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Making clouds that are more than hot air
Third Sector IT is one of the fastest growing social enterprises in the UK, and topped the newcomers category in the 2012 RBS SE 100 Index, which tracks the growth and impact of UK social business. CEO, Stony Grunow shares his insight on tech for good and motivating yourself after a 100ft. cliff fall.
Third Sector IT started three years ago as a fledgling social enterprise with a big mission – to make the world a better place through technology. I’d spent the previous ten years running an IT consultancy, so I knew the capability of Cloud technology to transform a company’s efficiency and operations. Yet I noticed that no organisation was helping charities and other non profits to access or benefit from this technology.
So, in 2010, I started Third Sector IT to do just that. By assisting these organisations with the implementation of great technology, we help them to be more effective in achieving their mission. Three years on, and we’re thrilled to have been included in the RBS SE100 2012 report as fastest growing newcomer.
Of course it hasn’t all been plain sailing. On top of the regular challenges of starting a business, I added an extra challenge to the task when I fell off a 100 ft. cliff while skiing in France, just as the business was taking off in 2011. Suffering from a fractured pelvis and shoulder, crushed vertebrae and mild head trauma, the earliest months of Third Sector IT were directed from my hospital bed where I hired our first consultant and confirmed our very first client.
Thankfully things have got a little easier since then, and as a small team of 10, we’ve built a reputation for quality, offering Salesforce CRM training and consulting to charities, social enterprises and ethical SME’s throughout London and the UK.
The original decision to focus on Salesforce.com as the Cloud CRM technology of choice was an easy one. Apart from being considered the leader in the field, Salesforce licences are approximately £1,000 per license per year, but non profits can apply for up to ten licences for free, and purchase further licenses at a steep discount.
Yet even with such discounts, subsequent implementation and staff training costs can still be an obstacle to organisations. As CEO, my main challenge over the last few years has been keeping up with the demand from charities, such that we remove this obstacle, whilst juggling a small team and building up our resources.
One of the most rewarding elements of the work is coming into contact with a hugely varied and passionate group of non-profit clients. We regularly hear their frustrations around what technology is or isn’t available to make their life easier, and wherever possible, we’ll do what we can to help.
Most recently this has led to a project to develop a fundraising-focused app for charities. Snow Goose offers a one-click import function, getting fundraising platform data into Salesforce, so donations from sites such as Virgin Money Giving go straight into the organisation’s Salesforce database.
Once developed, this will save charities hours of time manually inputting the information. Ultimately Snow Goose will make it possible for charities to manage and scale up their public fundraising, without drowning in the administration of it.
Third Sector IT has never been accused of lacking new ideas for development, and Snow Goose is just one of a number of projects in the pipeline. We’re also developing a tool specifically to help grant-makers easily migrate information from GIFTS database into Salesforce. And our sister company, Daddy Analytics, has also launched an app that integrates Salesforce and Google Adwords.
For anyone who wants to understand the effectiveness of their Google Adword campaigns, or track leads as they come through a website, this app delivers the information straight into Salesforce with excellent analysis and visual reporting capability. All these projects, some still in their early stages, are driven by an inherent passion to offer great technology that can make a difference.
Of course it’s not all about new ideas and success stories. The last couple of years have been about hard work and blind determination to see things to fruition, so it’s rewarding that this year is our busiest year yet.
Our ongoing business goal is to produce a service of such quality that any non-profit using Salesforce would consider our services for either training or implementation, and to scale to a size where we never have to turn down an opportunity to help a charity achieve their mission. It’s an audacious goal but we’re certainly up for the challenge.
The RBS SE100 Index 2013 is again opening soon. To register you're interest and receive notification when the survey opens, contact help@se100.net with the name of your organisation and your contact details. You can also follow @se100 on Twitter for the latest updates.
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