Jan/Feb 2008

Seva Foundation Increases Donations via New Gifts of Service™ eCommerce Site; Ready to Expand Outreach to Wider Audience with Integrated eCRM

Despite news stories of concerns that a tight economy would affect the 2007 holiday giving season, Seva Foundation (http://www.seva.org/) increased the number of donations through its Gifts of Service™ campaign by 13% during peak fundraising (November 1 through December 21) as compared to the same period in 2006 (see more: Seva Foundation Launches New "Gifts of Service™" Web Site).

One of Seva's most important fundraisers, Gifts of Service now brings in over 25% of the organization's annual income. The campaign operates year round, yet about 85% of revenues come in during November and December. About half of the orders come in via the Web site, the others via mail or phone.

When a donor selects something from the Gifts of Service catalog to celebrate a friend or loved one, Seva mails a beautiful card to the gift recipient with a personalized message from the donor. The challenge for Seva is to process the gift cards efficiently, making sure they arrive on time, at the right place, with the right message.

"Gifts of Service always had huge market potential, but we've been very conservative about promoting it because we haven't had the IT infrastructure to scale up the operation," explained Robin Woodland, Seva's Director of Communications. "We had so many manual steps for processing orders that we were always at risk of becoming overloaded and not being able to send the cards out fast enough. Using Convio makes the operation less labor-intensive and provides us with much faster, more accurate order processing. So even with a record-breaking number of Web orders this season, it was the smoothest campaign we've ever had."

Seva is ready to promote Gifts of Service to its full potential. Using Convio's integrated Web, email and data management tools, the organization is planning to take full advantage of the opportunities for online marketing.

"We're perfectly positioned to go full steam ahead," said Woodland. "Now that we can safely handle a higher sales volume, we're ready to open up Gifts of Service to a wider audience. Going forward, we'll focus on online marketing strategies as a low-cost way to increase Gifts of Service sales volume."