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Organization: Friends of Kijabe

Joined the Kindful Family: 2017

Making an Impact On: Healthcare

Located In: Kijabe, Kenya

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How Using Kindful Saves Friends of Kijabe Thousands of Dollars Every Year

Friends of Kijabe provides access and affordability for the best medical and surgical care in East Africa and supports medical education for surgeons, anesthetists, nurses, and clinical officers. They believe where you are born should not determine the quality of healthcare you receive, which is why they’re working to provide world-class healthcare in the developing world.

The staff at Kijabe Hospital sees 200,000 patients and performs around 10,000-15,000 surgeries each year, proving there is a great need for their services. For Friends of Kijabe, that need translated into the search for a donor management software that could handle the donations necessary to continue this important work.

Searching For A Dynamic Software Solution

David Shirk is Friends of Kijabe’s Executive Director. From day one, David says he knew the organization would need a donor management platform in order to thrive.

“It’s easy for somebody just to give to a charity, but it’s harder to make it easy for them to give to a charity for a specific purpose,” he says.

One thing that initially attracted him to Kindful was the platform’s ability to let people give to different funds and provide the organization with reports detailing the transactions.

David was also impressed with how easy Kindful made it for the donor to make a gift, whether that person is a tech-savvy member of Gen Z or a 70-year-old person who isn’t as tech-literate. That’s an important feature because, as he says, “The most important thing is ease-of-use for the donor. With Kindful it’s possible to set it up where people can give in two-to-three clicks.”

And it doesn’t matter where people live; with Kindful, Friends of Kijabe can easily accept donations from people around the world.

Kindful + Friends of Kijabe

One thing David loves about Kindful is how little he has to use it. Thanks to integrations and automations, he now spends less time managing his donors and more time on the organization’s mission.

Save More Time

David was pleasantly surprised with how useful Kindful’s communication features turned out to be. By integrating his account with Mailchimp, he now has peace of mind when it comes to automating emails and sending donation receipts. David also estimates he saves “hours and hours per month” thanks to Kindful’s tracking and reporting features, making it easier for him to get his board members or staff the information they need.

Raise More Funds

One of the biggest wins David mentions is how Kindful pays for itself about 6-7x over every year. By offering donors the ability to cover transaction fees, something 75% of Friends of Kijabe donors choose to do, Kindful has saved the organization $6,000 just by providing that option.

Do More Good

One weekend, David drove to the middle of nowhere in western Kenya. He was up on “this big mountain, probably an hour's drive from cell phone range.” When he came back to the office on Monday night, he saw that donors had given $4,000, with about $1,500 coming through monthly giving. Thanks to Kindful, he didn’t have to worry about “all the backend stuff.”

“It's impossible to say how freeing that is as a nonprofit leader to have the system work when you're not connected to it,” says David. Now that he doesn't have to manually communicate with each donor or pull reports from a spreadsheet, he can do more good.

hospital staff in scrubs performing surgery
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In the last year, we paid Kindful $1,200 dollars, and we made $6,000 extra. We’re paying for the service but making more money because of that. So that made Kindful a no brainer.

David Shirk, Executive Director, Friends of Kijabe

Making The Most Of Kindful’s Features

Because they’re supporting so many students and professionals, David loves that Kindful allows you to create unlimited custom donation pages. For example, he received a request from someone who had a fundraising goal of $8,000. The person wanted to set up a page that looked similar to what you’d see on GoFundMe.

“He sent some pictures and wrote a story and then put in the donate button. And, you know, he hit his goal last week. I think we’re around 105% of what he was trying to raise, which is awesome,” says David.

When we asked David what he would say to someone who wanted to know whether Kindful is the right fit for them, his answer was simple: “[Kindful is] worth its weight in gold.”

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