Human Appeal

Customer Profile

Human Appeal is one of the UK’s fastest growing charities with a presence in 25 countries, spanning Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Delivering humanitarian assistance in times of crisis and sustainable development programmes in the world’s poorest nations, Human Appeal has just celebrated it’s 29th year of operations.

First founded in Greater Manchester in 1991, Human Appeal is a global humanitarian and development organisation that delivers sustainable development programmes to some of the world’s poorest nations.

As a charitable organisation based on Islamic values, Human Appeal is heavily reliant on donations to carry out its essential disaster relief projects each year. Donations are especially important during the month of Ramadan which, encourages all Muslims to give a proportion of their wealth to charity each year. With the daily donations of Ramadan presenting a significant fundraising opportunity, Human Appeal needed an entirely customised payment solution to compliment their recent transition to Salesforce.

On the one hand, the solution needed to be flexible enough to accommodate the unique donation structure of Ramadan, allowing for incrementally increasing daily donations throughout the month. On the other, it also needed to accommodate multiple payment types, such as card payments and Direct Debits, diversifying and crucially, simplifying, the ways in which donors could make recurring payments to encourage a higher volume of Ramadan donations.

A SmarterPay Salesforce Solution

Having already selected Cloud Galacticos, a SmarterPay Partner and Salesforce consultancy firm to assist them in replacing their in-house CRM, the necessary payment integration with Stripe, Human Appeal’s card payment gateway and processor also needed to be
developed.

The need for daily recurring payments was a new business requirement driven by a market trend which acted as the catalyst for Human Appeal to provide this feature to their donors in order to stay
ahead of their competition.

Recollecting the initial decision to move away from their previous in-house CRM and payment processes, Ihsan Aljafri, Head of Systems and Development at Human Appeal said: “It was a challenging project from the very beginning. We needed seamless integration with Stripe to take payments by card, manage refunds and perform reconciliation with banked-in income but also, the ability to take payments via our call centre and website.”

Implemented against a very tight deadline, SmarterPay created a customised solution in Salesforce to integrate with Stripe and configured Human Appeal’s Salesforce products to be able to take card payments at daily intervals. With daily donations during Ramadan typically being between £20,000 and £30,000, it was essential that SmarterPay delivered a robust and reliable solution.

The solution was deployed over two stages. The card payment functionality went live first and the configuration and managed transition of Direct Debits quickly followed. The implementation itself was completed via configuration of SmarterPay’s payment app and the development of a custom code for the Stripe integration element of the solution.

Recalling the implementation period, Ihsan recalled; “During the development and deployment of the solution, SmarterPay kept us up-to-date via twice weekly stand-up sessions. It really helped keep us informed, the project on track and address any project issues.

Daily recurring Ramadan donations

The benefits of the SmarterPay solution were seen by Human Appeal immediately, after the timely completion of the project ensured the launch of their primary fundraising campaign on time, offering a competitive product against their competitors. The solution enabled Human Appeal to collect a staggering £500,000 through a combination of payment methods, with £350,000 donated through card transactions alone and approximately £25,000 worth of daily donations.

As a direct result of the donations collected over Ramadan, Human Appeal were able to support a total of 201,309 people across seven countries including Bangladesh, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Amongst the disaster relief provided, Human Appeal were able to deliver 23,793 monthly family food parcels, 9,760 hot meals, 1,927 food vouchers and Eid gifts for 4,024 children. The solution also promised several key benefits that would manifest over time as Ihsan explained; “Our SmarterPay solution will give the flexibility for Human Appeal to integrate with different card payment providers within the UK and Europe. In addition, similar daily recurring payment services could also be offered to our European donors.”

Commenting on Human Appeal’s SmarterPay experience, Ihsan enthused, “I think it is commitment to excellence and customer service that really sets SmarterPay apart. From arranging a temporary solution to keep donations coming in over the transitional period, to customising the solution to accommodate our payment architecture, nothing was too much trouble. I would absolutely recommend SmarterPay, they offer a fantastic, personalised service and in my experience, go beyond expectations to meet your requirements.”

About our Salesforce Solutions

We can integrate your web order processing and payment collection processes directly into your CRM, ensuring valuable customer account and payment details are automatically recorded.

• Regular or one-off card payments
• Direct Debit sign-up and management
• Checkout by Amazon, Paypal or Apple Pay
• Custom-built website checkout/order pages

For more information about SmarterPay’s integrated Salesforce solutions, please get in touch.