In 2009, the Trust welcomed its 200,000th member and was aiming to build a 300,000-strong membership by 2012. Gareth Jones hears how it implemented a new supporter relationship management system to help achieve this.

In 2009, the Woodland Trust embarked on the mission of replacing its ageing database technology, as, according to supporter relationship management (SRM) project manager Chris Webb, the previous system required a number of convoluted workarounds. He adds: “Our data was also fragmented across a plethora of satellite systems and silos. In this situation, there is always a danger of under or over-communicating with members and supporters. We were certainly not able to make an informed ‘ask’ based on a supporter’s interests, giving history and giving preferences. Without a unified set of data and a single supporter view to pore over, you can’t begin to explore the opportunities for targeting.”

As an example, he says: “We may wish to target Scottish supporters living in London who are primarily interested in supporting woodland projects in Scotland. That kind of targeting was extremely difficult with our old system.”

Any system would also have to work effectively across several sites and support around 180 users, many of whom are home or field-based.