Community Service Volunteers appoint Purple Vision to manage software upgrade and user training

Situation

Community Service Volunteers (CSV) is the UK’s largest volunteering and training organisation.   CSV needed to migrate from version 6 to version 7 of fundraising management software, The Raiser’s Edge.

Samantha Ihenacho, Head of Fundraising at CSV, was aware that their users would need training to get the most out of the new version of the software.

“We viewed training as being a vital step in upgrading to the new version of The Raiser’s Edge,” said Samantha, “but we were keen to make the most of our limited budget”

Challenges

The challenge was not only to provide CSV’s fundraising team with an effective training programme, but also to ensure that CSV’s use of The Raiser’s Edge would really help develop their fundraising capabilities.

“From my initial conversations, it became obvious that working with Purple Vision would not just be a cost-effective solution” said Samantha.  “It was obvious they had a rich understanding of how fundraising systems like Raiser’s Edge can really deliver, and a real desire to pass on their knowledge and experience.”

Solution

In order to deliver a training programme relevant to CSV’s   users, a good deal of time was spent  identifying their specific needs and objectives.

Users’ requirements of The Raiser’s Edge vary a great deal.  For trust and major donor fundraisers, it’s very much about close relationships with specific donors, whereas for other users it’s more about understanding the needs of a larger group of supporters, and making sure that the system helps to communicate effectively with all of them.

As part of the training programme, Purple Vision recommended using two consultants to deliver the training. This approach brings different backgrounds of using The Raiser’s Edge and provides a much wider range of experiences to draw on.

Benefits

The objectives of the training programme were met in all respects:

• Ensuring that all users of The Raiser’s Edge were given a good grounding in the basics of the system

• Empowering users to understand how they could best use the system to support their own area of work

• Identifying improvements in how the system should be configured and used in order to support fundraising strategies

“Initially, I was looking for a cost-effective training solution. What Purple Vision brought was something more – an emphasis on developing our capacity to make the most out of the system, and we now really feel very confident with it. ” said Samantha Ihenacho.