Age Concern New Zealand is a federation-model charity supporting people aged over 65, along with their friends and whānau. Their national office provides governance, support, and advocacy while working alongside a network of local Age Concerns. Core services include:
- Elder Abuse and Neglect Prevention Service (delivered by 17 local offices)
- Visiting Service (operating in 32 local offices with volunteers providing social connection)
- Health Promotion Programmes (including Falls Prevention initiatives)
Their Visiting Service alone, in 2023, supported 2,400 clients (69% aged over 80) and engaged 1,940 volunteer visitors (57% aged 65+). Impressively, 96.7% of clients reported feeling happier and 95.7% felt less lonely. These outcomes underscored the importance of improving the systems that support service delivery and volunteer coordination.
Need
Age Concern had outgrown its legacy platform, Acorn, which was limiting their ability to unify service delivery, manage volunteers, and track outcomes nationally. The decentralised model created data silos and inefficiencies, hampering both national oversight and local service innovation. They needed a scalable, intuitive CRM system that could support federation-wide operations while remaining flexible to local office needs.
Solution
GravityLab partnered with Age Concern to lead a multi-phase technology transformation:
Phase 1, we implemented a custom CRM platform to replace the outdated Acorn system and built core functionality for managing enquiries, elder abuse cases, visiting services, and volunteer management.
Phase 2, the platform was rolled out to additional local offices, and volunteer management capabilities were enhanced to better track, engage, and support their large volunteer base.
Phase 3 is upcoming and will focus on unifying fundraising efforts across local offices into a single, national Salesforce platform for improved donor management and campaign coordination.
Phase 4 will introduce outcome management capabilities, allowing Age Concern to track service impact and better report on wellbeing improvements and strategic goals.
Key to the project’s success was close collaboration with Age Concern’s team, including regular refinement sessions, stakeholder workshops, and iterative development cycles to ensure the platform truly served those delivering and receiving care.
Results
- Significant uptake across the federation, enabling more consistent service delivery and reporting.
- Improved visibility into service usage and outcomes, helping both the national office and local teams make data-informed decisions.
- More efficiency now and into the future. Focusing people on doing what they do best and letting computers do the automation and structures.
- Enhanced volunteer management functionality to support recruitment, onboarding, and engagement.
By streamlining operations and strengthening connections across the federation, GravityLab’s CRM transformation is helping Age Concern deliver on its mission: improving the wellbeing and dignity of older people across Aotearoa New Zealand.
“GravityLab were wonderful to work with and engaged well with staff from across the organization in the discovery phase. The technical knowledge of the team gave us the opportunity to build a solution to meet a complex federated operating model.” –
Karen Billings-Jensen, CEO
