RPD FOUNDATION
Tracking Social Value of Interactions between Charities and Companies
Client
Service areas:
Charity advisory and support
The Challenge
The RPD Foundation provides advice and support to charities and community organisations. The Foundation’s support includes guidance on strategy, governance, and financial management. It also helps organisations select appropriate operating models and develop their fundraising and business activities.
The RPD Foundation also connects companies with charities to create opportunities for businesses to provide meaningful support to charitable organisations. As these relationships developed, the RPD Foundation needed a reliable way to monitor and demonstrate the social value generated through each connection.
This included tracking different forms of support, such as volunteer hours, pro bono services, financial contributions and gifts in kind, and understanding the overall value delivered to charities through the matching activities.
Previously, this information was managed across spreadsheets. This made it difficult to maintain a consistent record of interactions, track contributions over time and consolidate data into meaningful reports. As the number of company–charity relationships grew, the manual process became increasingly time-consuming and provided limited visibility into the overall impact being generated.
The RPD Foundation needed a centralised CRM process that could capture these different types of social value and turn the data into clear, reportable measures of impact.
The Solution
To enhance its monitoring and reporting capabilities, the RPD Foundation partnered with Virtual Blue Bird to build a process for recording match opportunities consistently in Beacon CRM.
Virtual Blue Bird implemented:
CRM Customisation
This allowed for the precise tracking of every match made. We customised fields that record the interaction between a donating company and a receiving charity, capturing resources, volunteer hours, pro bono work, and training.
Dynamic Dashboards
We built a comprehensive dashboard within the Beacon CRM, consolidating all the critical metrics, such as donations from Company A to Charity B; total volunteer hours donated from Company A to Charity B; and trainings delivered by Company A to Company B.
The dashboard provides an immediate visual overview of the overall impact.
Automated Data Aggregation
The dashboard automatically pulls data from the new activity records, allowing the client to monitor key performance indicators in real time. The dashboard is automatically updated as new data is added to the CRM.
The Results
The implementation provided the RPD Foundation with a robust and centralised system. The benefits were immediately measurable and significant:
Real-time Visibility
The RPD Foundation now has dynamic, up-to-date data available for monitoring and reporting activities. They can view the total impact of a company on a specific charity instantly. This eliminates the delays associated with manual data entry and customisation of filters for matching.
Improved Reporting
Centralised data allows for professional and effective reporting. The RPD Foundation can easily demonstrate the depth and breadth of their impact to stakeholders.
Operational Efficiency
The process of tracking matches has freed up staff time. The RPD Foundation can dedicate more time to supporting and advising charities, rather than managing spreadsheets.
Conclusion
The success of the RPD Foundation demonstrates the power of customised Beacon CRM implementation. Their work is important but complex, and this complexity means that tracking impact requires a sophisticated technical solution.
By helping the RPD Foundation move away from manual spreadsheets, Virtual Blue Bird improved the visibility of the Foundation’s impact on charities. Allowing RPD Foundation to focus on their core mission: creating collaboration between businesses and charities.
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