Accurate address data for charity fundraising processes

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The challenge: behaving like a business on a non-profit budget

The Boston-based Home for Little Wanderers is one of the nation's largest non-profit child services agency. The organization helps children in myriad ways - from early intervention therapy programs, to adoption services, to afterschool programs, to residential treatment facilities.

Through grants and private donations solicited by a development team of 18, The Home for Little Wanderers manages an annual budget of around $56 million. "Whether our money comes from grants, which must be applied for by a firm deadline, or from private individuals, without accurate address data, we can't raise funds," said Lisa Rowan-Gillis, Vice President for Development and Public Relations at The Home for Little Wanderers.

Every holiday season, The Home for Little Wanderers holds a toy drive. In just four weeks, The Home staff collects and distributes $500,000 worth of toys. Donors are asked to fill in name and address cards that are provided at drop-off centers. "Each of those donors is an incredibly committed giver," said Rowan-Gillis. "Think about it. These people buy a present in the middle of their busy holiday season. They then get in the car and drive it to a drop-off site. That takes a lot of effort, and these are people we want to get to know."

Rowan-Gillis added that crowds and time pressures make filling out address cards difficult for donors. "We receive cards with no Zip + 4™ codes, or addresses that are missing apartment numbers," she said. "In previous years, it took two temps eight solid weeks of data entry work just to get the addresses into a database. Then we'd have to spend the whole rest of the year correcting mistakes manually, using internet people searches."

The solution: QAS Pro frees staff for more rewarding work

In the fall of 2002, The Home staff began researching technologies to make the toy drive process more efficient. The move was part of The Home's strategy to automate low-level tasks, freeing up staff for more high-level work that would directly aid in fundraising. There were several projects, such as an online donation program, that the team wanted to implement in 2003, and in order to do so, they needed to find a way to automate the toy-drive address verification process. After some initial research, The Home management team decided on QAS Pro.

By working at the data point-of-entry, QAS Pro ensures that only addresses validated against the latest U.S. Postal Service® records are entered into the database. This helps avoid duplicate addresses and costly mailing problems down the road. Other members of The Home were also impressed, not only with the functionality, but also with the ease of use. "For software that does such a sophisticated job, it's remarkably simple to use and implement," said Rowan-Gillis, "It's very easy for us to get our development team, including temps, up to speed."

The results: 90% reduction in error correction workload

The Home for Little Wanderers implemented QAS Pro in early November and immediately began reaping significant benefits. The development staff were able to manage the 2002 toy drive process much more efficiently than in previous years.

"It used to take two temporary workers eight weeks to enter the thousands of toy-giver names into the database. This year, with QAS Pro, it took only four weeks," said Rowan-Gillis. QAS Pro reduces the number of keystrokes needed to take an address by up to 80%, enabling employees to input addresses in a fraction of the time previously needed.

QAS Pro improves accuracy, as well. "Now we enter a name and address, and we know from the beginning that it's validated and formatted correctly," said Rowan-Gillis. "The product has reduced our data cleanup efforts by about 90%. I've got a person now managing our online donation program, and another working on getting our website connected to other sites," she said. "These people used to work primarily on verifying addresses manually."

Added benefits

Since implementing QAS Pro, The Home has discovered more benefits to the fundraising process. The Home has enjoyed a reduced amount of returned mail, which helps decrease clutter and costs. Additionally, The Home has been able to improve relationships with donors through faster response times. "Because QAS Pro adds those four last digits to the zip code, the mail is delivered quickly," noted Rowan-Gills. "A lot of what we do is acknowledgement, so that's important."

About The Home for Little Wanderers

The Home for Little Wanderers is the nation's oldest and New England's largest, private, non-profit child and family service agency, providing services to thousands of children and their families through 20 programs each year. The mission of The Home is to ensure the healthy emotional, mental, and social development of children at risk, their families, and communities through an integrated system of prevention, advocacy, research, and a continuum of direct services. For more information, visit www.thehome.org.

The Home is "Where hope lives."

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