How a Children’s Charity Modernised Its Fundraising Data

Overview

Synogize partnered with a national children’s charity to modernise its reporting data foundation and create a more trusted, sustainable platform for fundraising and donor insights. The organisation needed to move away from legacy SQL Server-based reporting workloads and establish a governed data platform that could support accurate reporting, stronger donor engagement, and future analytics needs.

About the Client

The client is a nationally recognised not-for-profit that creates life-changing experiences for vulnerable children and their families across Australia. Its operations rely on effective fundraising, donor engagement, and program delivery, all of which depend on accurate, timely, and trusted data.

The Challenge

The organisation faced a critical window to modernise its data infrastructure before its legacy SQL Server environment reached end-of-support, creating both urgency and an opportunity to rethink its approach.

For a lean not-for-profit data team, the new platform also needed to avoid fragmented tooling, remain manageable day to day, and support trusted reporting across donor, fundraising, campaign, and payment data.

Our Approach

Synogize modernised the organisation’s reporting data foundation by moving SQL Server-based workloads into a governed Snowflake data platform. The solution used Fivetran for automated data ingestion and a dbt Project hosted natively in Snowflake to transform and model data across Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers.

This created a clearer pathway from raw data through to business-ready reporting datasets, while keeping the architecture practical and sustainable for a lean internal team.

Results

The modernised platform delivered:

1. A clear SQL Server decommissioning pathway: A structured migration off legacy SQL Server-based reporting workloads ahead of end-of-support, eliminating technical debt and future support risk.
2. A governed reporting foundation: Structured Bronze, Silver, and Gold data layers with controlled transformation logic and clear data lineage.
3. A sustainable operating model: Reduced technical overhead and a platform that is easier for a lean not-for-profit team to manage day to day.
4. A future-ready analytics platform: A scalable foundation for new data sources, evolving reporting needs, and future insight initiatives.
5. Stronger fundraising and donor reporting capability: Improved foundations for donor contact information, campaign targeting, fundraising events, appeals, donations, subscriptions, refunds, invoices, and revenue reporting.