Kentish Town City Farm

How do you use Plinth?

We use it for all our bookings. It's really important to know exactly who we've got coming.

For Corporate Social Responsibility vists, we need to know how to plan; there's a big difference between 15 and 50 people coming.

For children, it's really important, because we can access all their emergency contact details and their medical information during or before the session.

How does it compare to what you were using previously?

Before, we were just using a Google Calendar, pieces of paper, and to be honest people were just keeping information in their heads.

There were lots of different systems for different projects and different people. There was no central organisation of it all, so no one person had all the information.

For reporting, we couldn't track who was coming in. People would just turn up, so it was hard to plan for staffing etc.

Now, I've got all the information, and it's great.

I can just go into Plinth and I know exactly what's going on at all times. It's fantastic.

And because it's all in one central place, more and more is coming onto it. And everyone can have access.

Has it benefited your organisation in any other ways?

Well the really cool thing is that now we can actually see the journey of the people we work with.

If someone starts off with us at age 8, then starts volunteering with us, then moving to young farmers, then maybe going off to study veterinary medicine, we can see that whole journey through their profile on Plinth.

How has using Plinth changed the way your organisation works?

The really big one for me was seeing how our demographics and audience changed.

During the pandemic, we could see that we were reaching a totally different postcode to before.

And we saw how ethnic groups were changing. We saw different people coming into the community, something that you don't find out about directly, but we could see the increase in the number of refugees from Eastern Europe. It gave us much better local knowledge.

Now we can also see different age ranges. Before, we had no idea we were reaching so many younger children. We discovered that in the data from Plinth, and that opened up applying to more funding to cater to a different age group.

What advice would you have for other organisations?

It's great.

Definitely take the time to sit down with Tom and Will.

The system is great and really intuitive, but having chats is really helpful. Don't be scared, they're so easy to talk to.

It's not been 100% smooth sailing getting set up, has it?

No there were a few issues, I think because we were the first organisation to use it fully for bookings.

But when things do go wrong, you're really responsive. You were really right on it.

When I say "I really need this", you go away, think about it and make changes that work even better for us.

How does it compare to other systems you've used?

It's a lot better than some of the other systems we've had to use.

It's so intuitive and easy to find the data. It's really easy to create bookings. Trying to create a programme of activities on some other platforms is just a nightmare.

How would you describe Plinth to someone else?

It's a really great little system. I really enjoy using it.

I think more people should be using it. Camden Council, I'm looking at you.

It's made my life so much easier.

Find out more about Kentish Town City Farm