Disaster Relief Australia

Disaster Relief Australia (DRA) is a veteran-led not for profit organisation that unites the skills and experience of military veterans and other volunteers to help communities prepare for and recover from disasters.

The organisation’s success in the field depends on its ability to recruit, train, equip, and deploy teams to locations across the country for disaster recovery. In particular, its ability to build on its connections with veteran communities and leverage their skills and experience.

Michael Hoffman, General Manager of Technology at DRA, explains: “Disaster Relief Australia was established in 2016. Around two years ago we began to scale up and build a profile within the Australian not-for-profit sector. We also secured significant Federal Government funding to build our capability and capacity to help disaster-hit communities.

“The organisation continues to evolve and grow organically. We now have almost 5,000 volunteers with a target of 7,200 by 2026 and more than 60 full-time paid staff.”

DRA is an independent volunteer organisation and, in addition to Federal Government funding, secures financial support via government grants, corporate sponsorships and partnerships, philanthropic donations, and public donations. The organisation also deploys on behalf of councils and state agencies in an agreed funding arrangement.

DRA had grown organically, with systems to match.

Disaster Relief Australia’s technology had grown organically with the business. As such it had different systems fulfilling different roles.

DRA originally managed volunteers through the cloud-based health, safety, and compliance management platform, ‘Done Safe’. This met DRA’s basic needs, but the user experience was poor, and it offered few options for customisation.

Donations were processed through ‘Vega’, a New Zealand-based software developer that specialises in creating fundraising and management solutions for nonprofit organisations. A bespoke fundraising and management solution, Vega did not have the ‘out of box’ solutions that a growing organisation required.

“All communications with donors, business partners, volunteers, and clients were sent on separate systems,” recalls Michael.

“These platforms and applications were effective individually, however, we as an organisation suffered from inefficiencies caused by running multiple systems in different parts of the business.

“The challenge for us and the Turbineers was to build a single CRM platform that would bring everything together. We needed to streamline operations, improve data accuracy, and enhance collaboration across teams. Such integration would allow us to respond more swiftly to disasters, maximise volunteer engagement, and optimise our resource allocation.”

Disaster Relief Australia went to tender with a selection of technology service providers. It partnered with the Turbineers because its approach to business process automation, its services, and its high levels of integration were exactly what DRA was looking for.

A CRM platform to streamline operations and drive efficiencies.

Over a two-and-a-half-year process the Turbineers have created an agile working environment for Disaster Relief Australia, based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform.

Disaster Relief Australia (DRA) now has centralised its operations across five distinct projects using different Microsoft Dynamics platforms, each managed by separate teams.

These platforms serve unique functions with specific goals and priorities, reflecting the diverse needs within the organisation. Turbineers provides specialised support for each project, ensuring that the service delivery is coordinated and cohesive.

This setup allows DRA to efficiently manage multiple projects simultaneously, while maintaining focus on the individual objectives and requirements of each. This enhances the organisation’s overall operational effectiveness and responsiveness.

An effective CRM solution for a dynamic organisation.

The key outcome for DRA is that it can now run all its operations in a shared context on a single platform.

“The Turbineers are our Microsoft Dynamics 365 development team,” explains Michael. “Tej and his team have developed a modern, flexible CRM solution for us which bridges all the gaps in our business and ensures a seamless, end-to-end customer and stakeholder experience.”

What this means, is that DRA’s CRM can now trigger multiple journeys and events. The teams can develop 20-30 different journeys, featuring different cohorts of people, and set communications to connect and engage in the most relevant way for each audience.

For example, let’s say one person living in country Victoria donates $10 to DRA. This donation triggers a new communications journey. Then let’s say a disaster occurs near where they live – this enables DRA to reach out to that person and communicate the need for ‘spontaneous’ volunteering.

The person volunteers for the event and enjoys the experience. DRA then extends the communication to the volunteer to include details on ‘corporate volunteering’, which is DRA’s ‘whole of business’ volunteering engagement.

After a period of time, this person becomes a fully-fledge DRA member with many different interactions with different teams.

“The system developed by the Turbineers, enables us to see the full journey of that person. We can attach all their relevant training, certification, and details of the deployments they’ve been on, and the feedback that has flowed between us and them. We can then extend all their communications into other donation or volunteer categories, depending on their activities and feedback,” explains Michael.

“Microsoft Dynamics 365 has become a crucial tool for managing our operations efficiently, enabling us to coordinate our resources, volunteers, and relief efforts effectively.”

A strategic partnership that will continue to grow.

the Turbineers are now a strategic partner and technology enabler for Disaster Relief Australia. Two years ago, Turban Tech would have been too small to manage the scale and complexity of the projects DRA is now asking it to do. But the partnership has enabled the new Turbineers to establish and embed experienced people in key roles with unique capabilities and expertise in the business.

Tejwansh Singh, Managing Director at Turbineers explains: “Our two organisations have very-much grown up together. Thanks to the trust and confidence Michael and his team have placed in us, we’ve now developed a highly specialised not-for-profit business practice at the Turbineers that is aligned with the unique needs of organisations, like DRA.”

Michael Hoffman confirms this through his own experiences: “Now that Turbineers is a more mature organisation, it has specific people in roles that can deliver different parts of the development cycle.

“It has a team for testing, documentation, and planning and it has a team for managing our ongoing requirements. We receive each feature release with appropriate managed tickets, test cases, and user documentation. It’s a complete package on each release and this enhances our internal experiences and support.”

“Over the past two years of working with Tej and his team, he’s taught us that in any development situation, there’s usually a ‘quick’ way and there’s the ‘right’ way. And Tej will never let me do anything the quick way, if it isn’t the right way!”