Fundraising during Covid-19

Fundraising during Covid-19

by | Aug 10, 2020

Somali Hope Foundation

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Fundraising during Covid-19

The transformative power of education cannot be understated. This is why access to education is so critical to the development of healthy communities. The Somali Hope Foundation was created recognizing that education can serve as a beacon of light, illuminating a path for girls and boys to take steps toward a future they truly deserve.

The Somali Hope Foundation is dedicated to providing education access to some of the world’s most underprivileged children. Education empowers individuals to transform their lives and the societies in which they live. It also makes people aware of their potential, providing a means to materialize what they would otherwise deem impossible.

Goals

Take SHF’s traditional gala event and recreate it completely online (live-streamed speaker and program, online auction, donation page)

Create consistent branding (logo, slogan, email campaigns)

Update client’s online presence

  The Issue

Due to Covid-19 the charitable sector faced massive service disruption, layoffs and billions in lost revenue and that’s just charities based in Canada. Somali Hope Foundation relies on their annual gala hosted in Ottawa to help fund the operational costs of their K-12 academy in Bursalah, Somalia. Given the ban of large gatherings and the safety of the public a major concern, SHF initially decided to completely cancel their event. This idea was short lived. The youth served by their academy would not be able to return to school in the Fall without financial assistance. With that in mind, the board of the foundation decided to try a virtual gala. SHF sought out Toos to consult and execute the virtual gala.

  The challenge

  • Creating Commitment and Presence: One of the most important things we had to do was develop engaging content to ensure the public was not only interested in our marketing campaign but committed to attending the final event. Throughout the process we had to think of ways we could involve and engage everybody and ensure their participation had a purpose. Keeping everyone committed would help persuade them to log on regularly and stay updated up until the virtual gala. 
  • Building Relations and Trust: Somali Hope Foundation has organized a success gala for 10+ years. How could we develop meaningful relationships between attendees and the organization?  What do we need to do to keep our audience engaged from the moment the campaign begins till the end of the virtual gala?
  • Managing the Switch: With minimal time to transfer a well-loved traditional event to an online format, keeping participants engaged throughout the campaign and event was a new challenge we faced. Developing engaging content and ways to update our participants consistently was the goal throughout.
  • Management of Technology & Virtual Event Logistics: There were many boxes to check in advance of the virtual event, including but not limited to ensuring there was sufficient bandwidth for the event, audio in real-time has to be A1 for the virtual gala to run well, customer support to assist attendees, technology support so the virtual gala runs smoothly across all devices such as desktops, tablets, and smartphones. 

  Solution

  • Introduce a webinar platform in preparation for the virtual gala.
  • Substitute in-person event, auction, and fundraising with an online version of all three using streaming software for the event, web-based auction for the soft auction and a donation campaign page for the fundraiser.
  • Live stream the virtual gala from multiple host sites.
  • Create multiple communications for distribution to engage participants, donors and long-time supporters of SHF.
  • Utilize an email marketing platform to send automated emails to our participants throughout the campaign for announcements, registration and updates. 
  • Emphasize the importance of the social media platforms being used (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) for updates on the virtual gala, speakers, and any upcoming news.

  outcome

  • Updated website material and pages. Website became the hub for marketing, registration and general information for participants.
  • Participants were actively engaged throughout the virtual gala with unique opportunities to hear from content experts, participate in question and answer sessions, and the chance to outbid their fellow attendees on items.
  • The email marketing campaign was a success as it resulted in more followers on all social media platforms, increased public awareness of the Somali Hope Foundation and the mission of the annual galas.
  • More donations started to flow in through the GoFundMe page and the bidding war for the online auction continued throughout the whole campaign and into the final minutes of the bid validity period.
  • The virtual gala was executed perfectly, attendees and participants had an exceptionally high audio and video quality view throughout the night.

Expresscluster

Expresscluster

by | Mar 5, 2020 | 0 comments

Expresscluster

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Our work

Disaster Redundancy Planning

Chubb is one of Canada’s best‑known providers of fire safety and security solutions for businesses and organizations nationwide. For over 200 years, their mission has been to make the world a safer place by protecting their customers with essential systems, equipment and services. Chubb has been protecting people and assets worldwide for over 200 years. Chubb offers high-quality service and innovative, technology-enabled solutions for business and home – from design and installation to service and monitoring.

  The Issue

Toos was retained as consultants by Chubb, a fire safety and security solution company to help create a redunduncy plan for one of their clients. The client uses an ACMS (Access Control Management System) to control the identification and traffic of employees, guests and contractors. The client required a long-term solution for protecting critical data and uninterupted access control management.

  Solution

Chubb and Toos believed the best way to mitigate the risks is to create a failover cluster. A failover cluster is a set of computer servers that work together to provide high availability. If the primary server goes down, the backup server in the cluster can assume its workload with either minimum or no downtime through a process referred to as failover.

ACMS High Availability (HA) solution consists of two servers that are redundant and backing up to each other. Domain authentication redundancy was achieved using primary and secondary servers where access HA was configured using NEC ExpressCluster solutions. In order to achieve this, we created the environment.

Data is mirrored between the two servers by interconnecting the servers through a private network as well as a standard public network.

After implementing the plan, Chubb and Toos configured and programmed the primary and backup servers. Validation was completed to ensure both servers were connected, and the disks were mirrored. Manual failover tests were done to ensure that if the primary server goes down, the backup server assumes responsibility and acts as the primary server.

  outcome

  • Productivity and profitability has increased thanks to an effective document organisation strategy that is driven by SharePoint Online.
  • SharePoint Online is now the single centralised document management repository that provides all the functionality the company requires for efficient client and case records management.
  • Client data management has been streamlined through the introduction of SharePoint Online increasing business case efficiency and improving productivity, customer service and client relations.
  • All electronic email correspondence is now saved in SharePoint alongside the respective case files and customer information.
  • The staff are now collaborating more effectively on cases and sharing knowledge from the same repository.
  • The introduction of FAST search capability has made it quick and easy for their staff to find up to date information.
  • As an added layer of security, document version tracking is active and access permissions have been applied at both user and group level, ensuring that all staff only have access to their respective client case details.
  • Any duplicate data has been completely erased from the client’s network, speeding up productivity and reducing the workload placed on their internal file server and exchange servers.