An increase of almost 100%

“…having the volunteers out there collecting with Yoinki Terminal was really powerful.” “Special Olympics Western Australia’s annual lunch at Perth’s Rambla on Swan was a roaring success. Raising a total of $140k, it was an increase of almost 110% on the previous year.

“We were incredibly happy with the result – especially given we raised $76k in 2018,” said Tanya Brown, the organiser of 3 of these now super successful lunches.

Tanya and the SOWA team’s fundraising strategy on the day was simple: conduct silent auctions, live auctions and sell raffle tickets. However, it was the pledges that really drove the total raised on the day, which came to $40k and was raised with the help of Yoinki.

SOWA utilised Yoinki Terminal to collect the donations, efficiently taking payments, sending tax receipts to the donors in real time, and building a database of 147 donor email addresses. The Yoinki app puts a payment terminal capable of taking EFTPOs payments onto every volunteer’s phone at no extra cost.

Aaron Henry, GM of communications at Special Olympics Australia loved the fact that all of the processing of donations and associated administration was completed through Yoinki. “Manually processing donations after one of our events has always been a time consuming and challenging process. Yoinki solved this problem for us. Our donors receive instant receipts and we’ve saved precious time in both our events and finance team.”

The event wasn’t without its challenges. A last-minute decision to collect raffle ticket purchases through Yoinki and taking the 9 volunteers through the application did cause a spike in anxiety amongst organisers. However they soon found out they’d have no trouble at all.

“We found it really easy to use…we changed our minds and decided to use Yoinki [for raffles sales] at the last minute, however once that was cleared up, the app itself was really easy to use.” There were some pre-event jitters too about working with a new provider, however the power of Yoinki Terminal squashed these quickly.

“We didn’t have the confidence initially to promote [Yoinki], however having the volunteers out there collecting with Yoinki Terminal was really powerful.”

When asked if Tanya would work with Yoinki again, her answer was a resounding: “Yes!”

We can’t wait to come back in 2020!

“I think hands down, Yoinki beats the old school way of “everybody let’s get out a piece of paper & pen” because even though we’re using technology, you still have the element of a human ask, which is so important in the process and it just can’t be beat.”

At Reach Foundation’s‘25 Years of Reach’ Gala evenings in Sydney and Melbourne, Tyler Juel, Head of Fundraising enlisted Yoinki’s help with donations collection and processing.

Reach were attracted to Yoinki because of efficient donor data capture capabilities, and the ability to easily deploy a motivated volunteer group with the technology to process payments and data. The two events were amazingly successful. Reach deployed 50 volunteers with Yoinki terminal mode over the two evenings, raising over $70,000 in donations and collecting new details for 158 donors –the latter was a key metric of success for Tyler.

“The value of collecting donor data is so important. We’ve used tap and go processing systems in the past, where you get the money, but nothing else, and it’s a real missed opportunity.”

The ability to efficiently deploy a large group with a simple information and payment processing tool was huge for Tyler, as he understands the importance of both embracing technology, combined with an old-school human ask. In an event situation, diners are typically more inclined to donate when approached by a volunteer, versus fill out a donation form of their own accord.

“I think hands down, Yoinki beats the old school way of“everybody let’s get out a piece of paper”because even though we’re using great technology, you still have the element of a human ask, which is so important in the process and it just can’t be beat. When someone asks face to face, “would you like to make a donation?”people close donations. And Yoinki provides a clean way to do that.

Administration time post-event was significantly reduced through Yoinki’s immediate receipting technology and powerful administration portal, allowing easy access to donor data, and completely cutting out a number of processestypically associated with event fundraising. These allowed Tyler and his team to get on with the work that mattered, and saved what he estimates to be 60 hours worth of administration.

“As a small fundraising team, we would spend days processing donations manually that were made on the night, and more days to receipt those on the back end. Yoinki made a world of difference to our admin time and cost savings, which meant that we could spend the critical days after the event thanking our generous supporters–rather than re-keying and processing their donation.”

Our live analytics also helped Tyler and his team to be more agile at the events. For example, it enabled them to make a necessary second donation sweep of the Melbourne event to hit their overall fundraising target. This resulted in an additional $10,000 raised in a matter of minutes.“

Having real time analytics for a fundraising event is so critical. Using an excel spreadsheet and a calculator, you just lose the ability to be agile in the moment. To say,“this isn’t working or we need to make a secondary ask” or“this is working really well, let’s do more of that”can maximise the fundraising opportunities. With live analytics telling us“our transactions are currently around the 20% participation level”we knew that wasn’t enough. We wanted at least 33% participation, so we immediately re-deployed the volunteers to do a follow up sweep.”

With Reach Foundation’s success, alongside other charity partners of Yoinki, the events platform will continue to grow and iterate in response to what our partners need. Watch this space for upcoming updates to the product (such as ticketing and charity raffles) to enable even better fundraising outcomes!