Kids Club Kampala, Helping Vulnerable Children Survive and Thrive with infoodle
Kids Club Kampala is a UK charity helping vulnerable kids in the slums of Kampala, the capital of Uganda, to survive and thrive. Life isn’t easy in Kampala’s slums; education isn’t free, household incomes are unstable, and many families survive on just one meal a day.
We spoke with Olivia Barker White, Chief Executive Officer at Kids Club Kampala about the work of Kids Club Kampala and how infoodle has helped them with their administration, communication and fundraising.
– infoodle: We have been working with you for a few years now, before we talk about your experience with infoodle, tell us a little about Kids Club Kampala.
– Kids Club Kampala: “Kids Club Kampala is a UK charity helping vulnerable kids in the slums of Kampala, the capital of Uganda, to survive and thrive. Life isn’t easy in Kampala’s slums; education isn’t free, household incomes are unstable, and many families survive on just one meal a day. Many children have been neglected or abandoned as a result of poverty. We are passionate about protecting and empowering these children, letting them know they are loved and helping them to overcome their situations of poverty.
Our vital projects provide for both children and their family’s immediate needs and strengthen their futures through educating, feeding, protecting and skilling. We are currently supporting over 300,000 people throughout 12 slum communities across Uganda, but the global cost of living crisis means our vital services have never been more needed.”
– infoodle: What was important to you when looking for a new CRM or donor management system?
– Kids Club Kampala: “We were looking for a system that was user friendly and intuitive, not overly complicated or difficult to use. We wanted a CRM that was easy to learn how to use and accessible for different staff members, particularly those who didn’t necessarily have previous CRM experience. It was also really important for us that our CRM system integrated easily with our accountancy software.”
– infoodle: “How did the onboarding process go for you?”
– Kids Club Kampala: “We decided to move our CRM over to infoodle at the beginning of 2020. In a way we were lucky because we suddenly had several people wanting to volunteer or intern with us whilst they were on furlough due to the covid-19 pandemic. Having this extra manpower really helped as it was a big job, although the most time consuming part was probably cleaning our own data rather than setting up infoodle.”
– infoodle: What has been the main benefit from moving to infoodle? Is there one particular thing that stands out?
– Kids Club Kampala: “The main benefit for us was having an easy to use, intuitive system that we could store all our donor information securely and be able to link to our accounting software so we know how much each donor has donated, enabling them to thank them appropriately. Setting up To Dos is a really useful feature to keep track of everyone’s tasks, and being able to assign different supporters to different groups and then tailor comms appropriately.”
– infoodle: Describe how infoodle has changed your situation, how has infoodle improved your pain points mentioned above?
– Kids Club Kampala: “As mentioned above, our main pain points were having a previous CRM that was very complicated and difficult to understand, involved a lot of work to train new users and didn’t seem fit for purpose. Another pain point was that it didn’t connect easily to our accounting software so we couldn’t keep a note of financial information which is really needed. Additional features such as being able to claim Gift Aid and being able to send and receive emails through infoodle have been a huge benefit too.”
– infoodle: It’s often said that “Time is Money” but often organisations like yourselves work with volunteer and not salaried staff, has moving to infoodle saved you or your volunteers time?
– Kids Club Kampala: “So many things! Being able to design and then schedule comms to different groups of supporters, being able to claim Gift Aid through infoodle rather than doing it manually, being able to run reports, print labels, set up task lists to track actions, moving to infoodle has saved us so much time!”
– infoodle: What other, perhaps unexpected impact has moving to infoodle had on you or your community?
– Kids Club Kampala: “As a team, infoodle has made us more productive, being able to track To Dos and set up task reminders. Also being able to add notes to profiles has made everyone more conscious of when and how we communicate with particular people, keeping a track of interactions in this way has made us more sensitive to our different supporters’ needs.”
– infoodle: Do you have any advice, words of wisdom to give to other people thinking of moving over to infoodle?
– Kids Club Kampala: “I would say do it! We have been so pleased with the system, it’s easy to use and works really well for us. The infoodle team is constantly updating and improving things, and really care about their customers and are very willing to make improvements based on customer feedback – which I think is very rare!”
– infoodle: Thank you Olivia for your time, we love working with you and your team. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
– Kids Club Kampala: Yes, Another thing we love about infoodle is the lovely team behind them. The customer service is brilliant and they are regularly making improvements based on feedback from users. We are a Christian based organisation so the fact that we share similar values is also important to us. They really put their customers first which we really appreciate, and Aukje and Richard even came to spend a day training our team on how to use infoodle which was invaluable. I highly recommend infoodle!”
To find out more, please visit www.kidsclubkampala.org.
