Transforming a Multi-Million Dollar Gift Processing Business
OUTCOMES
Online and EFT processing for CSR program giving
Automated bank account reconciliation
40% reduction in costs and handling errors
OVERVIEW
Good Done Great was a leading CSR software provider to F500 companies prior to being acquired by a competitor in 2017. In the two years leading up to the acquisition, GDG acquired AmeriGives, a CSR competitor led by Gary Carr and Steve Greenhalgh (now the principals of CSR Matters). Gary led a complete re-engineering of GDG’s gift processing business.
CHALLENGES
Charitable gift processing for third-party software companies is a complex business, often misunderstood and under appreciated by corporate clients and nonprofits. Good Done Great had undertaken a significant investment to develop a new CSR giving platform while also acquiring competitor AmeriGives, whose own gift processing was rigorous but lacked automation.
The challenge was to combine these two companies’ operations, upgrading across a single technology, and applying financial services best practices in transparency, accountability, and velocity.
BUILDING A BETTER MOUSETRAP
Processing more than $40 million in gifts annually to 16,000 charities on behalf of 30+ corporate clients, and with new Fortune-level clients being booked every week, “We needed to design and implement new processes while the plane was in the air,” says Gary. Starting with banking needs and gift processing regs, GDG worked with DonateWell’s DAF to replace old, manual disbursements that depended upon manual labor and spreadsheets.
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Check payments became EFTs, paper reports became real-time online data, audit trails were created, and customers were given a clear view into the status of gift payments. To institutionalize these process improvements, GDG brought in an independent audit firm to establish the foundation for future SOC audits.
CONCLUSIONS
Within six months, GDG’s gift disbursement business had been transformed, achieving a 40% cost reduction. Automated bank reconciliations, real time access to payment status, and dashboard controls gave GDG’s customers a level of transparency and accountability unsurpassed in the CSR industry.
Gary made Good Done Great a better company. His unique combination of financial services, fundraising and software experience was instrumental in our success.
— David Barach, CEO, Good Done Great
Gary Carr
Engagement Lead
Gary served as the CFO of Good Done Great and managed their affiliated donor advised fund at DonateWell.
www.CSRMatters.net