Danish Diabetes Association deepens member and volunteer support with Dynamics 365

When Huxi was hospitalized with dangerous blood sugar levels and diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age eight, his entire family reeled. They reached out for support, including asking a nurse to educate the boy’s school about diabetes. After adapting to his new lifestyle, Huxi attended a camp for children with diabetes. “Huxi met others he could look up to, and it gave him so much peace of mind. He experienced that he is not alone with his diabetes,” his mother recalls.

A new diabetes diagnosis can be overwhelming, but the Danish Diabetes Association works so that no one has to struggle alone. The nonprofit, one of the largest patient associations in Denmark, improves the quality of life for people living with diabetes and their families. It runs camps (including the one Huxi attended), educates people with diabetes, fights stigma, funds research, and advocates for improved policies for people with diabetes.

“We have big hopes for the future, so we’re optimizing the way we do things all the time,” explains Sebastian Erbo Hoffmann, Head of Business and Strategy at the Danish Diabetes Association. “Then, we can use the money we collect most efficiently in our work for people with diabetes and our vision for a future without diabetes. Good data is an important part of that.”

The Danish Diabetes Association has adopted Dynamics 365 as its constituent relationship management (CRM) platform. With its improved CRM, the nonprofit is collecting and leveraging better data to educate and support its 90,000 members.

Strengthening relationships with supporters

In the past, only a few people had the expertise to navigate the Danish Diabetes Association’s former CRM. The bottlenecks led to long waits to get needed information about constituents, marketing efforts, and fundraising campaigns. The organization reached out to the Microsoft partner itm8, which rolled out a tailored version of Dynamics 365. Now, roughly half the nonprofit uses the intuitive platform. “It has been a great improvement,” Hoffmann says. “We can know our members better."

Dynamics 365 enables staff across the organization to develop deeper, more meaningful connections with its members, 10,000 volunteers, and other supporters. The CRM integrates with the phone system so that when members call, staff can see their entire relationship with the organization, from the type of membership to which newsletter stories are the most popular. “That way, we can be better in dialogue and serve our members better,” Hoffmann says.

Through a discovery process, itm8 learned exactly what the Danish Diabetes Association needed to facilitate its work. “The great thing about Dynamics 365 is it is customizable, so we can make it fit our organization: find out what kind of information we need and then collect it. Then, we can act on the data we’ve collected,” Hoffmann explains. That empowers the nonprofit to tailor outreach to supporters. For example, they can segment communications by diabetes type, so members get the right information for their circumstances. “That will definitely help us increase our relevance by helping members get better care and treatment for their condition,” Hoffmann adds.

Local branches of the Danish Diabetes Association can also target their members. They can now email supporters in their region, for example about a meet-up in town, through an integration with a Power Pages solution spun up for each branch. Dynamics 365 documents interactions at the local and national level, such as RSVPing to a cooking class, in the constituent record. The visibility leads to a “360-degree view of engagement,” explains Nicki Jorgenson, Director of CRM at itm8 - Digital Transformation Division.

While it is still too early to quantify improvements, Hoffmann says that “members who have joined since we implemented Dynamics 365 seem to be more loyal.”

Streamlining funding for long-term service

“We’re responsible for obtaining the income we need to do our work helping people with diabetes live a good life,” Hoffmann says. With about a quarter of the organization’s budget coming from membership dues, the Danish Diabetes Association needed to gain efficiencies in attracting and retaining supporters.

Itm8 integrated Dynamics 365 with an online payment system to transform a resource-intensive member-onboarding process into an automated, seamless one. The nonprofit used to collect membership dues by mailing payment slips and following up via phone calls—a weeks-long process that required countless hours of administrative work, plus a big budget for paper and postage. Now, an online payment system immediately collects membership fees and creates a new constituent record. “This has been one of our greatest improvements,” Hoffmann says. “Now, we have money in the bank on the same day.”

The immediacy also helps forecasting. The finance team used to build in estimates of the number of members that did not end up paying, leading to uncertainty for the nonprofit’s budget. “Enrolling members immediately uses less resources and helps Danish Diabetes Association act at once. Many new members have diabetes or have family members with diabetes, and they need information right away—not in one to two months,” Jorgenson says.

The smoother online experience also makes members more likely to donate and renew their membership, Hoffmann says. That funds the nonprofit’s programming, from research and advocacy to exercise classes and camps for children with diabetes.

Real-time data in Dynamics 365 dashboards and self-service reports provide staff with actionable information they can use to generate more income. “Dashboards help the right people gain the right insight at the right time,” not months after a campaign ends, Hoffmann explains. For example, the Danish Diabetes Association runs an annual fundraising effort by selling lottery tickets. Staff can check progress against goals at any moment, then adapt their strategy. If they are behind on benchmarks, they might run a series of social media ads to recruit volunteers to sell lottery tickets, then see the results of that strategy in real time.

“We can continuously improve our work based on this data,” Hoffmann says. “If a campaign is going well, we can do more of what’s working. If we’re not reaching our goals, we can put more attention into that. We’re not missing lots of important time to optimize.”

Dynamics 365 also uses an API that connects to a current database of mailing addresses in Denmark so member information is kept up to date. If a new member is missing crucial information, such as an email address, that gap shows up on a Dynamics 365 dashboard so staff can reach out—ensuring members don’t miss important information.

“With this technology, we have been able to work more efficiently and get the right data,” Hoffmann says. “That helps us build loyalty, stay relevant, and fight for a future without diabetes.”

Find out more about Danish Diabetes Association on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.