Who is Penny Appeal?
Penny Appeal Canada is a CRA-registered charity that provides aid and development support to some of the world’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Founded in 2009, Penny Appeal operates in over 30 countries and focuses on key areas, including emergency response, orphan care, water solutions, education, healthcare, and poverty relief.
The charity’s work is guided by compassion, empathy, and the desire to make a positive difference in people's lives, irrespective of race, religion, or gender. Penny Appeal is known for its practical approach to charity, offering sustainable, long-term solutions alongside immediate aid.
Penny Appeal values transparency, cost-effectiveness, and the tangible impact of donations, promoting the message that "small change can make a big difference.”
The Challenge
Penny Appeal’s OrphanKind program is one of its key initiatives. It allows donors to sponsor a child and directly witness the impact of their contributions. Through OrphanKind, donors can provide essential assistance, including meals, education, and school uniforms, while receiving annual updates on the child’s progress—fostering a meaningful and personal connection between donor and child.
OrphanKind profiles are important for introducing the children to potential sponsors and sharing their stories and needs in a personable way. However, creating profiles for the program had significant challenges. It relied heavily on Photoshop for tasks like importing documents, resizing images, and maintaining consistency. It became time-consuming and repetitive, leading to delays and backlogs.
With efficient profile creation, the Penny Appeal team sought to continue this critical process while focusing time on other high-value initiatives that aligned with their mission, vision and values. On average, Penny Appeal manages 4,000 to 8,000 individual donations monthly, each requiring precise tracking and tagging within its CRM system to ensure funds are correctly designated. Accurate and up-to-date reporting is vital to uphold donors' trust and maintain the integrity of the OrphanKind program.
The Solution
Connecting with Wrk, Penny Appeal successfully automated its profile creation process using our Hybrid Automation, transforming a cumbersome task into a streamlined and efficient workflow. Throughout the project, we worked closely with Penny Appeal to understand its challenges, workflow goals, and the key platforms integral to its process, ensuring a tailored solution that truly addresses its needs.
This new process integrates automation bots with our global Wrkforce to quickly generate personalized profiles for orphans, significantly reducing the time and labor required. This solution helps Penny Appeal keep up with the growing demands of its operations and allows it to assist more children in need.
Increased sponsorships
66 profiles created in 2 weeks
Improved donor satisfaction
Report turnaround time reduced from 2 weeks to less than 24 hours
Better donor retention
Time rededicated to scale operations
Cost efficiency
Staff redeployed to other higher-value initiatives
Google Drive
A cloud-based storage platform that enables teams to store, organize, and share files in real time, ensuring seamless collaboration and version control across projects.
Google Sheets and Slides
Cloud-based spreadsheet and presentation tools that allow teams to collaborate on data analysis, reporting, and presentations, making it easy to update and share information.
Image Editing Software
A creative tool that enables users to edit, enhance, and manipulate images for projects, providing high-quality visuals for presentations, marketing materials, or websites.
Custom Approach
As with all Wrkflows, we began by breaking down the entire profile creation process into individual, manageable tasks. For each task, we evaluated the most effective method of execution—whether it could be automated via an API call, handled through Browser Automation, or required Human in-the-loop intervention for tasks needing a personal touch or nuanced decision-making. This granular approach allowed us to design a tailored solution that maximizes efficiency and minimizes manual effort. Rigorous testing was conducted closely with Penny Appeal, ensuring each workflow step met their needs and expectations. We refined the processes based on real-time feedback, adjusting to ensure the final results were accurate, reliable, and perfectly aligned with the organization’s goals. This hands-on, iterative approach guaranteed a smooth transition from the old system to a new, optimized workflow.
Process Improvements
Penny Appeal aims to create greater value, enhance cost efficiencies, and empower its team to focus on strategic initiatives. The new system was fully built, tested, and launched in just about a month, highlighting Wrk’s commitment to being the fastest-to-deploy automation platform.
After Penny Appeal dipped its toe in the automation waters, it quickly wanted to automate more processes. Since our initial OrphanKind profile creation automation, we have built six additional automated Wrkflows for Penny Appeal. That's the power of Wrk. It makes automation so quick to deploy and drives outcomes and ROI that organizations want to do even more.
Expectations
Penny Appeal’s expectations were straightforward: it needed to automate the OrphanKind profile creation process.
Problem
Manual Report Creation
Creating child profiles for the OrphanKind program was time-consuming and error-prone. Manual tools were used to import documents, resize images, and ensure consistency, creating bottlenecks that led to delays and inefficiencies in the profile generation process.
Solution
By automating the profile creation workflow through Wrk's Hybrid Automation, Penny Appeal significantly reduced the manual labor involved. API connectors now handle repetitive tasks, enabling faster, more accurate profile generation.
Problem
Data Gathering
Gathering and managing data for thousands of donors and orphan profiles required significant effort. Manually pulling information from multiple third-party data sources consistently slowed the profile creation process.
Solution
The automation process streamlined data gathering by directly integrating with Penny Appeal’s CRM system, ensuring profiles are created with accurate information quickly. This consistency helped maintain trust and transparency.
Problem
Inconsistent Layout
When handled manually, maintaining a consistent design and layout across all OrphanKind profiles was challenging. Profiles often varied in presentation, leading to a lack of uniformity, which affected the professional appearance of the program's materials.
Solution
Wrk’s automation ensured that each profile followed a standardized template, automatically resizing images and arranging content in a consistent layout. This not only enhanced the professionalism of the profiles but also ensured a cohesive presentation to potential donors.
Problem
Scalability Issues
As Penny Appeal’s OrphanKind program grew, managing and generating thousands of profiles each month became increasingly unsustainable. Manual processes couldn't meet the demand, leading to delays and missed opportunities to engage donors.
Solution
The integration of automation allowed Penny Appeal to scale its operations efficiently. The system now handles the growing volume of profiles with ease, ensuring timely delivery of personalized profiles while allowing the organization to expand its reach and help more children in need.
Let’s Wrk Better, Together
What initially seemed like a simple Wrkflow for Penny Appeal soon revealed the need for advanced, intricate automation to meet their unique requirements. Leveraging the capabilities of Wrk, we managed these complexities seamlessly. The collaboration not only met Penny Appeal’s expectations but also exceeded them by delivering measurable results, including a significant return on investment (ROI) in record time. By streamlining their operations through this tailored automation solution, we empowered Penny Appeal to focus on its core mission while ensuring efficiency and scalability for future growth.
