Moving from CSV Imports to API Integration at Oxfam Australia

Oxfam Australia uses Raisely’s Salesforce integration, powered by MoveData, to administer their Oxfam Trailwalker events. We sat with Maria Papaly, CRM Development Manager at Oxfam Australia, to learn more about their experience and understand how the integration has helped Oxfam Australia save time and unlock new capabilities inside Salesforce.

Tell us about Oxfam Trailwalker

Oxfam Trailwalker began in 1981 as a military training exercise for the elite Queen’s Gurkha Signals Regiment in Hong Kong.  Oxfam Trailwalker launched in Australia in 1999 and to date, more than 100,000 trailwalkers have participated and have collectively raised more than $98.5 million.

What makes Oxfam Trailwalker such a success?

Oxfam Trailwalker is one of the most inspiring team challenges in the world. Teams of 3 to 6 people choose their challenge and will journey through a 100km, 50km or 30km bush trail within 40 hours. Teams start together, stick together and finish together – it’s tough, but with the right training and attitude, it’s an unforgettable adventure.

Using Raisely’s peer-to-peer template, the Oxfam Trailwalker attributes it’s success to the following:

• It’s a challenge - Oxfam Trailwalker is an endurance event. Much of the trail covers difficult terrain and participants are out in open country for many hours – often trekking overnight. As such, the event holds appeal to the adventurer in us all.
• The event is well organised - It’s not easy to go for a casual 100km overnight trek by yourself. Oxfam Trailwalker provides an environment where training, first aid, rest stops, and general safety are provided and associated risks are mitigated against.
• Teamwork and camaraderie are abundant - People participate in Oxfam Trailwalker as a team. This makes participants accountable to one another whether it’s on the trail, during training, while fundraising together online, or anything else.
• The scenery is spectacular - There is no denying participants get to walk through some amazing scenery that they otherwise might not have been able to experience.
• Multiple distances offer something for everyone - The inclusion of multiple distances, including a 30km trail in 2023, makes Oxfam Trailwalker approachable for first timers and avid enthusiasts alike.

Why do you need to get your Trailwalker data into Salesforce?

Oxfam Australia manages everything through Salesforce. As such, it is paramount to have a complete view of our supporters so we can engage, nurture and support them in our mission to eliminate poverty by tackling inequality.

During the running of an Oxfam Trailwalker campaign there are three core business units that leverage Salesforce to operate effectively:

• Marketing - All Trailwalker participants receive operational communications to help prepare for their event. This includes resources for the actual trail they are going on, training and preparation material, safety information, and journeys to steward teams and fundraisers to success amongst many other things.
• Supporter Services - As you can imagine there is significant involvement in supporting the thousands of participants that undertake an Oxfam Trailwalker each year. Collecting this information in Salesforce streamlines supporter services by having active and historical information at hand when engaging with participants.
• Reporting - Naturally we use Salesforce for reporting purposes. This involves reporting on the actual event to manage how it is going as a whole, but also to connect into finance, attribution, business intelligence and other systems used to identify challenges to address or opportunities to double down on.

What was your approach to data entry prior to using Raisely’s Salesforce integration through MoveData?

“We were continually having problems with our Excel-based data imports” - Maria Papaly, CRM Development Manager, Oxfam Australia

Like many other charities we imported data via Excel files. We would undertake manual data imports multiple times per week, and a non-trivial amount of human effort was necessary to review files prior to import to detect and correct errors before processing into Salesforce. Because of the human element errors would be missed which required further work to review and unpick inside Salesforce.

What outcomes did you receive by automating this through MoveData?

“Raisely’s Salesforce integration has made our life so much easier”– Maria Papaly, CRM Development Manager, Oxfam Australia

While the information output into Salesforce hasn’t changed significantly (which was by design), there were three key capabilities gained by fully automating this process:

• We’ve saved a lot of time - Since implementing MoveData we haven’t had to touch another Excel file. Over the course of the year this equates to hundreds of hours saved.
• We’re happier as a team - It’s no secret that manual data entry isn’t the most enjoyable of tasks, and it can be quite stressful when an event is running at full steam and simultaneously dealing with errors which impact the information Oxfam Australia relies on. Everybody is both thrilled and relieved that this challenge has been taken off our plate.
• We can act in real time - Given Raisely and MoveData both operate in real time, it only takes seconds between a supporter registering, donating or otherwise engaging as a Trailwalker and this information appearing in Salesforce. This real time capability allows us to make decisions quickly and deliver communications faster.

“MoveData’s technical and ongoing support has been wonderful”– Maria Papaly, CRM Development Manager, Oxfam Australia

Only that the support to set up our integration and include our custom requirements has been brilliant. The support MoveData provides after go live, where we might have needed to tweak something or put MoveData and Raisely on a call to collaborate on something else, has been excellent too.