Skip to main content

Titus Trust

One Platform, one Solution: Countless possibilities

The charity Titus Trust runs a series of summer camps for teenagers, giving young people a chance to do all sorts of activities, such as kayaking, climbing, clay pigeon shooting and more (can we sign up?) and gives them a chance to hear and engage with the Christian faith. As you might imagine, running these events comes with a massive administrative and financial burden, and this is where we come in. 

We‘ve been working with Titus Trust to help improve and add to a number of their online systems. After our discovery day with the team at Titus, we found that there were four key areas in which we could help:

  1. A CRM-type system (to help manage contact information and more)

  2. A donation tracking system (enabling online donations and analytics)

  3. Events system (to enable the management of the events, including applications)

  4. A Safer Recruitment System

4
Key systems developed

As well as developing these systems, we also needed to enhance the experience on the sites to ensure users could navigate the online system seamlessly! One further challenge we had, however, was the sheer number of distinct users. With campers, parents, volunteers and different types of administrative staff, the need for a simple system with carefully allotted access was really important. To solve this set of complex needs, we divided the project in half, with one system aimed at CRM and Donations and the other at Events and Safer Recruitment. 

Starting with the events and safer recruitment system, Dave led on the UX and design front, working hard at simplifying the information presented to users and providing a clear step-by-step process. He added a stepper, so users could see where they were in the process and the system auto-saved to allow people to return to their applications at a later date. As well as the stepper we built a dashboard, so users could quickly see any actions that they needed to take at a glance.

Nikita and Ben built the system from scratch in Nova, using Nova components, Tailwind and lots of custom logic to ensure all the requirements were met. They worked hard to ensure the complexity of the system isn’t something that is experienced by the users, guaranteeing a smooth process at the front end. The sensitive nature of the data we held meant that we wanted to be careful with the way permissions were set up in the system, making certain that the right people could access the right data. 

A key aspect of this project was that we ran it ‘agile’. An agile project provides deliverables at the end of each phase (each month in this case) and allows the client to test and adjust the priorities as we go. What this means is that where functionality had been ‘forgotten’ in the brief, or where a need for key features emerged from testing, we were able to re-set the scope at each stage ensuring the team at Titus got the best possible system. It also meant that they could feed into the look and feel of the site, providing near-constant feedback and generating improvements as we went. All in all, this meant the final product was better than it otherwise would have been. 

Users and Titus admins are now working with a bespoke, succinct system that supports the parents, volunteers and team. This refined and thought-through solution makes everyone’s lives easier and helps more people engage with their cause. Win-win. 

More work