How Kids Matter used workflows to cut their case admin in half

Kids Matter is a Christian charity working to reduce the impact of poverty on children. Their founder is a Clinical Psychologist who found being a parent difficult. She recognised that if she still struggled even with a lot of support and financial stability then it could be even harder for families in less privileged positions.

 Alongside others in her community, they started developing support, informed by clinical expertise but centred on real world experience and solutions. Kids Matter now trains peer facilitators to run evidence-informed programmes nationwide, building confidence, competence and community for parents and carers facing disadvantages, ultimately enabling their children to thrive.

Kids Matter had been using Capsule CRM. It’s reasonably modern software, but it lacks customisation and automation options. It also doesn’t have the advanced features necessary to manage the complexity most charities face. 

We hadn't collected Gift Aid in a really long time. It was so hard to do with the tools we had, and we didn’t feel like we could trust our data. Beacon categorises eligible payments and tracks which ones we haven’t claimed, which let us claim over £12,000 in backdated Gift Aid, so Beacon has paid for itself out of the gate.

When looking for a new CRM, Kids Matter wanted a system that could handle complex case management. For their use case, their first step is to form a partnership with a Church or similar organisation. They then attract volunteers in each community to train as Facilitators. Those people will go on to run the peer-to-peer programmes locally and support parents and carers in a variety of ways. Each Facilitator will be assigned to a Support Coach from the Kids Matter’s staff team, and each Support Coach will work with multiple Facilitators.

That’s already a lot of data and relationships to manage, but ongoing volunteer engagement is also key to this programme’s success. Kids Matter had a substantial workload to the time and resources that the Facilitators need. They previously did that by spreadsheets and setting themselves reminders. Their process was well-designed but time consuming to execute manually.

It's less about the time saving for us, although Beacon has saved us lots of time. It’s the confidence to know everything is taken care of. When a case is created in the Programme Support Pipeline, all the relevant tasks and dates are automatically populated. Everything the Support Coach needs to manage their Facilitator caseload just gets put right in front of them. It frees us up to just get on with our work.

Kids Matter took the time to examine each step of their case management. They understood the information that needed to be recorded and thought about where best to store it. They mapped the triggers with specific criteria to the actions that need to follow them and created matching workflows and smart fields to automate as much as possible.

But just as important, Kids Matter are still improving. They’ve recently implemented Beacon Portal forms to allow the Facilitators to update the relevant records directly. 

Our volunteers are scattered across the country. We put them into WhatsApp groups based on region, so they can support each other. Someone asked me if we could see and manage that in Beacon. How could we see which Facilitators are in which group? I created what was needed in about half an hour. Everyone was astounded. Beacon makes it so easy.

The evidence is clear that volunteers are more likely to continue volunteering (and in many cases volunteer in the first place) if they feel supported and valued. What Kids Matter have done is used Beacon to make sure that happens efficiently, reliably, and consistently.

Kids Matter found the key to a great CRM implementation that can really transform your charity; take the time to find a CRM that meets your needs. Their organisation had an established process. They found a tool that could deliver on that process and then worked hard to make sure it did exactly that.

One of our favourite things about Beacon is how easily you are able to customise it. I haven’t found anything I can’t rename yet. It might sound silly, but not having something phrased the way people talk about it in the office, having to translate from the software, is a barrier. Beacon has allowed people in the organisation to be able to go about their work so much more efficiently.

Find out more about how Beacon can improve your charity’s case management here or try it for yourself for free