Oxfam GB

Regular givers are the lifeblood of many organizations, but attracting and converting supporters can be challenging. Today’s donors expect charities to deliver the same experiences that they receive from other brands, however, to do this at scale, requires powerful systems and processes, and underpinning it, quality and timely data.

Oxfam GB recognized this and knew its previous system couldn’t support it so they decided to move to Salesforce in 2018, and now use the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) and a combination of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud together with FinDock.

“We wanted to ensure that all our data was held in one place to make it easier for teams to have that complete supporter picture and ultimately improve the supporter experience,” shares Philip Blaney, Solution Architect at Oxfam GB.

Taking control over high volume direct debits

Direct debit is a crucial process for Oxfam, with 140,000 processed each month. While the new set up is similar to its previous one in terms of data and interactions, the team now has much more control.

“We have an end-to-end view of the process and can follow that journey through which gives the team more control; they can troubleshoot or spot if something is taking longer than usual, and to fix it before it becomes a problem,” shares Stuart Midgley, Head of CRM at Oxfam GB.

“Direct debit is the most critical business process that is running through Salesforce. We had to have confidence in the solution we were going to use to manage that – both in its stability and its scalability. We’re happy with our decision to go with FinDock,” says Stuart.

Achieving over 99% match rate for standing orders

Oxfam reconciles roughly 140,000 standing orders a month using FinDock’s Guided Matching tool. Having the flexibility to configure rules and manually review gives the team more control, and in the end, better data.

“Prior to FinDock and Salesforce, resolving monthly exceptions would take weeks of effort by our Data Processing team. These activities are now completed within 24 hours resulting in improved supporter care and more reliable and up to date data,” explains Stuart. 

And Oxfam GB’s data matching performance is improving all the time. “It’s never been as good as it is now with FinDock,” says Stuart.

Data driven decision making 

Having up to date data is very important to teams at Oxfam GB as it plays a huge role in decision making.

“Donor transactional data feeds into many KPIs across the organization and helps us understand how we’re performing which helps us refine our strategies,” says Stuart. “We need to be confident that we can access this data when we need it. FinDock plays a big part in that.” 

Powerful engagement tools, driven by 360 degree data also helps Oxfam GB nurture supporters throughout their journey with the charity.

“To have data and communications tools in one place is essential. We don’t need to wait for another system, we instantly have the data we need to take the next action,” explains Stuart. “Our fantastic supporters engage in many different ways, both financial and non-financial. The better we understand them, and the better the tools we have to make decisions, the more likely we can continue to build on these conversations and relationships with supporters. With Salesforce and FinDock data, teams now have more visibility and confidence in the data they’re using to do this.”

When it comes to understanding which payment methods are performing, the team can now see that in Salesforce too.

“We need to be able to offer donors payment methods they feel most comfortable with, whether that’s recurring card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal. We test both online and offline, through our door to door fundraising team,” says Stuart. “We can now detect patterns in Salesforce, helping us understand what’s working, so we can scale it appropriately.”

Maximizing Gift Aid income through better data and processes

Gift Aid represents substantial income for Oxfam, so it’s important it can process it effectively. To support data quality, Oxfam also uses AddressTools by ProvenWorks which verifies supporter address. Once the address data is verified against the Royal Mail, the team uses FinDock to manage the whole Gift Aid process.

Oxfam processes two types of Gift Aid using FinDock – fundraising and retail. For the retail arm, where the process is called “Tag your Bag”, Oxfam applies the sale value of supporter’s donated goods from the charity shops as a specific donation category in Salesforce, and once approved by the donor, Oxfam can then claim Gift Aid on the donation which has converted into a financial donation.

“FinDock enables Oxfam to submit our Gift Aid claims to HMRC with confidence in the quality and reliability of the process. This is also much more efficient than our previous ways of working and can cope with the large data volumes that we require,” explains Stuart. “We submit fortnightly Fundraising claims to HMRC, which means our data is up to date and claim value is released to our organization in a regular and timely manner. Our Retail claims typically run into millions of records and are run twice a year. FinDock handles all of this for us and provides the supporting information for our Finance teams to monitor this essential income stream.”

A partnership that learns and grows together

Oxfam GB’s journey with FinDock and Salesforce has been a collaboration on both sides, with Oxfam contributing product suggestions and FinDock supporting them to realize its goals. 

“What’s been great is that the people in FinDock really listen,” offers Stuart. “If there’s a potential issue or we see an improvement opportunity the FinDock team makes an effort to discuss and make those changes.”

Having support throughout their journey is also appreciated.

“Regular calls with Customer Success to review what we’re doing and to understand what’s possible with the new releases is really valuable,” shares Stuart. “We’re looking at ways we can take more advantage of the FinDock solution.”  

The team also appreciates being part of a growing nonprofit customer community.

“With our previous system, we were very much on our own, but now we’re part of a community,” shares Philip. “As the FinDock platform develops and addresses other customer needs, we benefit from those improvements too.”

There is also a match in terms of future vision and innovation.

“One of the things that really appealed to us about FinDock was that while they were quite a young company, they had a lot on their roadmap for the future,” shares Philip. “The kind of growth that they are aiming for is exciting for us, and the areas they are looking to move into line up well with where we want to go.”