Movember is famous for its moustache growing fundraising campaign held every November. Since its inception it has been responsible for raising over $837 million and has funded over 1,200 projects in more than 20 countries.
But none of this would be possible without the technical support to leverage growth periods. Here is where the partnership with AC3 has helped the once humble not-for-profit grow into the charity empire that exists today. With Movember events spanning Ireland, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Spain, the UK, Israel, South Africa, Taiwan and the US, it’s vital to have a system in place that supports such global reach.
For the past 13 years, AC3 and Movember have been problem- solving to grow the tech support as the database and customer base have also grown. Movember’s solution architect Liam Svenson explains how AC3 and Movember work together to solve problems as they occur, leaning on the partnership they share. “Movember operates in 21 countries, so having a fast and reliable digital platform is one of the most important things for us,” Svenson says.
Movember also has another unique part of the business structure – the fundraising itself. As a peer-to-peer fundraising company, Movember’s strategy is about individual supporters hosting personal campaigns to collect donations from their friends, family and colleagues on behalf of the organisation. This tactic allows Movember to organically expand, reaching new heights and unexplored networks of supporters. But, in order to do so, the platform needs to be accustomed to coping with a surge or uptick in traffic during busy campaign periods. “Because we’re a peer-to-peer charity, the platform is the most important thing for us. It’s our entire income,” says Svenson.
For businesses with a set-up like Movember, key calendar dates mean exponentially more traffic to the site. “During our campaign, what we call our ‘magical month’, our traffic will go through the roof,” says Svenson. “It’s during this time that we need everything to work. We can’t have a campaign where our site will experience downtime or anything like that.”
It’s also cost-effective. “It’s a lot that we need during that time with services, but we want it to cost as little as possible, so there’s that obstacle as well,” adds Svenson.
PROBLEM SOLVING ON-PREMISE ONTO THE CLOUD
For Movember, an early problem revealed was that its data was on-premise and needed to be moved to the cloud. From infrastructure through to cost savings, this move was imperative for the charity to continue its growth. “Originally, we had it on-premise. It was costing a lot of money as well as being unreliable,” Svenson tells Three. “It also didn’t scale as we needed it to.”
As the traffic for Movember is primarily based on three key months of the year, there needed to be a recovery plan in place. It was important for there to be backup and help if needed should the November traffic overwhelm the servers. “We can’t have any technical outages during these times. They’re crucial,” says Svenson. “If we have one of these outages it can literally cost us all of our fundraising.”
Movember has relied heavily on the partnership with AC3 during this time, which Svenson describes as worth its weight in gold. It was AC3 that transferred Movember from being on-premise over to the reliable platform of the cloud. “AC3 provided the entire solution architecture for the move over to the cloud,” Svenson explains. “Everything from auto scaling groups on our EC2 servers to running serverless technologies such as Lambda functions. We were provided with a cost-effective solution that allows us to be confident every time we go into November.”
WHAT ABOUT THE RESULTS?
Relying on the expert services of AC3 has paid off in spades for Movember. In the first year of the partnership alone, Movember saw savings of over 80 percent. “For a charity, seeing these savings is just amazing,” says Svenson. “Year on year, AC3 continues to see savings and we are continuing to see AC3 reduce our costs. They help us to optimise our workflow, which also helps us to save our donors’ money and use it for the cause.”
The partnership has already lasted for well over a decade, but Svenson sees it as one of the vital parts of making his job easier. “Working with AC3 means that we can work on our charitable work and AC3 provides us with the service to provide that work properly,” Svenson concludes.