Charity Technology Trust: Bringing Innovation
to Giving
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CTT was formed to catalyse a move in that direction. Registered as a charity and financially supported at its inception by the personal philanthropic contributions of its original patrons and trustees, the intention from day one was to create an organisation operated on business principles that would eventually return a surplus to the charity for re-investment in other charitable projects.
CTT's first big idea was the launch in 2001 of an online raffle system to increase the flow of online donations for charities. CTT's research indicated that an online lottery could increase the return to charities form 47p in the pound for paper lotteries to 80p every £1. The success of an online lottery would not only deliver charity efficiency, by having an immediate impact on fundraising costs but more importantly would lead donors into a longer low cost online relationship with their charity. Furthermore, if the online raffles service took off, it would generate funding for investment in a suite of online donor management tools that would allow charities to take online rafflers and turn them into low-cost online committed donors and supporters.
The experience of launching this first service provided valuable learning for CTT as it highlighted some of the factors that would inhibit significant take-up
- Most charities had very few e-mail addresses to send outgoing messages highlighting the online raffle. A typical UK charity could mail an appeal to hundreds of thousand of postal addresses but had maybe only a few hundred e-mail addresses.
- Conversion rates from online banner placement were significantly lower than cold responses to direct mail.
- The time taken to establish the bank facilities to allow a charity to handle online credit and debit card payments was painfully slow and could often take four to five months. The sheer hassle was often a barrier to the charity taking up the service.
CTT's market entry experience was no different to many new business start ups in that it learned much by doing. Although some of the initial assumptions were flawed, the learning and ability of management to react to these problems with agility enabled the organisation to move ahead nonetheless.
CTT realised that it needed to be able to address the overall technological context into which its online raffle service fitted. Moreover, it also realised that in order to move quickly, it had to develop a model for service introduction through effective partnering. This partnering model enabled CTT to introduce a range of online fundraising tools, including email marketing platforms, online and back office payment processing services, and e-commerce capabilities for membership and online trading.
The ability to blend CTT's rapidly growing knowledge of the charity sector with the capability of organisations with the tools to address sector needs, but who did not regard the sector as a core target market, was to prove a winning formula for CTT. In August 2004 CTT's founder handed over to a new CEO, William Hoyle who came to the charity with over 20 years experience of management in ICT related businesses. The team at CTT now have a powerful combination of commercial experience and charity expertise. Today, CTT works with over 120 charities, including Amnesty International, Childline and The Woodland Trust. The organisation distributes more than half a million e-mail pieces for charities each month, processes millions of pounds worth of payments and has raised over three quarters of a million pounds in lottery income in the first half of this year alone.
This measure of the leveraged impact of CTT's work is perhaps a better indication of CTT's success that it's growth in revenue terms, which is still an impressive 50% year on year. By the end of 2005, CTT will be close to operation at breakeven, or better, before capital investment. 2006 should see the first, albeit small, trading surpluses.
The experience of CTT has shown that no amount of thinking and planning can even approach the experience and learning gained by doing. Although the route taken by CTT over the past four years was very different from that originally envisaged, it has arrived at the place it wanted to be in, contributing significantly to the efficiency of the sector.
CTT continues to develop and innovate. Current projects include the acquisition of new capability in the mobile arena and as an example, CTT is already providing a text based fundraising service using an sms platform designed with partners to support charity specific requirements.
Like many organisations with a small staff and limited budgets, it has to work hard to pick the areas where it should focus. Key to this is understanding what technology based services will have the biggest impact on charity fundraising and at the same time, pay for their own development and implementation, such that CTT can become self financing on a sustainable basis.
There are still many un-tapped opportunities for charities to use new technologies and methods to create efficiency. The only impediment to the sector harnessing new ideas is the confidence to act. CTT expects to work with charities to give them the confidence to move quickly and capture the value from new technology with lower risks and lower cost.
Hopefully this article has demonstrated that, for the UK charity sector to continue to flourish and grow, there is as much need for specialist sector organisations like CTT, providing innovative 'B to B' services and support to charities, as there is for front line organisations focused on good causes.
So how can you help? Firstly and most obviously, if you believe in the organisation's aims, are impressed by their achievements and feel that you can help financially, CTT would love to hear from you! Secondly, CTT would also like to hear from you if you think that you can offer access to services, technologies or skills that could help CTT achieve its mission. For more information: www.ctt.org You can contact CTT's CEO, William Hoyle at William@ctt.org