CRN Impact Awards 2023: Crayon empowers not-for-profits with rhipe for Change program

Crayon and its partner community helped hundreds of not-for-profits access donations and tap into the power of technology via its rhipe for Change program. 

The project was recognised as the best in the Distribution for Social Good category at the 2023 CRN Impact Awards last month.

An extension of Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact (TSI) initiative, rhipe for Change enables Crayon's partners to empower their not-for-profit customers with better technology. 

The program aims to help not-for-profits overcome the cost barriers of modernising their technology with unique technology pricing and services via Crayon's partners. 

In the 2022 financial year, rhipe for Change delivered Microsoft TSI donations and discounts to 1210 charities across the Asia Pacific region via 370 partners.

The program also facilitated three non-for-profit security webinars and a region-first Azure webinar for not-for-profits co-hosted with Microsoft.

Crayon plans to continue expanding rhipe for Change by bringing additional vendors on board to expand the portfolio of solutions available for not-for-profits.

Automating processes for Baptist Association

A recent rhipe for Change success story involved the Baptist Association of NSW and ACT, which runs a Creating Safe Spaces (CSS) program for its staff who work with vulnerable people.

Business applications consultancy ECLEVA was selected to help Baptist Association meet mandatory obligations to track all staff and volunteers who participate in the CSS.

ECLEVA proposed leveraging an existing Microsoft Dynamics 365 system to provide key data to the CSS program team.

The solution leveraged Dynamics Marketing for event management and a custom portal, allowing digital recording of workshop attendance.

Power Automate was deployed to correlate course participation and completion data and to send reminders to those needing to complete CSS training.

The new systems have saved three hours of administrative work for each event run by Baptist Association, equating to forty days of work annually.

ECLEVA called on its cloud distribution partner, rhipe a Crayon company to ensure the Baptist Association was supported with licensing pricing discounts.

"rhipe actually did a proactive analysis around the impact of licensing cost changes and how they were going to affect our clients."

"That was just brilliant, because they had already done a lot of analysis and I could just go talk with clients about the changes," ECLEVA's client success director Cristina Northcott said.