Case Study: Aberlour Children's Charity

Founded in 1875 by Canon Charles Jupp, Aberlour Children’s Charity started out as an orphanage, before growing into one of Scotland’s largest children’s charities.

Today, Aberlour delivers more than sixty services, working with children, young people and families, to provide services and support in communities across Scotland.

The charity works with families to overcome the challenges they face, such as the impact of drugs and alcohol, growing up in and leaving care, poor mental health, living with a disability, experience of domestic abuse or the impact of poverty and disadvantage.

This vital work relies on the generosity of their donors, and Digital Marketing Executive Scott Earl is at the heart of that effort, running the organisation’s SEO, paid ads and managing the website. 

Aberlour Children’s Charity has been a ResourceSpace customer for the last year, and we spoke to Scott about how implementing a dedicated Digital Asset Management system has supported the organisation’s work.

“What did we have before? A combination of different platforms.”

Aberlour has a large digital asset library, and while the majority of that content has been generated by their work as a children’s charity, they also have some historical assets dating back generations.

Like so many other organisations, prior to implementing ResourceSpace Scott was having to deal with a combination of platforms that created as many problems as it solved.

“What did we have before ResourceSpace? It was actually a combination of OneDrive and Microsoft SharePoint, but that didn’t work for the organisation,” says Scott.

“Organisational buy-in was a real problem because it wasn’t a proper DAM, and unsurprisingly people simply weren’t using SharePoint to manage media assets.

“Discoverability, as well as ease and speed of use was a real challenge, and it meant I had to handle a lot of requests for assets. This was an issue when people were on holiday or sick leave because we’d have to rely on people’s memory for things,” recalls Scott.

READ MORE: Simplifying charity story collection with smart uploads and consent

“It really comes across that ResourceSpace knows the charity sector.”

Aberlour recognised the need for an actual DAM system and began the process of finding the perfect solution for their specific needs. Despite the evaluation process taking around 18 months, Scott found that the ResourceSpace team were ‘not at all pushy in the sales process.’

“I can’t fault them at all,” says Scott.

“The team patiently answered all of our questions during the DAM selection process, and it really came across that they knew the charity sector, and it felt like a mature product.

“It was clear to us that all of the charity sector-relevant questions I asked had been asked before, and in several different ways—and one of the great things about them is that they understand their system.”

“When it comes to safeguarding and GDPR, we’ve got the answer before they ask the question.”

Responsible for Aberlour’s DAM, Scott is keenly aware of the need to ensure the organisation adheres to data privacy regulations and GDPR, particularly when it comes to images of minors.

READ MORE: Charity GDPR compliance: What you need to know

“ResourceSpace has provided us with a single source of truth for our digital assets, as well as the associated permissions and consent documentation,” says Scott.

“Anything that’s asked of us safeguarding wise, or GDPR-wise, we’ve got the answer before they ask the question, which is incredibly helpful, and prevents some difficult conversations.”

Aberlour Children’s Charity has also benefited from the open source principles ResourceSpace was founded in, working alongside our team to develop two crucial pieces of functionality that has made a big difference to their industry obligations. Specifically, guidance developed by the UK Online Harms Early Warning Working Group: ‘Protecting your setting’s images from AI manipulation and abuse’.

“One amazing thing about ResourceSpace is that they worked with us to develop an image compression function at no extra charge to help us adhere to this guidance, and we can now do this from within the DAM rather than having to use Photoshop or upload to a third-party website,” says Scott.

Although guidance rather than a legal obligation, Aberlour are adhering to it.

“Related to but separate from this, they also helped us to develop the ability to remove EXIF data from images to ensure someone can’t accidentally upload an asset containing location data, which again is important from a safeguarding and GDPR point of view.

“These new features have proven to be really user friendly too, because we’re not adding to anyone’s workload by asking them to remove this metadata, while the compression is one or two clicks.”

“ResourceSpace is kind of perfect.”

The consent issue is of the utmost importance to Scott and Aberlour Children’s Charity, but the organisation has also been able to benefit from the DAM functionality all of our other customers also rave about.

“Our team has taken to the sharing features, and they love that they don’t have to go through Dropbox and OneDrive anymore—and the IT team are happy about that too!

“Also, I value the speed at which I can find things now, because before I had to know exactly where things were in the file storage system, but now searching by metadata keywords and the AI search—which I love, by the way—makes this so easy.

“ResourceSpace is kind of perfect!”

READ MORE: Why ResourceSpace is perfect for... charities

As Scott has found during his first year as a ResourceSpace customer, we know a thing or two about charity Digital Asset Management. 

To find out more about why the likes of Aberlour Children’s Charity, Friends of the Earth and Oxfam all rely on ResourceSpace as their DAM of choice, book a discovery call with one of our experts below.