Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a foundation focused on finding a cure for breast cancer, will use Convio applications for fundraising, advocacy, marketing, constituent relationship management and other online applications at all of its offices.
The foundation will implement Convio’s system across its headquarters and all 125 affiliate offices to create, for the first time, a single database across the entire foundation. The new database will be housed on Convio’s open, Web-based CRM system, Aikido, which is built on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform.
“Relationships with people who share in our mission are our most important asset, and the ability to capture all constituent interaction with our organization, whether online or offline, will allow us to interact more intelligently with donors and partners,” said Justin Ricketts, VP of information technology for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. “Because we’re now a global organization, we also need the ability to access information at any time, anywhere, and Convio’s relationship with Salesforce.com and Aikido really meets those needs well for us. The open platform has a very robust developer community that will allow Komen to capitalize on the technology in a cost-effective and timely way.”
Ricketts added that one of Komen’s main goals is to increase revenue associated with Race for the Cure — its most significant fundraising event — by 15%-20%. The organization also aims to decrease technology costs by 30%-40% by moving to the shared platform.
Komen has been using Convio products at its headquarters and 50 affiliate offices for a number of years, primarily to support the Race for the Cure event, but the databases and CRM systems were fragmented between offices. Convio’s system allows Komen to keep all constituent data — from donors, volunteers, advocates and partners — in one database. In another change, data capture will now be performed automatically; the previous systems required manual input.
Between now and September, Komen will roll out Convio software and services at its headquarters and six affiliate offices. Ten more offices will put the system in place between October and January, and all offices should have Convio applications up and running by the end of 2009.
“The real key for us is to allow donors to control their relationships with the organization, not vice versa,” Ricketts said. “We need to satisfy their needs, and to do that we need to be able to capture their preferences, honor their preferences and maximize the donor experience. That’s the key business driver behind consolidating all the information.”
