15 years of consistent growth with Concern Worldwide

15 years of consistent growth with Concern Worldwide

Driving donations, engagement, and impact with Concern Worldwide’s next-generation digital platform.

A collection of assets from Concern worldwide, including an element of a donation flow, the concern logo, and 3 iconic elements from the Systemseed brand. All shown overlaid over a photo of a girl receiving a vaccine.

Setting the scene

Concern Worldwide is Ireland’s largest charity dedicated to ending extreme poverty, reaching more than 16 million people each year through its emergency responses. Their priority is to streamline donations so that support gets to those who need it most. Concern has been a long-standing partner of SystemSeed across more than 15 years. Over that time we redesigned and rebuilt the Ireland and UK websites along with their gift sites, integrated their Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and continue to host and support the full suite of Concern sites.

A screenshot of the Concern Worldwide charity website homepage. The header contains the organization's logo and navigation links such as "Our work," "About us," and a prominent "Donate Now" button. The main banner features a large headline: "Conflict is driving millions of people around the world to catastrophic levels of hunger." To the right is a donation form with options for a one-off or monthly gift, preset amounts, and a "Donate Now" button. Below the main banner, a section titled "Other ways to help" displays three large images with appeals: On the left, an image of a woman holding a young child for the "South Sudan Hunger Appeal." In the middle, an image of a woman with a child for the "TV Appeal." On the right, an image of a crowd of people for the "Gaza Crisis Appeal." Each appeal has a "Donate now" button.
The Concern.net homepage, a continually evolving landing point, driving donations and campaign engagement with each new iteration and adjustment.

The challenge

Concern’s digital journey began with the need for a multisite rebuild: keeping Drupal but making it far more editable and flexible than their previous sites. As a large and trusted charity, they also needed to keep innovating to grow donation revenue, attract new donors and supporters, and maintain trust in the vital work they do worldwide. At the same time, NGOs around the world look to Concern for their valuable research and insights. Their sites therefore had to be not only powerful fundraising platforms but also focal points for publishing knowledge and research across the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

SystemSeed has delivered huge improvements to the user experience, security, backend architecture and content editing of the Concern Gifts website.
Niamh O'Bryne
Concern Worldwide
A collage of screenshots from the Concern Worldwide charitable gifts website, which allows users to buy "alternative gifts" to support families in poverty. Key sections shown in the screenshots include: A vibrant homepage banner with an illustration of farm animals and the call to action "Transform the lives of families." A product page listing various gifts like "Six chickens (£21.00)" and "Avocado trees (£9.00)" with accompanying photos. A bright yellow and teal banner displaying statistics about the organization's impact, such as the number of people reached and countries they work in. A shopping basket page showing an item ready for purchase.

The solution

For the multisite rebuild, we created a flexible, future-ready foundation that gave editors full control over content and allowed creativity without developer intervention. We’ve continued to iterate the platform ever since, focusing on conversion rate optimisation, performance and security enhancements, and ecommerce for Concern’s charity gift campaigns.

From a technical standpoint, we architected a decoupled solution using Drupal CMS and Node.js with a React front end built on Next.js. Decoupling enabled greater flexibility in design and functionality, while also future-proofing the platform. We engineered a complex integration with MS Dynamics NFP365 CRM, contributing the NFP365 API module back to the Drupal community.

A montage of visual components created for the Concern Worldwide website.

The donation system, powered by Drupal Commerce, synchronises seamlessly with MS Dynamics and is fully configurable by Concern’s team. Stripe was implemented as the payment gateway, handling both one-off and recurring donations, with Apple Pay and Google Pay enabled through our Decoupled Stripe Drupal module for headless environments.

We also put automated testing, automated updates and scheduled maintenance in place, keeping security and performance consistently ahead of the curve. This meant Concern no longer faced costly rebuilds — their platform could evolve gradually, with new components added or swapped out over time. Alongside this, our UX team leads quarterly human-centred design workshops with Concern staff and stakeholders, prioritising upcoming features and enhancements to bring the greatest impact.

A screenshot of the "Project Us" webpage by Concern Worldwide. The top of the page features the Concern Worldwide and Project Us logos, navigation links for "Global Goals" and "Resources and toolkits", and a "Join Project Us" button. The main image shows a person with short dark hair and glasses, wearing a pink sweatshirt, looking directly at the camera. Overlaid on the image is the text "Project Us" and "A MOVEMENT FOR CHANGE," with the word "CHANGE" highlighted in yellow. Below this, a section with a white background is titled, "What is Project Us?", followed by a collage of photos showing people participating in activities, including one in front of a banner for gender equality.
Project Us: one of many landing pages that have been set up to serve specific initiatives across Concern Worldwide.

The outcomes

Our journey with Concern Worldwide has been truly transformative:

  • A focus on donation appeals and their flows produced a 940% increase in conversion.
  • Refining the checkout flow and homepage calls to action doubled donation revenue.
  • Improving the path from social campaigns to campaign pages led to a 60% increase in conversion.
  • New personalised products in the gifts site— brought in 70% more new users and increased gift revenue by 50%.

Throughout our partnership, Concern’s platform has also remained secure with no recorded threats, giving them a reliable foundation for continuous digital growth and global engagement.

Beyond Concern’s digital team, the stakeholders across the organisation have adopted agile processes and an accessibility first mindset, helping bring the digital strategy and roadmap to life across the organisation.

SystemSeed is one of the best agencies I've worked with.
Elena Sarmiento
Concern Worldwide

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