The Customer
The charity landscape has changed dramatically over the past ten years with a boom in the not for profit sector, and the number of high net worth individuals and organisations with a philanthropic interest. Over 54% of the UK population donates regularly which is one of the highest figures in the world. The income for charities has risen by 125% from £19.7bn in 1998 to £44.6bn today.
New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) is a charity that aims to create a world in which charities and their funders are as effective as possible in changing people’s lives and in tackling social problems. Since it was set up seven years ago, NPC’s team of consultants and analysts have built up a wealth of experience in analysing charities, understanding social issues, and providing expert advice to a variety of donors, their advisors and, more recently, charities. NPC also builds a number of free and easy-to-apply tools to help other charities measure and communicate their impact.
Jocelyn James, Chief Operating Officer at NPC, stated, “We want to improve the way high net worth donors support charities, so that the money flows to the most effective organisations. We produce a range of independent reports and analysis for donors on where and how to give, which is all available from our website. In essence we provide expert advice to donors on where they can make the greatest impact.”
The Challenge
For NPC the challenge has been to keep its operating costs at a minimum whilst maximising its income. Like many organisations, its IT was identified as a key area to deliver not only cost savings but improve business operations. With over 30 employees the charity is based in the same office it started in back in 2002.
Joanna Ballard, Office Manager at NPC, continued, “We had two servers running everything within the organisation. That meant all our accounting, HR, payroll, Microsoft Office, email, and Web applications. Both servers were over four years old and it showed in the performance and reliability of our IT service.
“We had already outsourced technical support but I found that I was spending a lot of time on the phone trying to get our systems back up and running on a near daily basis. This was not the way we wanted to work. We had to find a better way.”
For NPC the constant threat of a complete failure was a real business driver in its hunt for a solution. In addition office space was limited as the charity was expanding at such a fast pace. “We had a backup solution in place but this was by no means completely fail-safe. Backups were performed daily, but we stored the tapes by the server which was in hindsight was a huge risk to the organisation,” added Joanna.
Solution
Joanna continued, “What was clear is that we needed a system that would improve user performance, increase reliability and yet did not increase our overall costs.” As with all charities the impetus for saving money was a critical driver. NPC was particularly interested in capital cost savings associated with not purchasing new IT equipment or renting additional office space. Joanna stated, “We looked at a number of options and felt that an outsourced approach best fitted our overall needs. We were sold on the hosting idea but after a false start with another supplier we realised that specialist skills were needed so turned to Intercept and its onlinedesktop™ solution.”
This cloud computing service is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ subscription based outsourced model with Intercept hosting and delivering all applications and data centrally from its secure data centre.
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