Sobell House Hospice launch their first inline raffle game

My history working with the hospice began with one of my Donorfy CRM web widget integrations, giving the charity the power to collect unrestricted donations directly from their website, straight into their supporter engagement system. It's important for the charity to not only raise funds to sustain their hospice and related services, but also to know who their donors are and as much context about the gifts they make as possible. That's why they opted to upgrade to one of my web widget installations - a customised online donation form that not only looks perfectly on brand and functions well, but also collects richer data that the charity can use for better marketing segmentation, effective retention and tighter reporting. Basically, they needed a way to turn donations from strictly transactional moments, into meaningful connections.

As time went on the client and I expanded the web widget integration to also cater for restricted donations; shelf-life campaigns and appeals that raise funds for particular goals, which also report directly to their CRM system. I built the charity a new control within their website to configure these appeals on the fly, and, I introduced a few flourishes to enhance some of the user experience for key appeals. Take the Rainbow of Ribbons and Memory Tree appeals for example, where donors can make dedications to their loved ones via custom, attractive interfaces that record extra personalisation data.

In more recent years I worked with Sobell House Hospice to redesign their website, with the aim being to better reflect the tone of their organisation, uncomplicate the signposting and pathways, and identify greater integration potential. Their previous site lacked joy and compassion in its aesthetic, needing to be softened and made less sterile. It was beginning to show signs of strain too; poor development and a lack of maintenance was hampering reliable use of the site. After a successful strategy meeting at the hospice and a robust design process that followed, developing the new website became a significant focus for the next few months. A large amount of the work revolved around connecting the website to the Donorfy CRM system, particularly through custom adaptations to the plug-in Gravity Forms.

Now, the charity can steward form submissions at will to Donorfy, and they do so in spades; Gift Aid declaration and communication preference submissions, user story sharing, event registrations for fundraisers like Oxford Half and Bike Oxford, and ticket sales with optional donations to native events like Lights of Love and Winter Walk, to name but a few.

And we didn't stop there. Last month marked the launch of yet another enhancement to the donor engagement + data enrichment package; the Sobell Raffle.
With the objective of cutting costs by growing a native tech stack, the charity decided to stop outsourcing its Raffle product and develop one of their own. So once again I lifted the lid on the code and bolted-on new functionality to facilitate the sale of raffle tickets. Leveraging what's already gone into the Gravity Forms enhancements, I worked in new code that generates and records unique ticket numbers per sale, emails them to players, and compiles them in a draw file for the charity to use once the game closes. As well as the salient parts of that process also being mirrored to Donorfy, I built the team a bespoke admin interface to enter players into the draw who have bought their tickets in other ways - over the phone or in person etc. - widening the accessibility of the game.

What's next on the Sobell House Hospice tech road map?

In high streets across Oxford, Sobell House operate a number of retail shops and superstores that sell donated goods, raising yet more funds for the charity. But as is typical of such shops, the stock pipeline is unpredictable, resulting in overwhelm and underwhelm of different item types at different branches, causing a lot of logistical issues.
In a bid to combat this, the charity engaged me to develop another portal on their website, this time so that retail managers can log in and define exactly which stock categories their shops do and don't need, using a simple traffic-light indication system. The live read-out from this system appears on the website's map page, making it convenient for donors to not only identify where the shops are, but which are in need of the items they plan to donate. The read-out is also broadcast on large screens within the shops, so those planning to turn up armed with goods can plan and sift accordingly.
Coupled with that tech is the comprehensive item look-up tool, encouraging donors to do their own research about how best to pass on their donations. From "Fridges" to "Wedding dresses" to "Fishing equipment", donors can cross-check their to-be-donated goods using the tool to find out which shops will accept them, or if they're even accepted at all. Health and safety play a big part in the sale of goods, even more so when items are coming from a past life, so checks like this mean donors can self educate about why certain items are prohibited for donation, which shops are prepared to handle items of particular size and quality, and ultimately, how friction from the whole process can be removed for both the charity and its supporters.

Momentum from Sobell House Hospice to advance their technical relevance whilst easing their resource overheads is still high all these years later. Theirs is a charity with a clear focus on digitising as many processes as possible and I'm proud to be instrumental to these projects. Like I said at the start, I enjoy the challenge of building solutions that balance the complex technical requirements with engaging, intuitive user experiences.