<strong>Illustrative example.</strong> This engagement is fictional and exists to show format and tone. Replace it with a real case study, with written client permission, or relabel this section before publishing.
Headline: Grant reporting from eleven days to one, and recurring-gift attrition halved At a glance: National charity · 90 staff, 1,400 volunteers · NPSP + Experience Cloud · 14 weeks
The problem
Every grant report was assembled by hand from four sources. The finance manager blocked out most of a fortnight each cycle, and the resulting figures occasionally disagreed with the annual accounts, which is an uncomfortable conversation with a funder.
Separately, recurring donations were failing quietly. A card expired, the payment bounced, and nobody chased it because the failure only appeared inside the payment processor. Annual attrition on recurring giving ran at 31%.
What we found
- Donors, volunteers and service users existed as separate, unlinked records — 2,900 people existed at least twice.
- Grant-restricted funds tracked in a spreadsheet with no link to expenditure records.
- Recurring-gift failures visible only in the processor dashboard, unmonitored.
- Volunteer hours recorded on paper at 6 of 11 locations.
- No outcome data structure; impact reported anecdotally.
Household and constituent model with role-based relationships, so one person can be a donor, a volunteer and a service user without duplication · Restricted fund tracking linked to programme expenditure · Automated dunning journey for failed recurring gifts, with a self-service card-update page on Experience Cloud · Volunteer portal for shift sign-up and hours logging · Outcome framework with defined indicators per programme · Funder report templates generated from live data.
01 · Weeks 1–2 — Constituent model design and deduplication rules. 02 · Weeks 3–5 — Fund and programme structure; expenditure linkage with finance. 03 · Weeks 6–8 — Giving: recurring gifts, dunning journey, card-update page. 04 · Weeks 9–11 — Volunteer portal and hours logging. 05 · Weeks 12–13 — Outcome framework and report templates. 06 · Week 14 — Training and launch, timed to fall outside the two main grant reporting windows.
Results (12 months)
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Grant report preparation | 11 days | 1 day |
| Recurring gift attrition (annual) | 31% | 16% |
| Duplicate constituent records | 2,900 | 210 |
| Volunteer hours captured digitally | 45% | 98% |
| Recovered failed recurring gifts | — | £64k in year one |
What we’d do differently
We built the volunteer portal before the outcome framework. Reversing that order would have let volunteer activity feed outcome indicators from launch, rather than requiring a small rework in month five.
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