relatively new technology. Instead, he's a member of one of a large, if perhaps unrecognized, market segment in North America: nonprofit organizations.
The United Way of Greater Toronto is one of 125 United Way-Centraide organizations across Canada that raised about $200 million last year. Canadians donated about $3 billion to charities in 1997, the most recent year for which figures are available from the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy.
The application that will help lower overhead and increase the amount that gets passed along to charitable causes is United Way @ Work, which uses Delano Technology Corp.'s
E-Business Interaction Suite. This software lets companies develop and implement E-business applications, such as E-mail marketing campaigns, for interacting with customers, suppliers, and trading partners.
United Way @ Work automates United Way of Toronto's workplace-based fund-raising campaigns. About 20 companies are testing the application this year. Employee campaign chairpersons, who coordinate United Way campaigns within companies, communicate United Way of Toronto's message through personalized E-mail with embedded Web links, rather than relying on printed pledge cards and brochures. United Way @ Work also gives the organization's staff an instant picture of how the workplace campaign is going at any given time.
Because United Way @ Work is in its first year of implementation and the companies using it represent less than 5% of the donor base for employee campaigns, its effect on workplace giving is difficult to quantify. "I can't say our participation has gone up, because our campaign isn't over yet. But our total [donations pledged] after the first week is already higher than last year's," says Joanna Spinner, a senior consultant and United Way employee campaign chairperson at Deloitte Consulting.
King says he expects donations will increase at Deloitte and other companies "because the ability to give and learn about the community is more personalized." That should help United Way of Toronto beyond the savings in paper, printing, processing, data entry, and mailing costs.
Personalization is the key for Spinner and her campaign at Deloitte. Spinner sent an E-mail to each of the 500 employees at Deloitte Consulting's Toronto office. The E-mail included a link, specific to each employee, to United Way of Toronto's Web site. Once there, employees view their personal contributions, along with real-time updates on the company's campaign goals. "The information pitched is specific to their interest level, based on their past giving and their interactions with the system at that time," King says.
Photograph of Phillip King by Sid Tabak
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