Client Profile

Tearfund New Zealand, a Christian non-profit organisation, and its 40+ staff: Raise $14 million from 15,000 donors and child sponsors annually. Their work also covers modern slavery prevention, disaster response and recovery in times of crisis. Working with local partners to help find peace and safety for people affected by conflict, and helping farmers and entrepreneurs create sustainable incomes.

Challenges

Tearfund had been running their website on an inflexible, slow platform that was costly, and time-intensive to develop and maintain. On top of this, the systems' integration between the website and CRM were time-consuming, slow manual admin tasks. We needed to build a new website, to their designs and new branding, on time and on budget to ensure donation continuity.

Results

To solve this challenge, XP provided a custom digital solution which provided:

  • Modern, rebranded website
  • Opensource, flexible DNN platform
  • Simple, quick DIY development
  • Digitise and automate all admin

Using technology to help end poverty

Tearfund New Zealand hopes to encourage people to put their faith in action, and for the past 10 years, their website has been a critical part of their strategy to help end poverty.

Tearfund’s website has to be visually appealing, easy to use and incredibly functional. That’s because every year, about $14 million from 15,000 donors and child sponsors flows directly from the charity’s website to support its projects.

“Our website is so much more than a website – it’s a fully integrated tool we use to run our entire organisation,” says Tammy Frazer, business technology solutions, Tearfund. “Tearfund staff, our donors, child sponsors, partners and volunteers all depend on it.”

In 2022, after a major rebrand, Tearfund asked Xtreme Productivity, their long-term digital solutions service partner, to modernise the site. The modernisation would include the new look, which Tearfund themselves provided, updated technology and a simple, DIY approach to development.

  • $14

    MILLION

    Income received through the website on an annual basis

  • 15

    THOUSAND

    The number of supporters giving through the platform for appeal, sponsorships and more

  • 8

    MONTHS

    The number of months it took XP to launch the new site from project kick-off
Tearfund's new website homepage

Using technology to help end poverty

TFNZ’s website and Dynamics CRM handle all of the donations, child sponsor signups and more.

For more than decade, XP has worked with Tearfund to automate 90% of the day-to-day financial transactions and administrative processes.

Online donations are secure, simple and traceable. Tearfund can see what went wrong, when and where, if a donation doesn’t appear in their bank account. It’s the best way to track every single donation and financial transaction making it safer for their donors, too.

“We look at our CRM daily and have the ability to reconcile the CRM with the bank in real time,” says Tammy.

Every year, Tearfund’s 8,900 child sponsors support children with up to 300+ new sponsors signing up every year. Tearfund’s CRM handles the logistics such as the children’s photos and profiles.

A few years ago, Tearfund asked XP to digitise child-sponsor letters and messaging. They had needed the equivalent of a full-time employee to manually process and mail the 30,000 sponsor letters they receive every year. That employee now spends just 10% of their time on the letters and the turnaround is minutes not weeks.

And since Tearfund and XP digitised and automated the tax receipts sent to donors and child sponsors, their supporters get their tax receipts 75% faster.