Red Cross unveils Ascent CRM system

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 1 Mar 2009

The British Red Cross has gone live with its new CRM system, Ascent CRM for Fundraising version 2.0 from Ciber, after more than a year in the planning.

The system, which will give the international aid charity a single view of all its donors and allow it to segment and target groups of supporters according to their giving habits or their interests, was launched on 26 January with half a million records loaded onto it.

The system will replace a number of different systems being used by various fundraising divisions, and will be used by the entire Red Cross fundraising department, from major donor to trust fundraisers, community and corporate teams. It will handle all direct marketing activity and process direct debit and gift aid transactions.

The Red Cross began the selection process at the end of 2007, enlisting consultant Peter Flory to help devise the specification and Pam Gordon from Logical Resolution to assist with evaluation and selection.

Separately, online fundraising by the Red Cross doubled to £2.1m in the last year, though it remains a small proportion of its £64m total individual giving income.

The charity’s online fundraising campaign Parcel of Hope returned an RoI of 2:1 in its first year and 3:1 in its second, but the average gift was £34.19, slightly lower than the £50-£60 average online gift. Digital fundraising manager Sarah Webb said that this year the campaign team will be focusing on driving more traffic to the site, because once people are there, the conversion rate is pretty good.

Directory: British Red Cross
Who's Who: Tania Mason

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.