Rafflebox leverages TELUS' reliable IoT connectivity to scale and expand internationally
Customer stories · Jun 8, 2023
Learn how this Canadian fundraising tech company is growing their business and raising millions for charities, non-profits, and sports associations.
Taking local causes to an international playing field
Fundraising plays an invaluable role in helping non-profits — from food banks, to animal shelters, and schools — carry out their important missions. Rafflebox Technologies was founded to help these organizations easily and cost-effectively manage their fundraising events, whether online or in-person.
Today, thousands of non-profits in Canada and the US partner with Rafflebox to quickly create 50/50 raffles, implement fundraising initiatives online, and provide their staff with internet-connected handheld devices for in-venue ticket sales.
Since its origin, the company has helped raise more than $150 million for its customers. Rafflebox has enjoyed numerous high-profile fundraising successes from $705,000 raised to support the Stanton Territorial Hospital Foundation, to $2.9 million raised for Nova Scotia Firefighters in a single week during the Christmas holidays.
Rafflebox has scaled rapidly to meet growing demand throughout North America. In sports alone, Rafflebox has signed venue partnerships with Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Hockey League, among other sports associations at a professional and local community level.
The challenge
As the raffle tech company expanded their in-venue offering to meet the needs of much larger audiences, they needed a reliable and fast
IoT connectivity solution
. Simon Cusack, Co-founder and COO of Rafflebox explains: “There’s a lot on the line when it comes to raising funds for charities, non-profits, and sports associations at large venues, and connectivity is a core element of our brand promise.”Not only did they need a reliable network to support a higher volume of transactions in environments that typically have a lot of network traffic, but they also needed the ability to quickly deploy and manage their SIMs across the continent.
“Being able to have an inventory of SIMs on hand to quickly adapt to the size and location of the venue — whether we're running a fundraiser in the Northwest Territories of Canada or the Southeast United States — is extremely valuable to us.”
– Michael Perrin, Director of IT and Security, Rafflebox Technologies
– Michael Perrin, Director of IT and Security, Rafflebox Technologies
The solution
As Rafflebox started to grow, they needed a solution to help them deploy and manage their SIMs for large audiences across various regions.
TELUS Control Centre
, powered by Cisco Jasper, was able to meet Rafflebox’s business needs by helping them deploy and manage all of their devices. With this IoT connectivity solution, the team is able to gain greater control over their network connections and SIMs all within a single platform. With secure and reliable connectivity, and a large inventory of SIMs ready to deploy at any time they achieved a number of business results to help them scale and expand their business.
Key results
- Supported 200,000 transactions across venues that hosted 500 – 100,000 attendees.
- Helped drive $3.5 million in funds raised for around 100 charities, non-profits and associations during live events.
- Gained visibility to help detect payment device performance issues and maintenance needs.
Partnering with TELUS gives Rafflebox the confidence to expand operations without fear of jeopardizing its quality of service or reputation. Cusack explains, “TELUS’ proven ability to provide reliable connectivity helps us protect our reputation as a safe, secure and reliable provider of 50/50 raffle services.”
Choosing TELUS Business as a partner in their digital journey
Rafflebox’s founding team had used
TELUS Control Centre
as their connectivity management platform at previous companies. As a result of those experiences, the founders developed deep trust in both the IoT platform’s intuitive SIM management capabilities and the responsiveness of the TELUS account management and technical support teams.Michael Perrin, Director of IT and Security explains that TELUS was among very few IoT providers with the infrastructure to help an international company like Rafflebox keep their customers’ in-venue sales devices connected and running smoothly at events across networks throughout North America. “TELUS has dedicated networks for IoT, so they do not compete for bandwidth with the public networks, which was important for us” Perrin states.
“We wanted a partner that could support us not only across all of the Canadian provinces but also throughout the United States as we grew our business. Having worked with TELUS in the past, we knew the company had the global network and expertise to help us in our international expansion.”
- Michael Perrin, Director of IT and Security, Rafflebox Technologies
Thriving in a digital world
Within just 1.5 years, Rafflebox has grown their geographic footprint, customer base, and the number of fundraising venues supported — all successes that the team attributes largely to TELUS Control Centre. “Our team is accelerating plans for expansion and deepening our TELUS partnership so we can help a wider number of organizations reach their fundraising goals,” says Cusack.
“We can trust TELUS to deliver for us, which means we’re able to promise outstanding quality experiences to our customers. We see nothing but more partnerships coming our way, in large part because we have a provider as dependable as TELUS in our corner.”
- Simon Cusack, Co-founder and COO, Rafflebox Technologies
About TELUS IoT Connectivity Management Solutions
TELUS offers all-in-one IoT connectivity management so you can focus on driving your business forward. Our reliable, dedicated network was purpose-built for either domestic or international IoT deployments so you can scale devices without delay.
Request a
trial kit for TELUS Control Center
today.Authored by:
TELUS Business
