Kids Up Front Canada

Dynamics 365 Donor Management Platform

Kids Up Front gets close to supporters with Dynamics 365 solution from Betach Solutions

For twenty years Kids Up Front has been providing access to arts, culture and sport for children who otherwise do not have the opportunity. Kids Up Front reaches children and families in need by distributing tickets, classes and passes to more than 550 charitable partners across Canada.

When thousands of families think of a Kids Up Front, they think of experiences that have inspired their children’s passions and dreams. They think of an organization full of kind, giving, passionate, and mission-driven people who are making a difference in the lives of children affected by poverty, abuse, illness or disability.

As a non-profit organization that receives almost no public funding, Kids Up Front relies on a comprehensive program of sponsorship and fundraising. A large portion of its income is derived from an annual series of corporate retreats, golf tournaments and other charity fundraisers.

PROBLEMS

Kids Up Front wanted to align its IT strategy more closely to the organization's business objectives. The combination of Excel workbooks, Access Databases, and manual paper-based processes was inadequate and hindered growth.

KUF knew there were communication issues that they needed to solve regarding historical donor tracking. Nicky Nash, Executive Director of Kids Up Front explained, “As an established organization of 20 years, people were shocked we did not have proper systems in place, but as a non-profit we balance thinner budget lines and minimal resources. There was a lot of work needed to upgrade to Dynamics 365 so that we could report on donations and programs and obtain more value from the system."

The second issue related to the organization's ticket distribution system. Nash continues, "One of the major activities in this organization is the management and distribution of tickets through our Calgary office. This involves processing thousands of event tickets in a short period of time. To support this activity, we maintain a large database of programs, event type, and ticket cash value, that tie back to tax receipts for donors.

“The problem we faced was that our previous system was inefficient and left room for error. A significant investment in time and resources was required to ensure the system functioned and even then, tax receipt reconciliation was difficult.”

THE SOLUTION - DYNAMICS 365 XRM

"We first evaluated the approach to replacement that best suited Kids Up Front’s needs”, Nash says. "There are a number of specific niche systems for fundraising available in the market but we felt that a product with broad CRM functionality that was easy to integrate with Office 365 was a better overall choice. With the approach determined we got in touch with Betach to establish a new CRM infrastructure based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 software. They proposed to extend the out-of-the-box software by developing a ticket and donor processing function based upon Dynamics 365 for Sales.

This extension to Dynamics provides the specific business functions that non-profit organizations require to manage fundraising.”Betach came highly recommended to us by another Microsoft partner, Nash explained. “We were looking for a partner with extensive experience and proven success in customizing Dynamics 365. Our budget left little room for error and we needed to get it right the first time. Betach listened to our requirements carefully and were able to translate it exactly as we needed.”

BENEFITS

“Over the ensuing months Kids Up Front’s donor and ticket management system and processes were completely reimagined. Microsoft Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Azure were implemented, and KUF staff was trained to build their digital literacy. With the support of internal superusers, new dashboards and advanced find reports were put in place and provided an immediacy and depth of data that had previously been lacking.

Microsoft 365 has provided an important boost to the organization's collaboration across the country, unearthing opportunity with national corporations that have donated in some cities but not others. New visibility into accounts and projects has helped mitigate duplication of effort across the country for graphics, thank you cards, and other digital marketing communications.

Reconciliation of tax receipts used to be a major issue for Kids Up Front. It would take several days to complete Now, the integrated nature of Microsoft Dynamics 365 has streamlined the process.

reater segmentation of the supporter database and more targeted stewardship messaging has helped to increase donations and event participation across Canada, while less manual intervention has reduced both errors and risk from the process.