The Children's Trust

The Children's Trust is a national charity working with children who have multiple disabilities and complex health needs. It is based at a 24 acre site in Tadworth, Surrey but its services are offered to children from across the UK.

The Trust offers a unique combination of skills and experience in meeting the complex needs of children with profound disabilities. Its services include:

• Short, medium and long term residential care and therapy;
• Rehabilitation for children with an acquired brain injury;
• Short breaks (either at the site in Tadworth or in the family home);
• Practical and emotional support for the families of children;
• Ventilatory dependent care;
• Education, care and therapy for children and young people with profound and multiple learning disabilities at St Margaret's School.

It has an unparalleled reputation in its field thanks to its commitment to meeting the diverse needs of these children and their families, coupled with its ability to deliver the best possible combination of nursing, therapy, medical and educational care.

In 2004 The Children's Trust decided to source a new supporter database and chose Progress after going through a lengthy selection process. They now have around 75,000 records on Progress, 12 licences, and are using Progress to support their fundraising and management of events.

Linda Trafford, Database Analyst at the charity explains the process they went though selecting a new database and why they chose Progress.

"We were using a database that had about 50,000 records on it and wasn't satisfactorily meeting our needs. Only one person really knew how to use it and when you had the system open you couldn't have other programs open too.

"Also, everyone was operating their own spreadsheets which meant that we had mailing duplicates"

She began the process of sourcing a new system by first looking at the IT for Charities website where she drew up a list of 10 suppliers to look at their systems further. Linda also drew up a specification document of what The Children's Trust wanted from a database and asked suppliers to complete an ITT showing how the requirements could be met.

Linda continues "From the responses and demonstrations we had we shortlisted three suppliers - Blackbaud (Raiser's Edge supplier), EsiT (ThankQ supplier) and Fisk Brett (Progress CRM).

"All three systems matched our specification, which made the decision difficult for us. However, in the end there were many reasons why we preferred Progress and chose Fisk Brett.

"The enthusiasm that was shown for Progress when we did reference site visits really helped us, the people that we saw also all said the implementation process went smoothly for them.

"The enthusiasm that was shown for Progress when we did reference site visits really helped us, the people that we saw also all said the implementation process went smoothly for them.

"We also knew that Fisk Brett were capable of meeting our requirements and that Progress was a flexible system; there wasn't a 'one size fits all' approach and there were possibilities for extending and expanding Progress."

"The 15 fundraisers that would be using the database also preferred Progress to the other systems, they found it to have a simple screen where it was clearer how to enter the data. Progress was the clear favourite amongst the fundraising team, and we installed in June 2004.

"The implementation process went well as we worked as a team with Fisk Brett. Everybody now uses the database and they are enthusiastic about doing so"

"We now have 72,000 records on Progress," concludes Linda Trafford, "so within two years we have added almost 30,000 new records - which I think demonstrates how easy we find Progress to use!"

For more information on The Children's Trust, please visit