Using the transformative power of sport and play, Canadian-founded international development organization Right To Play is improving the lives of children in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the world.

Today, RTP is running about 50 projects across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America, and in 2009 its programs reached a total of more than one million children in regular weekly programming and special sports events and festivals. By the end of 2009, RTP was also reaching more than 700,000 children in weekly, regular sport and play activities.

But as a rapidly growing organization, RTP was facing several challenges: communications between staff members and with donors wasn’t working well, and financial tracking wasn’t very time efficient. RTP asked an external consultant to review the organization’s technology infrastructure and based on the recommendations from the resulting strategic IT plan, RTP decided if it was to truly improve its day to day operations, it would need to implement a major technology overhaul.

“We really needed to take an overall look at our technology needs and catch up to where we should be in terms of providing our staff and volunteers with the type of infrastructure that is required to run an organization approaching 500 employees across 26 countries, and a donor-base that is equally as geographically dispersed,” says Robert Witchel, RTP’s National Director.

RTP decided to reach out to Microsoft for support and Microsoft provided enough software for the team to realize a significant portion of its new five-year plan.

 “Microsoft quickly pointed us in the right direction,” says Witchel. “We were absolutely thrilled to receive a grant of software in the amount of $750,000. It allowed us to accelerate our technology plans at a rate that was, just a few months earlier, unthinkable.”

Witchel says the improved technology has directly impacted the organization’s day-to-day operations.

“It has already transformed the way that we work,” says Witchel. “It has freed people to manage their time more productively, operate more efficiently, and improve communications and donor outreach.”

“This is just an incredible thing for us because the impact that we can have on children around the world is directly related to our ability to raise funds,” he says.

Here is a quick snapshot of just some of the key benefits Witchel shares:

·        Improved communications: Microsoft CRM Dynamics was deployed so the charity would have the tools and technology to improve communications with its donors. One office was even able to triple its campaign letters from the year before and double its campaign revenues, because the solution improved the team’s ability to organize its contact-base.

·        Websites: Microsoft SharePoint allowed RTP to design an externally facing website that could easily be duplicated across each of its national offices, giving the teams the flexibility to populate their own sites while staying within the RTP brand.

·        Intranet: RTP now also plans to build its intranet portal on Microsoft SharePoint, making it possible for RTP staff and volunteers from all over the world to share stories from the field, as well as photos and reports, with the entire organization.

But they’re not stopping there. In the future the RTP team hopes to leverage Microsoft technology to distribute program resources to teams in the field, participate in video training, and maybe even connect children of various languages and cultures together.

“Our partnership has been wonderful so far,” Witchel says. “We really enjoy Microsoft’s collaborative approach, and we hope that we’re just at the beginning of what will be a long relationship.”

To learn more about Right To Play visit: www.righttoplay.ca

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