The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is the largest non-governmental direct provider of social services in Canada.  Founded more than 120 years ago, the Salvation Army is active in more than 400 communities across the country, providing valuable, practical assistance such as food, shelter and rehabilitation services.

The Salvation Army is widely known for their holiday street campaigns where volunteers stand outside of businesses and play or sing Christmas carols, or ring bells to inspire passersby to place donations inside the trademark red kettles.  The kettles have been used since the late 1800's and now appear all across the world.

Because people are increasingly spending more time online, the Salvation Army knew it needed to harness the potential of online giving for the Christmas kettle effort. The fundraising team was faced with two major challenges:  (1) Developing a digital format for the well known and successful physical symbol and (2) finding a technology provider that would meet their financial, security, and e-receipting standards.

The Salvation Army's digital kettle campaign (iKettle) had three key objectives:  (1) Implement an online kettle system with very high security which would meet the approval of financial department, (2) select a provider that would supply donors with CRA approved e-receipts and (3) allow donors to tell their stories and utilize personal peer-to-peer networks by enabling them to set up personal online Christmas kettles.

Artez was chosen to power the iKettle campaign because they possess a powerful and secure platform which allowed the Salvation Army to meet all of their key objectives.  Campaign supporters were able to customize their personal iKettle pages with photos and personal messages for easy solicitation of donations from their personal networks via email.  Built-in tracking tools allowed administrators to identify top fundraisers and individuals to view how far they are from reaching their fundraising goals.

The iKettle campaign was a great success despite the challenging economic climate of late 2008.  The campaign raised 4 times more revenue than in previous years and Breakfast Television setup their own personal iKettle which was the top fundraiser for the 2008 campaign.

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