Aid body updates donor system

By ADAM GIFFORD

World Vision's ability to turn compassion into cash has been enhanced with a new donor-management system from the Christchurch firm Jade.

The system, known as Tasman, was developed for the New Zealand and Australian branches of the aid organisation, and could be sold to other countries.

New Zealand marketing director Bruce Walden said World Vision in New Zealand had been using a 20-year-old database.

"It worked well when we were small, but with 67,000 sponsors now we needed something we can rely on," he said.

Child and community sponsorship accounts for 80 per cent of World Vision's $37 million New Zealand income.

While it can be relatively simple for World Vision to report back on the funds it collects for emergency relief and rehabilitation, reporting on sponsorship and community development requires complex systems to match information from specific projects to individual donors.

Walden said Tasman would allow staff to have the most up to date information when talking to donors, and would give the organisation a record of all such contacts.

It will manage correspondence, including targeted mailouts, and has interfaces to a credit card gateway and financial packages.

The system will have online access, so sponsors will be able to view specific reports online or change their contact details.

World Vision internationally has doubled its revenue over the past five years, and Walden said that was in part because of better management of relationships with donors.

"Now, when we do fundraising, we look more at the type of people who are willing to give in specific areas. If we have the Sudan refugee appeal, we will be able to identify the people who have given for such appeals in the past, rather than knocking on every door.

"We still have a responsibility to ask people to help, but we can be more sensitive."

Jade chief executive Rod Carr said the system took two years to develop as Jade programmers coded the business process knowledge of a large and complicated organisation.

"At its heart are a sophisticated series of rules engines which capture 20 years of intuition in the World Vision community about how their business works," Carr said.

Jade had not made a profit on the project.

"It is fair to say the shareholders of Jade have contributed to this."

Jade has a five-year contract to host Tasman.