The challenge
The hospice required a volunteer-friendly charity retail system that offered supporters a fast and simple way to sign up for Retail Gift Aid – maximising the opportunity to generate additional Gift Aid income.
Plus, there was a need for improved data reporting and business intelligence to enable the hospice to monitor key performance indicators.
Cornwall Hospice selected Kudos for its easy-to-use EPoS and versatile gift-aid sign-up solutions that offer volunteers or donors the ability to complete sign-ups on a kiosk, or a tablet, as well as the software’s advanced data and reporting features.
From requirements to results
The Kudos project implementation team collaborated closely with the hospice to accurately capture their requirements from the outset. This approach ensured that the Kudos system configuration and hardware was suitable for their retail needs from the very beginning, including re-using existing hardware.
Some of the requirements included being able to continue to sell lottery tickets at the point of sale, importing the existing Gift Aid database, and carrying over the tax year-to-date values for end of year Gift Aid letters, as well as improving reporting and analytics, including recording the number of donated goods bag drops.
A phased rollout
The roll-out involved training and onboarding the head office retail team first, to prepare them for a seamless system implementation. To facilitate this, a dedicated training till was set up for the duration of the rollout so that the team could familiarise themselves with the new system.
This made it easier to set up stores and troubleshoot any teething problems. The hospice implemented the Kudos system in one store to begin with and then had a phased rollout to the rest of the stores to enable them to support their teams throughout the process.
Streamlined supporter donation & sign-up system
Cornwall Hospice has a donation drop-off process that requires supporters to drop donated goods to dedicated donation points, including drive-through donation centres. These donation points receive around 50,000 carloads of donations and raise over £1,000,000 so it is vital that donating goods and signing up for Retail Gift Aid are made as quick and simple as possible.
The Kudos donation technology enables the hospice to record the number of bags donated, simply and easily, as well as printing off donor labels to enable tracking the item from the donation point, through picking and packing, in-store pricing, and finally sale. The Kudos sign-up stations, supported by volunteers, make donating goods simpler and quicker for supporters; the hospice has seen an increase in gift aid income since introducing the new sign-up solution.
‘Bringing Kudos on board has made a huge difference to our retail operations. The software is reliable, and the team is responsive. We are particularly pleased with the Gift Aid system, and we’ve seen RGA income increase year on year, and we expect this to increase again next year.’ Justine Cook, IG Projects Manager, Cornwall Hospice.
Volunteer friendly software & support
The till is simple to learn, and volunteers of all ages and experience, find it very easy to use. The Kudos support team is based in the UK and is available to call 7 days a week. The friendly team is quick to answer and resolve calls, with over 98% of tickets closed within service level agreement timeframes.
The robust software has resulted in a greatly reduced number of technical support calls from stores. This has saved shop managers, volunteers and the hospice IT department time and restored confidence.
‘The number of support calls from our shops have dropped dramatically since switching to Kudos. With our old provider there were regular weekend calls that often required our own IT team to intervene, whereas now support calls to Kudos are infrequent because the software is more reliable. If there is a problem, then calls are answered quickly by Kudos and problems are resolved efficiently, without input from our IT team.’ Kev Rowden, IT Helpdesk Team Lead, Cornwall Hospice.
Better barcoding
Another noticeable improvement is the Kudos barcode labelling process, which is now quicker and simpler, and enables donated items to be tracked from donation to sale for Gift Aid recording purposes.
‘Kudos is much better than our old system. The till is easy to use, and the barcode labelling is straightforward and simple, which saves us time. We hardly ever call support now compared to before and when we do the Kudos support team are very helpful and sort things out quickly.’ Holmbush Shop Manager, Cornwall Hospice.
Improved data & analytics
Cornwall Hospice uses Kudos to provide data and analytics, allowing it to assess and compare the performance of each shop. The business intelligence from the Gift Aid reporting functionality has proven to be very useful and enables the hospice to make informed decisions about stock, sales, Gift Aid and more.
Cornwall Hospice’s Head of Finance, Belinda Santos Cunha, said ‘It’s important that we can pull off the correct data and reports that we need. At first, we didn’t have all the reports set up in the same way as our previous system, but the Kudos team worked with us to create new reports that our auditors needed, and we now have all the information we require for budgeting and forecasting for both donated/new goods and gift aid. It is good to work with a supplier that listens and responds to our requests.
About the hospice
Cornwall Hospice is a 24/7 UK healthcare charity that provides compassionate end of life care for patients, their families and carers. The charity has 31 shops from Penzance in the very west of Cornwall, to the most northerly in Bude, and from Perranporth on the north coast, to Looe in the southeast of the county.
The charity shops, staff and volunteers are a vital part of helping to fund the care at the two Cornish hospices, contributing over £1 million each year to overall fundraising, as well as encouraging the local community to reduce waste, re-use, and recycle.
