How Red Nose Day’s Website Copes with Traffic

New Nose Job

In 2007 Comic Relief gave its website a nose job and its IT infrastructure a facelift. As all the generous fundraisers take increasing advantage of technology, the numbers donating online is going through the roof. Fundraisers are also downloading photos and videos of their spectacular efforts. The result is the infrastructure needed to go under the knife.
With the necessary procedures undertaken the infrastructure can now deal with 20,000 transactions per second as opposed to 800 with the pre-op system. The charity also set to work 10,000 operators using a computer system to input donations while the other 3,500 stuck with the previous paper and pen pushing system.

Technology has its red nose day!

Improved software allows more donations to be processed and means faster access to money, both hugely important in charitable work. Paper based donations could take 3 to 4 months to transcribe; those made online take just a couple of days. Technology also means a sudden surge in internet donations does not mean disaster as a less used server can be used to provide back up. Software also provides insight into where and when donations are being made.

Light Relief

Comic Relief is making the most of opportunities technology offers, including social networking tools. It has approached the likes of YouTube to urge its vast number of visitors to support the charity. It has already joined forces with teen site Piczo to encourage younger people to get involved.