Preact Launches Charity Hub – A Cost-Saving, Out-of-the-Box CRM System for Charities and Not-For-Profits

News
08/04/2022

Charity Hub, an out-of-the-box CRM app which simplifies the process of managing donations and memberships for charities at a fraction of the cost of other solutions, has been launched by Preact.


With the cost of implementing a CRM system often a barrier to entry for small charities, Charity Hub, a Power App built on the Microsoft Power Platform, takes advantage of free licenses offered as part of Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact program, to keep costs down.


This means smaller charities and not-for-profits can benefit from features usually found in more expensive, enterprise grade products, especially as the need for a ‘single truth’ solution is more important than ever due to the growth in remote working.


With rising inflation sparking cost of living concerns, there will be more demand for the services of charities, but these organisations face a funding squeeze as the value of their existing grants and donations will reduce in real terms. This is accompanied by increasing staffing and operating costs.


In these challenging times, investing in digital tools that streamline processes and make better use of resources to improve fundraising will help. Charity Hub is positioned to tackle the challenges with a highly cost-effective licensing model that strengthens donor management processes and improves communications to increase loyalty and support new fundraising efforts.


Selom Bulla, Preact Managing Director, said:

“The free licences on offer from Microsoft form the bedrock of the app and makes it incredibly attractive for small to medium sized charities that might want to step up what they’re doing from a systems perspective and as a not-for-profit grows beyond the quota of free licences, additional users are heavily discounted.

“Charity Hub is Microsoft based and therefore extremely secure and robust, but best of all it’s accessible at an extraordinary low cost meaning there’s no longer a barrier for smaller charities to onboard with game-changing technology”


Key features of Charity Hub include:

  • Provide a simple, centralised way to manage donations and memberships leading to improved quality of service.

  • Increase fundraising by personalising communications and building relationships.

  • Enable gift aid declarations and claims management.

  • Allow organisations to track and manage membership renewals.

  • Measure impact and drive decisions based on intelligent data insights.


The simplicity of Charity Hub makes it easy to deploy for small charities, with minimal IT support required. It significantly reduces administration pressures on maintaining spreadsheets or outdated applications while maximising the value of a charity’s user base by driving revenue using centralised data.


Paul Rutter, Head of Product Management at Preact, said:

“One of the biggest challenges faced by smaller charities is keeping a handle on where things are financially and how to forecast forward.

“They often don’t have the tools to do this so they can’t predict where they’re going to be in the future. The way to solve this is to track information but this requires expensive systems, so we’ve taken the features from quite expensive products and put them into a low cost model.

“Charity Hub also solves the problem of issues surrounding cybersecurity and data governance as all data is held in the Microsoft cloud to provide a highly secure environment.”


For smaller charities, Charity Hub is a better fit compared to many other solutions on the market because it is more easily deployable, requires less configuration and is very easy for users to get to grips with.


Preact has a strong ethos of working with charities and giving back to the community making the development of Charity Hub a natural solution for the Preact team to devote its time and energy to.


“Supporting charities is a subject very close to our hearts,”
added Selom.
“We like to do the right thing as a business, and we’ve really enjoyed our engagements with the lovely, very generous people that work and volunteer for charities and not-for-profit organisations.

“It’s an area we genuinely love working in, so it was a very easy decision to make Charity Hub one of our first forays into the world of building vertical, industry specific IPs.”


Preact is very active when it comes to supporting charitable causes. The company donates to charity whenever a client leaves feedback, and gives hundreds of pounds back to the community every month through the scheme. Team members also participate in TutorMate, an initiative designed to improve child literacy.


Preact has extensively worked with non-profit organisations and delivered solutions built on the Microsoft Power Platform for them. Here is a glimpse of the positive outcomes charities have achieved working with Preact.


CASE STUDY 1:

British Gymnastics Foundation (BGF) is a charity that promotes wellbeing through gymnastics and related exercises in the community.


They sought a solution that would help them simplify their Hardship Grant application processes.


By moving the handling of grant applications to a self-service portal, developed by Preact, they achieved productivity gains, saving up to four days resour
cing of a highly skilled person each quarter.

Their CRM system has also enabled BGF to:

  • Simplify its registration process. Previously, this was manual and involved significant administration, but is now handled online, with applicants typically completing the process in just 15 minutes.

  • Automate workflows engaging applicants and endorsers in a timely fashion.

  • Provide clear visibility to applicants about their application status.


CASE STUDY 2:

Preact helped Australian Lions Hearing Dogs (ALHD), a charity organisation that places hearing assistance dogs with hearing impaired people across Australia, implement Dynamics 365. They switched from a simple fundraising tool to Dynamics 365 CRM and they’ve been able to expand their fundraising programs since then with meaningful communications.


This includes:

  • Managing all fundraising activities in a single interface allowing them to approach individuals and steward them with the right data.

  • Customising marketing communications and targeting large demographics and niche audiences with personalised content.


To find out more about Preact visit: https://www.preact.co.uk/