Streamlining payment management for CARE Australia's peak fundraising season

The challenge

CARE Australia is part of a federation of 21 members working in 104 countries, delivering education and training, healthcare, clean water, nutritious food and emergency relief to 2.7 million people across 25 countries. Every November and December, that mission depends on a fundraising season that brings a surge of donations and pledges.

CARE Australia already ran on Salesforce, but the CRM wasn't integrated with Stripe, its newer payment channel. Each donation processed through Stripe had to be reconciled with Salesforce by hand. That manual work slowed the team down and introduced room for error, right when donation volume was at its highest.

CARE Australia needed a payment system that could support all its donation intake channels, remove manual data entry entirely and manage payments efficiently at scale.

The TELUS Digital solution

TELUS Digital took on the engagement against a firm deadline: the system needed to be ready before the November and December fundraising surge.

The team built a custom MVP solution that integrated Stripe directly with Salesforce. As part of the build, TELUS Digital created a "flagged donor" function that could trigger specific actions automatically, based on which payment gateway a donor had used.

The results

With Stripe and Salesforce fully integrated, CARE Australia entered its Nov/Dec fundraising season with one connected payment system instead of two disconnected ones. Manual data entry between the platforms was eliminated, and the new "flagged donor" function now triggers actions automatically based on payment gateway, cutting the risk of human error during peak transaction volume.

The team delivered the integration in under four months, ahead of CARE Australia's most critical fundraising window. That foundation led directly to a second engagement, expanding into donor care and finance platform enhancements.