Raising funds for people, not technology.

Enabling rapid emergency fundraising for Act for Peace.

THE BRIEF

A digital platform to engage prospects on a global scale.

The tertiary education sector wasn’t immune to COVID-19. The spread disrupted traditional business models and revenue streams. Reaching students – particularly international students – became impossible without fresh digital strategies. Australian universities, like the rest of the world, had to pivot fast.

University of South Australia

An improved UX upheld by in-house capabilities.

A 74-year-old organisation with heavy responsibilities on its shoulders, Act for Peace (AFP) was ready to offload the weight of dated tech. The charity wanted to migrate to a new flexible website. One that improved the UX for stakeholders, strengthened brand salience, and increased supporter acquisition, retention, value.

Once established, Act for Peace wanted to be able to pull the strings on its own site. The capability to make in-house updates would keep ongoing costs low and agility levels high. 

ACT FOR PEACE

Working to create a world where everyone belongs.

Act for Peace fights injustice relentlessly. From providing aid to WW2 refugees in 1948 to providing rations for Syrian refugees today, the goal has always been about creating a world where everyone has a safe space to belong. 

In 2021 alone, AFP funded over 35 projects in 19 countries, improving the lives of over 286,000 people.

Dollar-stretching frameworks.

Budgets and resources are tight in the NFP sector. No surprises there. So when we were presented with the project budget and total cost of ownership (TCO) of the existing tech stack, we made a call. To achieve AFP’s goals, we recommended investing more into the design and build of a component-based frontend framework. And saving on the backend infrastructure.

To balance the offset in budget, we wanted to reduce the TCO of the digital landscape. To get there, we compared three backend architectures side-by-side: a Jamstack solution with headless DXP, a Jamstack architecture built on GatsbyJS and supported by WordPress, and a traditional WordPress implementation.

  • 60%

    reduction in cost and operational footprint

  • 6 hours

    The time it took for Act for Peace to launch new fundraising pages

  • 286,000

    The number of lives Act for Peace improved in 2021

An unlikely candidate.

A traditional WordPress approach came out on top. An old-school option we typically steer clear of, it was the obvious best match for the client’s needs this time.

Like any platform, WordPress demands ongoing updates and maintenance. But as a known commodity, it’s also highly supportable. We enlisted community-developed frameworks, Bedrock and Trellis, and deployed the site to premium WordPress host, Kinsta. This approach benefited the structure and security of the project, as well as plugin management, environment configuration, and deployment automation. 

The client could rely on high availability and performance at every twist and turn. 

We wouldn’t typically recommend WordPress as a solution, but in this case it matched the client’s needs and budget, reducing the TCO of the digital landscape, being platform-agnostic and easy for staff to maintain and update. The content authoring was critical to success in this project and the authoring environment is very familiar and accessible to many people. It can be managed by anyone in the organisation.

DIllon Hicks

Managing Director, Sudo Roux

Toolbox

A hub for speed, security, simplicity.

  • WordPress

    • Content management system, Advanced Custom Fields

  • Visual Page Builder

    • Components-based web development

  • Salesforce

    • Customer relationship management

  • Yoast

    • Search engine optimisation

The tools to transform mobile, transform desktop, transform lives.

We used a component-based content management approach to create the new WordPress site. Act for Peace could simply drag-and-drop their way to page updates, and we made sure every element worked the same across mobile and desktop. 

The time savings from the straightforward build went into the design. This involved a visual design to reflect the client’s re-brand, and a set of tools and templates to help them keep future content aligned.

Act for independence

Act for Peace’s new website has agility and flexibility built into it. This means the charity can respond to emergencies at lightning pace. When the Tonga volcano erupted in February 2022, for example, they published a new fundraising page within hours. Zero in-house developers. Zero support needed from Sudo Roux.

AFP’s independence has reduced its operational footprint and costs by 60%. Swapping out a system that drained the budget every year to a fit-for-purpose setup has resulted in time, cost and – no doubt – stress savings.

Sometimes what’s required is simplicity—a discrete solution our clients can execute themselves. This is particularly important in the case of an NGO, where every dollar not spent on the frontline, every overhead, needs to be scrutinised.

Dillon Hicks

Managing Director, Sudo Roux

Let’s talk.

Untangle your organisation’s challenge. Re-imagine the customer experience.

It starts with a call to Sudo Roux: 1300 753 499