Microsoft Dynamics Case Study

Microsoft Dynamics Case Study - United Way Greater Twin Cities

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Not-for-Profit Solidifies Donor Relationships with Greater Efficiency

Greater Twin Cities United Way (GTCUW) provides community services across nine Minnesota counties with a population of 2.75 million. When donors and financial giving dropped off, the organization found that its methods for managing donor relationships—a mix of paper forms, legacy software, and spreadsheets—needed improvement. GTCUW worked with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Inetium to deploy Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 3.0 business software. With this flexible customer relationship management software, GTCUW can track the philanthropic interests, financial giving, and other involvement of more than 190,000 donors and can conduct its annual fundraising campaign with far greater effectiveness and efficiency. GTCUW anticipates a bright future with Microsoft CRM; already, donor involvement has risen, and donations in one area have grown by more than $U.S. 1 million.

Situation
In partnership with businesses, government, and other nonprofit organizations, Greater Twin Cities United Way (GTCUW) serves more than 2 million people in and around Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.

GTCUW was losing donors and, consequently, funding. The most likely reason for the losses could be attributed to the way the organization tracked its donor relationships. GTCUW used paper documents, the Microsoft® Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet software, and a legacy fundraising system. As a result, says Sandy Clifford, Director of Market Technology and IT at Greater Twin Cities United Way, “People received multiple mailings or phone calls. In reality, 90 percent of the information about what was going on with donors and donor companies was stored in people’s heads.”

GTCUW needed a way to better match an individual donor’s philanthropic interests with the organization’s services. During the brief annual fundraising campaign and throughout the year, GTCUW needed to execute well on opportunities and wanted a solution that would meet its unique needs and be easy to learn and use.

Solution
Working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Inetium, GTCUW deployed Microsoft CRM 1.2. In November 2005, GTCUW upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 3.0 Professional to benefit from the tight integration with Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003. Specifically, with Microsoft CRM 3.0, when GTCUW donor relations staff disconnect from the network and attend client meetings, they can take client appointment and contact information with them on laptop computers or handheld mobile devices. Inetium performed the integration with GTCUW’s legacy software, including some custom programming. The upgrade to Microsoft CRM 3.0 took only a few days.

Approximately 140 people at GTCUW use Microsoft CRM 3.0 to record and access donor information stored in a single database. Marketing and donor relations staff benefit from a familiar, easy-to-use interface based on the Microsoft Office System products, which they already use.

“The number one reason we chose Microsoft CRM 3.0 was because it is easy to use,” Clifford says. “We have a large number of temporary staff and people who are loaned to us from companies just for the campaign season. So, we don’t have a long time to bring people up-to-speed on how to work with a piece of software. People have learned Microsoft CRM quickly.”

GTCUW appreciated the expertise of its Microsoft partner. “Inetium really took the time to make sure the solution meets all of our business requirements. Ryan Toenies, CRM Practice Manager at Inetium, knows the software inside and out, and that makes our lives a whole lot easier,” says Clifford.

When asked what helped make the deployment successful, Ryan Toenies, CRM Practice Manager at Inetium, said, “United Way was looking for a partner with expertise in CRM and Microsoft CRM software. United Way helped set a direction for where the technology could take them, and we had the expertise and resources to educate and train them on what the product could do, as well as execute on the technical components of the project.”

Benefits
“Greater Twin Cities United Way has made dramatic improvements over the last three years, and Microsoft CRM has been an integral part of that success,” Clifford states. “Microsoft CRM 3.0 helps us connect in strategic ways with the individual and corporate donors who make our services possible.” In 2005 alone, GTCUW used Microsoft CRM 3.0 to record 18,000 interactions with its donors. The number of donors giving the largest gifts (over $10,000) increased 8 percent in 2004.  More than 400 leadership level donors attended educational or social events.  Membership in the agency’s Emerging Leaders Program grew 27 percent, contributing an additional $1 million.  According to Clifford, “We know that this is just the beginning.  As we develop more relationships, our ability to support the community will only continue to grow.”

Cost-Saving Mailing Features
New mailing capabilities in Microsoft CRM 3.0 saved GTCUW time and money in its 2004 fundraising campaign. “Instead of making hundreds of phone calls to ask the representatives of companies how their campaigns were doing,” says Clifford, “we used the Microsoft CRM bulk e-mail system to accomplish this project. Talk about saving time and money!”

Powerful Reporting Capabilities
GTCUW’s fundraising campaign season is short, and the organization needs to execute well on every opportunity. Tracking and reporting capabilities in Microsoft CRM 3.0 help GTCUW make the most of the opportunities.

Reporting capabilities in Microsoft CRM 3.0 enabled GTCUW to create approximately 140 reports that help donor relations and other staff understand donor behavior. “Microsoft CRM gives us really good tracking and reporting—far better than anything we’ve ever had in this organization before,” remarks Clifford.

Easy Customization
As a nonprofit with unique business needs and people working in locations across nine counties, GTCUW benefits from the Web-based interface in Microsoft CRM 3.0 and the ability to add new entities and functions.

GTCUW can customize Microsoft CRM 3.0 quickly to meet unique information capture and reporting needs by modifying fields, forms, views, and reports to match users’ existing work patterns and the organization’s business practices. “Microsoft CRM works the way our business does,” says Clifford.

A Complete Management Solution
“With Microsoft CRM, everyone wins,” says Clifford, “but the number-one group of people that wins is donors because Microsoft CRM 3.0 helps us be as efficient as possible, and that makes us good stewards of donor resources.”

Now, GTCUW is working to take its usage of Microsoft CRM 3.0 to another level entirely, by using the solution to manage its organization. “We really are envisioning Microsoft CRM 3.0 as the core of our business,” Clifford concludes.