How Partners In Health Canada made fundraising easier and more effective

Functional, flexible and feature-rich fundraising tools for Canadian charities. How Partners In Health Canada, attracted, nurtured and retained more donors with Raisely

“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

Fred Rogers’ remarks still stand true today - the best of humanity comes to the fore at the worst of times.

Sure, Fred was probably talking about individuals.

But isn’t it selfless individuals who form the heart of organisations making a difference?

Partners in Health Canada is one of those dedicated organisations.

Who are Partners in Health Canada?

The Canadian charity is an offshoot of Partners in Health, a not-for-profit committed to transforming global health.

While we sit at home watching disasters unravel across the world, Partners In Health Canada people are on the ground doing the heavy lifting.

Thank you, wonderful souls 🙏🏼

A Canadian charity with global impact

Of course, the organisation isn’t only there for the humanitarian catastrophes we hear about.

Rightly so, they believe everyone should have access to quality health care.

Anywhere, any time.

BUT…well, here are some confronting stats that paint a rather grim picture about where we’re at:

• 50 percent of people across the globe cannot access essential health services
• 99 percent of maternal deaths happen in developing countries
• Each day (yes, you read that correctly - each day), 15,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthday.
  

The good news (there is some):

Partners in Health Canada are doing incredible things.

They’re at the front line of the world’s poorest places, partnering with local governments to bring about global change.

Last year, the charity provided:

🏥 1.6 million outpatient visits in their clinics

❤️‍🩹 1 million women’s health checks

🩺 Over 800,000 home visits by community health workers

🇨🇦  Back in Canada…

The Canadian team is small, but mighty.

All their fundraising efforts feed into the global work of Partners in Health Canada, from annual giving, major gifts and large-scale grants.

They’ve been with Raisely a while now (lucky us!).

Trying before buying

We love showing customers how our software can support their fundraising campaigns - before they sign up to the whole kit and kaboodle.

I mean…how else can organisations decide if it’s the right fundraising tool for them?

And that’s exactly how Partners In Health Canada joined the Raisely family.

They tinkered with the Raisely tools and features, exploring the software to see what it could do.

It must have ticked all the right boxes because, over time, they’ve moved all of their campaigns onto the Raisely platform.

This makes us so happy!

Canadian fundraising software, eh?

It’s always a treat to chat to customers who’ve grown alongside us, so we were delighted to sit down with the team recently (it was an especially sweet conversation because we made sure we were eating pure Canadian maple syrup at the time🍁 ).

In between our slurping, they told us all about their pre-Raisley fundraising woes, how the platform made life easier and the wins they’ve chalked up since coming on board.

They’re an inspiring bunch - with a fabulous Canadian fundraising website to match!

Raisely: What were your fundraising challenges before Raisely?

Partners in Health Canada: Our platform lacked the functionality to attract, understand and look after our donors.

This meant we weren’t fundraising effectively - which, of course, reduced our impact on the initiatives we’re so passionate about.

Peer-to-peer struggles

We didn’t have the tools to roll out successful peer-to-peer campaigns. This was a huge gap for us because it really limited our fundraising potential.

We knew how successful these campaigns could be, so it was an ongoing source of exasperation for the team.

No flexibility

We were also frustrated by the ‘one size fits all’ approach of our fundraising platform here in Canada.

We found the templates rigid, with almost no scope for customisation. We wanted to put our stamp on Partners in Health Canada’s campaigns but were essentially stuck with the cookie-cutter version.

Similarly, our old setup did a fairly mediocre job of integrating with our other platforms, particularly Salesforce CRM.

This wasn’t ideal, given that’s where we store our donor database!

Tracking troubles

Without in-depth analytics and tracking, we felt at arm’s length from both our fundraisers and campaigns.

That lack of visibility posed problems because we weren’t aware of emerging issues, nor could we nurture supporter relationships the way we wanted to.

Time-consuming and complex

Lastly, it was a mammoth task to build our fundraising pages.

Like any charity, our resources are pretty lean. We need efficient, easy-to-use fundraising software that lets the team get on with their daily tasks - not create more!

Raisely: What problems did Raisely solve for you?

Partners in Health Canada: Raisely was a (very happy!) accidental find which overcame many of the challenges we faced.

We first stumbled upon it while looking for a peer-to-peer platform.

But today, we use the platform for everything fundraising-related - our website, donation forms, and emails are all powered by Raisely.

Putting pep into peer-to-peer

Until Raisely, peer-to-peer had never been a successful form of fundraising for us. It used to be a lot of work to do these types of campaigns on other platforms.

But with Raisely, we are able to continue to try it and not feel like we’ve invested too much.

Now, we can get a campaign live in seconds!

Custom-building creative campaigns

The peer-to-peer template has been a game-changer for us.

We now have the functionality to customise our campaigns with features like embedded videos, progress bars, and fundraiser leaderboards.

We’ve got all the options available to us, but don’t have to use them to create a beautiful and customised fundraising website.

We can build exactly what we need on Raisely.

You can’t plan for global crises and emergencies, so you’ve got to act quickly when they happen. Raisely’s pre-built templates allowed us to be more creative and try new things in our fundraising efforts.

For the love of integrations

We love how easily we can now integrate our Salesforce CRM with Raisely.

We can now track and analyse where donations come from, who our donors are and what they’re doing with Partners in Health Canada.

We simply didn’t have the capacity to do this on our other platforms - it was clunky and didn’t integrate well.

See how UNICEF successfully integrated Raisely with Salesforce.

Feeling supported

The Raisely team listens to our feedback and actually follows through.

By that, we mean they implement our input into new features and product updates (this is huge!).

The team is honest about what isn’t possible and doesn’t mislead you. But they are also creative and innovative and provide workarounds for any unique request.

Taking the trickiness out of tax

As a Canadian charity, we have to follow strict requirements with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

CRA-compliant tax receipting is a major challenge for many platforms. That’s why we were so excited when Raisely took feedback from Canadian organisations to integrate it into the platform! Read more about our editable PDF receipts.

The consistent improvements, new features, and amazing customer support are a big reason Raisely stood out as the one we wanted to go with - and why we’ve continued using their fundraising platform.

Raisely: What have you been able to achieve since using Raisely?

Partners in Health Canada: Without a doubt, our ability to respond quickly and effectively to global causes is down to Raisely.

In fact, we don’t believe we could have raised what we did in Canada without the Raisely fundraising platform.

Haiti Earthquake Appeal

$525k+ raised

555 donors

In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, we literally set up a giving page overnight.

The Raisely platform meant we could customise an appeal template, email our database and track donations - virtually with the click of a button.

End Of Year Appeal

$85.5k+ raised

$9k largest donation

Partners In Health Canada’s fundraising delivers health care to the world’s poorest places, partnering with local governments to bring about global change..

The funds raised have meant:

• A 50 percent reduction in stillbirth rates at Koidu Government Hospital
• A monthly average of 99.9 percent of HIV patients returning for ongoing care
• A 52 percent increase in mothers served at Partners In Health Canada-supported facilities
  

Peer-to-peer success: Partners I  Health Canada Fall Fundraiser 2020

We’ve also seen substantial growth in our peer-to-peer campaigns.

We put that down to the flexibility and freedom fundraisers have with Raisely to set up their own pages and share those with their networks.

For example, chapters at schools across Canada took part in a Fall Fundraiser in 2020 which blew anything we’d done previously out of the water.

The challenge has always been, how do we encourage people to fundraise with those who want to make a donation with a credit card?

But now, Raisely’s donation forms make credit card giving a breeze.

We’ve done peer-to-peer fundraising with schools before, but the one with Raisely was triple what all chapters raised in the previous three years combined!

It was also an amazing source of new donors.

Does your Canadian charity need better fundraising tools?

Want more functionality, flexibility and fun (yes, fun!) from your fundraising software?

Book a demo today 🗓
Or, get in touch with the Raisely team and let’s talk tactics for your next campaign.