Sector(s)
Introduction & About the Client
Save the Children is one of the world’s largest international organizations, operating across more than 100 countries to improve children’s lives through healthcare, education and economic opportunities. Its digital presence plays a critical role in fundraising, advocacy and supporter engagement, helping to connect supporters, donors and communities around the world.
Over time, individual country offices had developed and managed websites independently across platforms, such as Kentico, Adobe Experience Manager and an aging Drupal 8 system.
This decentralized setup created significant challenges, including high licensing fees, increased maintenance efforts, inefficient content management and limited scalability. Platform inconsistency resulted in slow performance and pushed accessibility scores below industry benchmarks. This created disconnected user experiences that limited the organization’s ability to engage supporters and convert them into donors.
To address these challenges, Save the Children set out to replace its fragmented web ecosystem with a unified Drupal-based Global CMS capable of supporting its international network of country offices.
About the project
Save the Children wanted to:
- Replace a fragmented multiplatform ecosystem with a single global CMS to reduce licensing costs, operational complexity and maintenance overhead.
- Establish consistent brand, accessibility and performance across all country sites to deliver a unified user experience worldwide.
- Accelerate publishing and campaign launches through streamlined content management and standardized workflows.
- Enable rapid onboarding of new country and regional sites to scale the digital presence without increasing complexity.
- Drive stronger engagement and conversion rates to better support fundraising and advocacy at a global scale.
Our Solution
Save the Children needed a platform that could provide both global consistency and local control. Material partnered with the organization to create a unified Global CMS on Drupal 10, hosted and managed on Acquia.
To deliver this, Material:
- Architected a Drupal multisite setup that enabled centralized global governance while allowing country offices to manage local content and campaigns independently. The architecture incorporated optimized caching strategies and CDN readiness to support performance, security and scalability.
- Built a comprehensive design language system (DLS) and reusable component library that promotes visual and brand consistency and accelerates page creation across all markets.
- Simplified editorial workflows to make content publishing and updates more intuitive.
- Migrated content from multiple legacy platforms into a single Drupal 10 environment.
- Integrated enterprise-grade tools, including Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Single Sign-On (SSO), to streamline content operations.
- Introduced a custom petitions module that connected advocacy initiatives with fundraising campaigns.
Outcome
Key project outcomes include:
- 100%+ increase in engagement time on the international website.
- Nearly 400% improvement in conversion rates on key journeys.
- 30% reduction in editorial publishing time, enabling faster delivery of localized, time-sensitive campaigns.
- 25% increase in efficiency for onboarding new country sites, resulting in a significant fundraising pipeline.
- 20% improvement in overall operational efficiency through platform consolidation, automation and integration of key tools.
- Stable conversion performance on mature markets such as the US site, affirming the platform’s adaptability at scale.
Beyond these measurable gains, the Global CMS established a centralized governance model that enables country teams to operate independently while maintaining alignment and delivering consistent digital experiences. The platform provides a unified, future-ready foundation for continued growth, advocacy and fundraising across Save the Children’s global network.
Why Drupal was chosen
With multiple country sites running on different platforms, Save the Children needed a CMS to centralize governance without limiting local teams. Drupal emerged as the best fit because it combined enterprise-scale governance with the flexibility required to support a distributed global organization.
Key factors for choosing Drupal included:
- Multisite Architecture: Drupal’s native multisite capabilities allow multiple country and regional sites to operate on a common platform, while giving local teams the autonomy to manage their own content.
- Open Source and Cost Efficiency: As an open-source platform, Drupal eliminates the high licensing costs associated with proprietary systems like Kentico and Adobe Experience Manager.
- Multilingual Support: Drupal’s robust multilingual capabilities supports content and experiences across diverse regions and languages, making it well-suited to a global digital platform.
- Enterprise-Grade Integrations: Drupal’s flexibility enables seamless integration with enterprise systems, including DAM, SSO and personalization capabilities to support the organization’s complex operational needs.
- Scalability and Extensibility: Built on Drupal 10, the platform provides a scalable foundation capable of supporting additional country sites and evolving digital requirements over time.
- Content Management and Editorial Efficiency: Drupal’s customizable workflows and reusable components simplify content management, reduce publishing effort and accelerate campaign delivery across global teams.
