Driving real cultural change in an organisation by implementing CiviCRM.
Community Action Derby (CAD) provides support and guidance to voluntary and community groups in Derby in the UK. CAD connects organisations with volunteers, promotes events, and offers advice, training, and assistance with funding applications. Their work is critical to enabling community groups in Derby to grow and flourish.
Central to their work are programmes. Each of these may have multiple projects, grant streams and activities. CAD works to identify needs in the community, acquire funding and disburse grants to organisations who then deliver the services to the community. Grant funding needs to be tracked across individual projects and partner organisations.
CAD needed a system that would allow them to capture and report on both quantitative data and qualitative outcomes. This reporting needed to be flexible enough to provide insights at multiple levels for different stakeholders.
Previously, data was stored in spreadsheets and external platforms. Delivering programs and services using this system had become inefficient. They were in desperate need of a robust and flexible platform to centralise their operations and data, and enable them to:
- Manage events & subscriber mailing lists.
- Facilitate grant applications.
- Monitor program information, and track support provided to individuals and organisations.
- Provide comprehensive reports for different audiences.
One key challenge was managing the many-to-one relationships between programs, projects, and grant streams.
"After just 5 days' notice, Circle had enough knowledge of the system and the sector to be able to understand the challenge and present what we needed. This pitch was in fact, very close to what they delivered."
We proposed reconfiguring content types to create a data structure tailored to CAD's needs. We identified programs as the central entity, with other key elements connecting back to the programs.
Making the most of core CiviCRM features - SearchKit, Form Builder, and Layout Builder enabled us to build a user-friendly, and scalable system without needing extensive custom code or Drupal integration.
We configured layouts for different contact types and subtypes. This ensures that users only see the user interface and data relevant to them, increasing productivity and keeping data secure.
We use an iterative approach, starting quickly with a prototype using Agile methodology.
The system now allows CAD to generate comprehensive reports across all their programs and projects, tracking grant allocations and participant demographics.
We built views that enable staff members to perform common tasks more efficiently.
CAD is benefiting hugely from their new CiviCRM and it’s now creating a real cultural change in the organisation.
They are able to track grant allocation, programs and projects and participant demographics because their data is on one central place. This has changed the way they work for the better.
"We use our monitoring data to support any bids we make, so having a single source of truth means we can easily provide this evidence to funders. It also helps to demonstrate our impact to the wider community. We can show that we’re a safe pair of hands.
We can be more evidence driven in how we target our resources in the community. ""Our new platform is helping us to model where we're doing well and identify the gaps. We can also identify smaller organisations that can fill those gaps. We have a mission to build resilience in the voluntary sector in Derby and we can do this by helping those small organisations to grow."
"This was never just a tech project. It's about cultural change and having a single source of truth. As well as the day to day transactional benefits, the main benefit is the insight it gives us. This is going to shape the direction of travel for this organisation and really change the way we work for the better."
