Farleigh Hospice and LUAL

Farleigh Hospice cares for people with cancer and other life limiting illnesses. At a time when it can feel that nothing may be the same again they are there to help.

They recognise that patients not only experience physical symptoms, but also have social, emotional and spiritual needs. They are there for the patient and also their families and friends.Care can take place in the home through its team of Specialist Home Care Nurses who asses each individual case, co-ordinate care with GPs and the health service, and ensure support is available from an early stage.

Care is also offered through its three day care centres. Day care gives patients a regular opportunity for a social occasion where they can meet people with similar problems in a supportive and friendly environment.

Everything they do is designed to enrich the lives of the patients and those close to them.Farleigh Hospice provides vital support, totally free of charge, to around 250 people in Mid Essex who are affected by cancer and other life limiting illnesses.

This is made possible through many different fundraising schemes, which include Light up a Life, known simply as LUAL, collection tins, sunflower appeals, corporate fundraising and regular giving appeals, and there's event participation too.

For information on the Light Up A Light campaign, see page 2 of the printed case study

Farleigh Hospice puts on about 15 events per year from treks, marathons, golf days and balls. Each event type needs to be managed in its own way with different fields needed for each event type.

Personal fields are also needed to be kept on the contact such as next of kin, Passport Number etc, which are event-specific.

They need to process donations from various payment methods, cash and cheques, standing orders, credit cards and on-line giving; and automated processes were required to handle standing orders and giving payments. Individual donations are collated daily onto a banking sheet and the total is input into Sage.

Farleigh Hospice decided that a new database solution was needed to accurately cover LUAL requirements and trace fundraising trends along with a more efficient general contact relationship management solution. Integration with their SAGE Line 50 accounting package was also required.

The implementation of the project was to be carried out in two phases, LUPAL first and then general fundraising and customer relationship management.

The reason for a new database

The old database had limitations in terms of

• Light Up A Life capability
• Organisational contacts
• Segmentation analysis
• Contact tracking
• Flexibility of adding Groups & Flags
• Event management
• Security to specific data areas

Farleigh Hospice looked at alternative CRM solutions, and spoke to other hospices, taking a look at ProgressCRM is use at St.Raphael's.

They chose ProgressCRM not only because of its simplicity and functionality, but also that Fisk Brett was happy to further develop its range of capabilities to include the LUPAL requirement.

ProgressCRM now provides Farleigh Hospice with a single, centralised database which has taken over the role of the old database and various other spreadsheets etc.

It's providing a more modern and effective approach for handling contacts and managing relationships, events management, segmentation and profiling, flexible querying and reporting options, and various other financial and fundraising facilities.

ProgressCRM is written on Open Database Architecture (MS SQL Server), which means that the data is readily accessible to other Windows based software products. This ensures that Farleigh Hospice can manipulate and report on ProgressCRM data using third party tools in the future if required.

What has been achieved?

• Replacement of the old database with a future proof CRM system
• Implementation of a single integrated database with advanced contact management, events and fundraising capabilities
• Light Up A Life management
• Integrated processes for thank you letters via mail merge
• Using existing hardware and operating software platforms
• Integrated Postcode validation software removing the need for manual maintenance of a postcode table
• Flexible report writing facilities with the additional implementation of R&R Report Writer software
• Reduction of clerical duplication
• The new database now produces files automatically for Sage to input, bypassing the need to enter income amounts into two systems manually

For more information on Farleigh Hospice, visit http://www.farleigh.org/