Farleigh Hospice business processes

Farleigh Hospice cares for people with cancer and other life limiting illnesses throughout the 340,000 population of mid Essex. At a time when it can feel that nothing may be the same again, its team is there to help. They recognise that patients not only experience physical symptoms, but also have social, emotional and spiritual needs. The team is there for the patient and also their families and friends.

But the cost of running its specialist services increases each year as it cares for an ever growing number of patients. In 2006, the hospice cared for a total of 2663 patients through its range of services. Its operating costs are £3 million and the charity receives a grant of just over £1 million from the local NHS. The remaining funds are raised through the goodwill of the local community, who contribute an average of £5,000 every day for their local hospice..

Gary Hawkes is Head of Fundraising and PR at Farleigh Hospice. Gary joined four years ago having previously worked for big national charities.

"Working in a head office it was more difficult to appreciate where the funds were going. But at Farleigh Hospice, the fundraising team is working right alongside the staff, nurses, and the people being helped. Seeing it makes all the difference and is really motivational for the fundraising team."

The one thing that strikes you about Gary and his teams is their professionalism and enthusiasm. There are teams of fundraisers each with a specific focus.

There's a team for Corporate and major events, an Appeals team running direct mail, legacies and trusts, and managing a lottery; a Community team liaising with Women's Institutes, Rotary Clubs, schools and local support groups, providing tools for them to fundraise; and a retail team managing the 'charity shops' and catalogue selling."But the key factor is the close and direct relationships that our fundraising teams have with the donors and with those that benefit."

Gary joined Farleigh Hospice as the charity was about to launch the public phase of its major capital appeal for £6m for a new purpose built hospice.

"At that time we had an old in-house database that was proving restrictive in terms of some of the fundraising we wanted to undertake. We'd been struggling with processes" explained Gary, "We did little direct mail, segmentation was a laborious process using spreadsheets, and it was difficult to allocate campaigns and donations to codes.

"The financial accounts were separate and consolidating these figures with fundraising records was time consuming. We aimed to improve our systems but realised that our existing database would not have the potential to meet our needs but were wary of the time required to transfer to a new system".

In 2006, once the capital appeal was finished, Farleigh Hospice considered investing in a new database to maintain and develop its fundraising and to build on and improve relationships with its supporters. "After a research and tendering process we chose to work with Fisk Brett with its ProgressCRM as we felt the database most closely met our needs, had the flexibility to develop user defined tabs for our specific requirements, and there was a good cultural fit between our two organisations."

Gary looked at a two stage process to implement the ProgressCRM database.

He wanted to introduce the system to run the charity's Christmas Light Up a Life (LUAL) campaign to improve processing but realised that more internal work was required prior to a full data transfer. A User Defined Tab was built to manage the LUAL campaign and the administration, whilst at the same time work was undertaken to map the data from the previous database and a number of other spreadsheets that needed to be imported into ProgressCRM.

Debbie Collins was given the role of database administrator. "We'd realised the importance of centralisation and the importance of planning" said Debbie. "We invested time in the processes- making things more effective".

They also looked at the types of financial records. "For example, all our donations are 'unrestricted' for general support but specific to hospice or its local area, so we retain more flexibility."

Now the hospice can manage nearly all its fundraising, events, and more in ProgressCRM. The fundraising team works to a 5-year rolling plan that determines what funds are needed. As the hospice adds new services and facilities, at the site or in home-services, so the needs grow.

"Going live with the LUAL campaign was our first real use of Progress" said Gary Hawkes. "It proved to the teams the importance and significant benefits of using contact relationship management properly. LUAL administration had previously required four to five people, but with ProgressCRM this was reduced to one with volunteer help. It's freed up time for the others to increase our fundraising initiatives elsewhere".

Segmentation of the database for LUAL direct mailing started with just five segments, but is now up to 26 for some campaigns. "Progress has enabled defined personalised messages to increase responses" said Gary, "We can add 'You supported last, this, next etc'. We're now really starting to use the customer relationship power of Progress".

At the start of the LUAL campaigns, direct mail segmentation had taken them days. "Now it's in minutes" says Gary. "It's bliss".

A significant part of income is generated from its participation events, like its sponsored annual treks, walks and bike rides. These events have complex participation costs- with personal and teams entries, and their travel requirements; tour operational costs and other expenses. Then there's the income - from registrations, and individual and team sponsorships.

Now organisers can run analysis of individual, team and overall funds raised, and all can be linked back into thank you letters, or invitations to the next events. "One of the complex events to administer was our sponsored walk" said Gary. "Now this and our other sponsored events are all managed in ProgressCRM, greatly reducing our administration."

"We're running less smaller events now, focusing on just a few large ones," he explained. "We have increased income from our annual walk from £15k to £136k. And our bike ride income from £10k to £40k, with everything run from within Progress."

How has this been achieved? "We plan earlier," said Gary, "generating targeted marketing, advertising and press launches well in advance. Each year is more successful. Building reputation encourages pass-on of registration forms.

"We can really see the improvement in the administration. And each time we get more and more new contacts, each with the ability to follow up - using all the real benefits of a CMS".

For its large mailings, Debbie Collins generates segmented data extracts for the mailing house, which are checked for mailing preference blocks, deceased or gone-aways. After the mailings, the cleaned data is merged back into Progress.

She also uses the relationships function. "For example, we have a lot of support from our local Councils" she said. "Councillors change regularly, so it's about setting up organisation and personal records properly, and using relationships. Mayors and Councillors can be replaced but still remain as personal donors, as do their family members, and they continue to network to other potential donors for our cause."

The charity recently sent out a mailing of 17 thousand questionnaires to its donors. It achieved a high response of 9%.

It not only asked about donors' interests, motivation, and reasons for giving, but also asked about their internet use and asked for email addresses.

As a result, it increased the emails on the database from 200 to 1400 addresses. "Use of email rather than direct mail will enable us reduce costs in the future" said Gary Hawkes. "We currently use email for blasts of just 100 but we can now increase that to over 1,000 and it will continue to grow".

Farleigh Hospice is careful not to oversaturate their donors. In the past they had sent just four newsletters a year, the Light Up A Life mailing and a Prize Draw promotion. "We still send six, but all are far more effective. When our survey asked about frequency, 99.4% said we got it right and 95% thought the quality of what we sent was good or very good" revealed Gary.

The fundraising team is now working smarter, aiming to maximise CRM in all its communications, always adding value, adding 'also why not see this' or ' why not enter that' in its mailings, and offering signups to newsletters etc.

Correspondence is more personalised, with letters pointing out specific things in newsletters to their interests. Forms can be pre-filled, as well as including the database PV Key, appeal source codes and other details to further reduce administration time.

How does the team keep up with developments in the ProgressCRM database? "I go to Fisk Brett's training days and seminars, and then cascade down what I learn" explained Debbie Collins. "We have occasional specific team briefings for processes, and reviews of not only what each member of staff is doing, but also what they can do".

"The key issue is to ensure accurate recording of all our Contacts, and the interaction to them and from them" concludes Gary Hawkes.

"But in the end it's all about our donors, our supporters and our staff- all extra-ordinary people taking the time to improve the lives of others; about adding life to days, even when days can't be added to life".