Outsourcing Christmas Cards

Chris69_2

I work for a regional charity that has grown significantly over the past couple of years.

Historically we have managed the sale of our christmas cards in house.

This has worked fine until this year when we have sent out 21,000 brochures to our database and are now inundated with orders. The whole process is very labour intensive and is now at such a size where we can not manage it in house.

Can anyone recommend a reliable outsourcing company who could take the whole process away from the charity.

We are based in the High Wycombe area, although I guess this process could be managed from anywhere in the country.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Chris

PlutoinCapricorn

I worked at a Hospice a while back, and they solved the problem by getting a temp in just to process the orders. This gives more in-house control, but perhaps the volume was less than yours is. I think that she started in early November. She dealt with queries herself, and her spreadsheet balances to the nearest penny. They even offered her a job at the end of the assignment, but she had other plans!

louise3965

Hi, we use these http://www.impresspublishing.co.uk/ they are ok as long as you keep an eye on them and proof read to the nth degree

fran-o

Hi
We use The Production House (based in East Grinstead, Sussex) - its our second year working with them after years of volunteers fulfilling orders and staff processing cheques (the numbers had gone up and up and became unmanageable for us).

My advice for working with any outsourcing company is that you need to tell them EVERYTHING - explain the product, your charity, how you want things done as if they are aliens who have just arrived on Earth! it is no good assuming they will get on with things like your staff/volunteers do because it will all be new to them.

Good luck!