The Gift Trust
The Gift Trust came to Optimi with a critical problem: They were growing
and needed a more efficient donation system that wouldn’t jeopardise the tailored service they offer their clients.
The Gift Trust (TGT) offers a philanthropic, bespoke service to people who want to make large donations to charity. The team help their donors to make more impactful donations by managing their charitable funds and streamlining the donation process. TGT were growing and needed a more efficient, resilient donation system that wouldn’t jeapordise their personalised, tailored service. They needed to automate their manual processes – unsustainable for growth – to get ready to scale. We saw the opportunity to empower their clients to ‘self serve’ by logging in to a platform, like you would with internet banking, to see all their key information.
Optimi built TGT a donation management database using Knack to create a highly-functional client portal. This allowed TGT to easily track all their donations, link them to donors’ accounts and store key knowledge where it’s easy to find. Clients can now log in and see what’s happening without needing any further communication. This revolutionised their processes and meant that data was no longer entered manually, allowing more accuracy and better tracking. This work improved their accuracy, consistency and saved time so they can focus on doing more good in the world!
“As a values-aligned partner for The Gift Trust over the past four years, Optimi has been invaluable. Their expertise in scaling systems and technical capabilities have been instrumental in our growth and success and has helped increase philanthropic giving in New Zealand. Even during times when our budgets were tight, Optimi was there to provide unwavering support and guidance. Their coaching and training have empowered us to become more self-sufficient, while their innovative approach to technology has allowed us to offer an online service for our donors that would have been near impossible with our budget and a traditional IT approach. We are grateful for their partnership and look forward to continuing our work together in the future.”
— Cheryl Spain, Executive Director of The Gift Trust
Client Painpoints
Manual admin processes are not scalable for a growing business, creating a lot of growing pains
Hard to grow while still offering a personalized, tailored service on a limited budget
Difficulty tracking key charity data, as information was stored in multiple places
Too much time spent on manual admin, including data entry and repeated manual charity and client emails
Hard for clients to “see” their account and information.
Opportunities Found
Use Knack to create a single source of truth for charity and donor information, giving peace of mind and the ability to track, code and search all donations correctly
Automate manual admin work, ensuring consistency – the right steps are followed each time a donation is made
Automate the email process for donors and charities while retaining the personalization that clients need
Create a scalable system where more donors doesn’t mean more admin time, and donors can see their info
Build key integrations with Xero
Provide coaching so TGT can manage, flexibly adapt and evolve the system themselves.
Tools Used
Cloud database
Project management
Online payments
Workflow automation