The Donation Portal is developed with a vision to promote charity in the Sultanate of Oman, by providing an electronic gateway to facilitate donations to charities supported by the Ministry of Social Development. The portal collaborates with more than 10 charities for aid programmes covering orphans, disabled, and women.
It provides a one-stop service for the local charities to collect charity funds. Omani and residents can donate to a charity of their choice with a single click of the button from anywhere and at their convenience using a credit card authorised by an Omani bank integrating to the e-payment gateway of Information Technology Authority. Most importantly, the donors do not need to travel to any of the charities’ physical locations. In recent donation drive, the system has attracted donors from all across the country. This enhances the amount of collection as it can now reach places where the donation box cannot.
As the portal automates the donation collection process, it also makes it easier for the charities to monitor and administer the collection process. Some of the key functions of the system includes, secured admin area specific to the particular charity, this allows the charities to print statements and different reports such as total amount of money they received during a specific period of time. They can also filter information and generate specified report like how much funds they have for a particular programme. Most importantly, it has reduced the administrative work on the charities, as majority of the helpers are on a voluntary basis. Most importantly, it eliminated manual handling of donate money, hence eradicating funds misappropriation instances. Preparation of the reports and consolidation of the accounts were tedious work before, with the system, the various charities can now access and print these reports instantaneously. This cuts down the time for preparation of document drastically from several hours to matter of seconds.
The Portal achieved its main objective in assisting the charitable organisations to raise the donation fund for the less privileged and the people with special needs in Oman. It also serves as a place where information about the charity organizations in Sultanate of Oman is readily available, anytime, anywhere.
When it was first launched in 2009, the portal recorded 232 transactions with 2,3624 rials Omani collected. Donations via the portal saw a record increased of 370% in 2010 with a collection of 12,329 rials Omanis. A 744% increased in donation was recorded in 2011 with a total collection of 104,000 rials Omanis.
Transaction increased from 2009 to 2010 is 353% from 232 to 1,050. From 2010 to 2011, the transaction increased by 356%. Since its launched, more than 58,000 visitors from around 130 countries have visited the portal which mark a 700% increased from 8,500 visitors in 2009. During Ramadan 2011, more than 15,000 transactions were carried out through the portal.
Customer experience satisfaction and feedback were collected to improve the donation services. The Citizen Charter is published online to provide awareness to customers of the donations portal, sponsors, donation service, roles and responsibilities, service standards, user rights and others. A customer experience approached is used to measure and analyze customers’ satisfaction and outlined the customers’ feedback and response plan. Based on the 2011 Customer Survey analysis, more than 59% of the customers responded that the portal services exceeded their expectation and another 41% of the customers were satisfied with the portal services. 95% of the customers surveyed also responded that the Donation Portal is easy to navigate and use. 88% of the customers surveyed took less than 5 minutes to complete their transactions, while 10% took 6-10 minutes to do the same.
|