Embracing Inclusion: How the Red Cross helps facilitate digital empowerment for its communities with Optimizely

The Optimizely Customer Community is comprised of numerous industries from across the globe. The more industries we collaborate and serve, the better versed we are at solving new, complex challenges when it comes to competing in the digital economy.  

Working with organizations of all shapes and sizes gives us sharp insight into the truly amazing work that goes on, and an insider look at how various organizations leverage Optimizely to democratize digital for their end-users.  

One sector that has been setting new boundaries is the not-for-profit industry. These community-driven organizations are no stranger to challenges - especially when it comes to digital transformation. All too often, they find themselves on the tail-end of adoption and implementing change compared to their peers. However, this is rapidly becoming something of the past. 

The pandemic accelerated charities and non-profit organizations into accepting digital practices faster than ever before, as many are having to face the new reality of their funding environment. They lack funding, struggling with reduced capacity, and the focus is still on contingency planning and firefighting. There are strong signals indicating that overall, these organizations are beginning to emerge on the other side and focus on how they make best use of the resources they have in the new reality, but this is very dependent on each organization’s individual situation. 

The Red Cross in Australia and Sweden are great examples of not-for-profits having the appetite to bring about change through digital adoption and represent two marquee projects Optimizely is helping shape.  

Australian Red Cross wanted to create an improved digital instance to better communicate and engage with present and future generations. ''MyRedCross'' would become a central unified platform for all stakeholders and meet the digital requirements of today’s, and future generations’ digital users.  

Australian Red Cross partnered with LEVO to deploy the Optimizely Commerce Cloud platform to create the MyRedCross platform. The objective: To give the charitable organization a better understanding of monetary contributions from visitors that span across donations, retail purchases and other payment transfers and be able to easily manage content and communications with the charity's digital audience using Optimizely's best-in-class CMS capabilities. This blend of Commerce and Content makes a more efficient and effective way of engaging with the charity’s donors, stakeholders and supporters.  

The final key element of MyRedCross was to produce a 360-degree view of the stakeholder, enabling other stakeholders’ access to a single portal to observe how they interact with the site, all in one place. From the charity’s viewpoint, unifying the digital experience was achieved by recognizing that a single stakeholder may have several different identities (volunteer, shopper, donor) when interacting digitally with the Red Cross.  

The Swedish Red Cross wanted a multi-site online platform that was fit for the future generation of stakeholders. Over time, the Swedish Red Cross had acquired a ragtag of websites for different purposes and target groups. The project, "An Online Red Cross," was launched to create a platform-wide and modern solution. It was a multi-year project dedicated to making the most of digitalization opportunities from the perspective of visitors and users. 

The project started with an effect map to ensure that the different needs of all stakeholders would be accommodated in the solution. The key stakeholders were from several different profiles including people wishing to donate money, private individuals or businesses, people wishing for assistance to people involved in the Red Cross, to name a few.  

The vision was a digital platform that improved communication, reduced complexity and increased fundraising via digital channels. The outcome was an integrated digital platform built on Optimizely.  

Digital adoption and creating a platform and framework to achieve the organization's goals was high on the agenda for both digital teams. This marks a significant digital culture change for non-profit organizations as they invest in a new, more engaging way of interacting with their communities.   

Not only does the technology make for a better visitor experience and then in turn, customer insight, but it also creates momentum and drives future innovation. 

The metrics non-profits should be evaluating to measure success are hard and fast in most cases. Enlisting new members, seeking funding and the increased levels of engagement name but a few. However, this only comes about by collaborating more effectively with their respective local communities and raising awareness. By delivering a greater, more engaging digital experience, these not-for-profits were able to achieve their objectives and will continue to do so. 

We look forward to working closely with the Red Cross along with other and not-for-profit organizations to further support and develop greater awareness, understanding and intelligence in the pursuit of a first-class digital experience for their communities.