Insights

The Donkey Sanctuary was founded in 1969 by Dr Elizabeth Svendsen, MBE, with the core purpose of transforming the quality of life for donkeys.

What started as a love for donkeys as a child, has turned into one of the largest animal charities in the UK and one of the largest equine charities in the world.

Remarkably they never turn away a donkey in need, which is why since 1969 they have given over 16,500 donkeys and mules sanctuary for life in the UK and Europe, and help around 1 million donkeys within their international reach through direct and partner programmes.

The need for xRM

The sheer quantity of information that the charity needs to record against each individual donkey, as well as the number of donkeys that they care for, makes you quickly realise the importance of a suitable management system.

This is where xRM (anything relationship management) is used instead of the conventional customer relationship management (CRM) and was one of the key reasons for The Donkey Sanctuary to choose Microsoft Dynamics CRM over rival CRM systems. Built on the .NET framework it is ideal for the creation of xRM, as the system offers a common architecture that our developers can use to develop bespoke requirements. Thanks to its inherent flexibility and this ability for customisation, customer relationship management can be tailored to become animal relationship management.

Ambition to grow

From discovery, to rehabilitation and through to rehoming – the ability to record all the information against an individual donkey, not only helps that particular animal but can also be used to discover trends, insights and help the charity improve the lives of all donkeys. For example, the location and movements of all donkeys are recorded, so if a donkey becomes ill, it is extremely simple to find out which other donkeys have been in contact with it and could be at a higher risk.

With the charity’s ambitious plans to bring care to 2 million donkeys in 40 countries by 2018, the security and scalability of the Dynamics CRM system has meant that their donkey management system is future-proofed and will grow as they do. Our aim with all of our partnerships is to help forward-thinking companies use technology to its fullest potential to support expansion and growth.

With all the incredible work that The Donkey Sanctuary do, we are thrilled to be working together and building a robust solution to help them (and the donkeys!) for years to come.For more information on The Donkey Sanctuary, visit their website here.