War Child Canada
Obstacles to Rapid Response
For more than 20 years, War Child Canada has been committed to protecting and supporting children affected by armed conflict. War Child’s unique focus is on delivering acute aid and assisting with long-term development of struggling communities in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Jordan, and Uganda.
By focusing on education, opportunity, and justice, War Child’s programs create sustainable peace for generations to come. With a recognition that every community is unique, War Child uses a locally-driven, long-term approach tailored to meet the specific needs of each community that champions local people as the drivers of change and peace—ultimately impacting more than 500,000 people every year.
War Child Canada has recognized the need to grow more agile in creating opportunities for donor support. Traditionally, War Child’s philanthropic efforts have focused on pre-planned campaigns—often targeted at larger organizations—to meet the needs of these communities throughout the world.
However, over the past several years, it has sought to more directly and effectively engage individual donors in its cause.
While War Child Canada’s traditional fundraising efforts built effective partnerships with larger corporations and agencies, its relationship with individual donors had not been maximized. Previously, the organization was using 15 different systems to create, execute, collect, and maintain donations, donor information, and marketing programs. Employees spent more time trying to manage back-end processes than engaging in outreach efforts. Data was often lost during this process, which led to issues in future statistical and relationship-building tasks.
War Child also wasn’t as agile as it wanted to be in responding to campaign opportunities related to increased awareness provoked by news coverage.
Media coverage that increases awareness of crises impacting War Child’s target communities creates an opportunity to engage interested individuals. However, its existing processes and technology could not support a rapid response to these unpredictable moments of increased media attention—preventing War Child from successfully leveraging public interest and, subsequently, donations that would enable it to serve people in need.
