How a Western Australian conservation group streamlined its operations and volunteer management using infoodle.
The Ludlow Tuart Forest Restoration Group was formed in 2018 to raise awareness and take action in restoring the last remaining tall stand of tuart tree forest in Western Australia. With a team of 700 members and 65 registered volunteers, the group’s mission is to restore this critically endangered ecosystem before it’s too late.
Since its inception, the group has planted over 125,000 tuart trees and begun restoring the former Ludlow forestry settlement into a tourist attraction and education site, supported by a State Government lease. This ambitious project requires not only environmental care but also the coordination of a growing volunteer base, statutory compliance, and public engagement.
The Challenge: Too many spreadsheets, too little structure
In the beginning, the group used a basic Excel spreadsheet to manage names, addresses, skills, and membership payments. However, as the group quickly expanded, so did the problems.
“Maintenance of the spreadsheet was initially the treasurer’s responsibility,” explained Bill, a committee member, “but copies were passed around to other committee members, leading to issues with data security, duplication, and inconsistencies.“
The committee of 12 often found themselves tied up in discussions about how to extract value from the spreadsheet, particularly around using skills and knowledge of their members. It became very clear that they needed to move to a dedicated CRM system.
Why infoodle? A full-featured solution that could grow with them
The group chose to implement all of infoodle’s available packages. With so many moving parts – from tree planting to restoration work on buildings, utilities, and event planning – they needed a system that could keep up. They now find it easy to find members with the appropriate skills, and upload documentation like safety inductions and working with children checks, which are essential when planting trees with school groups.
Volunteer hours tracking was also a deciding factor: “infoodle was the only application that made it easy to capture volunteer hours. Others told us to just use Excel – and we were trying to get off Excel!”
Other key features that attracted them was the Xero integration, forms, bulk communication capabilities, custom fields, and event planning tools, including rosters.
Though there was a discussion about reducing their subscription to save costs, the team agreed that all of the packages were necessary for their growing organisation, and they would rather contribute financially than lose any of the functionality.
What’s changed since implementing infoodle?
“All our data is now in one secure place.” Bill shared. The team has one main user and 3-4 admin level users who can manage data and coordinate efforts.
One of the biggest shifts has been the impact on their annual Ludlow Art Prize competition and exhibition. Entrants submit artwork via infoodle forms, receive confirmation emails including all submission data, and are automatically added to groups for communications during the approval process. This has streamlined an otherwise complex event.
“The membership process is easy and acknowledged by new members. The confidence we now have in the system makes a real difference.”
Training, support, and adaptability
While infoodle did admittedly take more training than some other systems, the trade-off noted by Bill is the number of features available. The other CRM tools they evaluated simply couldn’t offer what infoodle can. The team also appreciates the customisability, particularly when it comes to storing things like induction records and compliance data with expiry dates.
On support:
“The support from infoodle has been outstanding. They always provide answers to our questions and have even taken on board our improvement suggestions.”
They also noted the responsiveness of the team when it came to user experience – including improvements to the mobile app and volunteer hours reporting.
Final Thoughts: Would they recommend infoodle?
“I would recommend infoodle to organisations who require a system to support the management of their organisation. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, which gives us the ability to mould it to our requirements.”
“It feels empowering to know that infoodle takes notice of customer feedback. Aukje once said to me, ‘We need customer feedback to build a better system.’ That’s not the response I’ve had from others.”
