Customer Case Study

Situation

Trinity Hospice’s fundraising team wanted to improve their use of their Raiser’s Edge fundraising database. Sara Morley, Fundraising Manager at Trinity Hospice, felt that there were some key issues that needed to be addressed:

“With quite a few members of the team having recently joined, we wanted to make sure that they had a good grounding in the system. We also identified that there was a need to ensure that all users were using the system according to commonly agreed standards.

Given the need to get 12 people trained on Raiser’s Edge, Trinity Hospice were keen to get a training package tailored to their requirements at an attractive price. Sara Morley contacted Keith Collins, Systems Director at Purple Vision, to see whether such a programme could be put together.

Challenges

The challenge was to provide a training course that would be engaging and deliver tangible benefits to a team of 12 users with varying degrees of knowledge of the software.

“Purple Vision’s approach was refreshing. Keith’s ‘can-do’ approach helped deliver a training package tailored to the requirements of our users, rooted in an understanding of our data and our ways of working, and providing specific examples of how we could actually apply this learning within our everyday work” said Sara Morley.

Solution

In order to deliver a training programme relevant to Trinity Hospice and their users, it was necessary to find out as much as possible about the existing knowledge of their users, and about how they were using the system.

“Keith came in for an afternoon and met with all of our users, and then conducted some off-site analysis of our database in order to get a real feel for how we are using the system” said Sara. “Purple Vision then produced a draft training plan, which we then reviewed to make sure that it was going to touch upon the issues relevant to all of our users.”

Having had this opportunity to understand the needs of the users, and appreciate how the database was being used, a 2 day training programme was delivered by 2 Purple Vision consultants.

“In order to train such a large number of people, with such a variety of existing skills and requirements, we felt that it was vital to have 2 people conducting the training. One trainer would guide each particular session, while the other was on hand to identify whether any user needed some more specific assistance or tuition” says Keith Collins.

Benefits

The training programme focussed on delivering a number of key benefits:

• Encouraging & ensuring more consistent data entry

• Empowering users to conduct fundraising reports and analysis

• Helping bring all users up to a higher standard of proficiency in the system

According to Sara Morley and Ann Smith, Trinity Hospice’s Database Officer, these objectives were definitely achieved:

“The training programme had an ambitious timetable, covering a wide range of topics. The training worked through examples of how each area of technology could be used, and more importantly, how we might apply it” said Ann.

“Purple Vision’s trainers were also very keen for us to build upon the training, encouraging us to create examples that we could refer back to when we needed to apply our learning.”

This emphasis on skills transfer and capacity building is very much part of the Purple Vision philosophy:

“One clear sign of a job well done is when a client becomes more confident in their own knowledge and ability. If we can help clients really develop, then we are confident that we are delivering really tangible benefits” says Keith Collins.