Nonprofit Bridge

Thanks to Holly Ross and the entire Nten staff for last week’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference, held in New Orleans.  With so many worthwhile sessions taking place during the three days, the hardest part was choosing which sections to attend.  I was also fortunate to receive what was clearly the most valuable prize at the Sponsor Fair, a $1000 donation to any nonprofit of my choice, generously contributed by Jay Frank of Nice Touch Communications and Telecom for Charity.

Kudos also to Beth Kanter who organized the Day of Service to assist local nonprofits in New Orleans on the first day of the conference.  Working with Nancy Schwartz, (who writes Getting Attention to help nonprofits with marketing tips), I gave a quick ephilanthropy tutorial to Casa New Orleans.

I also participated in two conference sessions:

Tug of War or Pulling Together? Building Teamwork for Better Online Campaigns, David Hollender, Jed Cohen and I reviewed strategies for how an organization can work collaboratively instead of in silos.  Sharing information regularly can help, as well as a current intranet site and ‘lunch and learn’ where departments are invited to learn about each other’s projects.  While it is helpful to build relationships with those in other departments before you are assigned to work on a project with them, it’s also important to make sure that your own department’s goals are met.

The Joy of CMS: Implementing Sustainable Content Management Systems (The Painless Way to Keep Your Web Site Current): I moderated a panel of three CMS experts: Andrew Cohen, Nathan Gasser and Jeff Herron.  Instead of focusing on available products (of which there are many), we discussed how the idea of content management can be successfully deployed.  Having a current web site is easier when the responsibilities are shared throughout the organization, and when management accepts this as part of everyone’s job.  We also discussed work flow – how web pages are reviewed and released, and how to insure that web content is consistent with other communication vehicles.

I also want to commend Laura Quinn and Dahna Goldstein who moderated two sessions on data integration which I attended.  Since most of us have data in many locations, it is always challenging to share information between multiple products.  Memorable takeaways: when evaluating products, data integration must be on the list of requirements, and it may be best to consider vendors who have been ‘open’ from the start rather than those who have changed mostly due to market demands  Let’s keep this discussion going on Nten’s Data Standards & Integration affinity group!

It was also wonderful to return to New Orleans, which clearly is still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.  My wife and I were serenaded one night by a couple who lost their home and were struggling to make ends meet.

If you’re planning to attend, please consider participating in the two sessions I’ll be participating in:

1. The Joy of CMS: Implementing Sustainable Content Management Systems (The Painless Way to Keep Your Web Site Current). I will ask three experts in building web sites how nonprofit organizations can build a culture which supports up to date online content.
2. Tug of War or Pulling Together? Building Teamwork for Better Online Campaigns. We will discuss how departments can work together within a nonprofit organization to develop and implement online strategies.

Nten’s Annual Nonprofit Technology Conference, expected to attract over 1,000 nonprofit staff members, consultants and vendors from across the United States, will take place in New Orleans, LA from Wed, Mar. 19 – Fri, Mar. 21.  It is always a wonderful event.,  Hope to see you there.

In addition, here is a useful resource on creating online donation pages and forms

This week, the Foundation Center’s column, The Sustainable Nonprofit featured this targeted article on Spending Your Web Site Dollars Wisely.  Major points:

• Delegating responsibility to the lowest level staff member or volunteer is foolhardy.  In a world where many will visit your web site as the first step in learning more about your organization, the web site must be professional and kept current.  It should not be primarily maintained by Information Technology, except for the back end responsibility of keeping it online
• When to use a content management system (CMS) – “the more content you have and the more you plan to change or update it, the more you’ll need (and want) such a system”
• Use professionals to create copy and images.  Hire a professional designer (if you don’t already have one on staff) so that your site is more about marketing than about information technology
• Design your site for the visitors’ perspective, not your organization’s
• Take the time to examine other web sites and to create a site map.  Think about what your constituents are most likely to look for and how can find it easily.

At my current organization, I’ve recently been instructed to review all of our web sites, and fix what’s wrong and make sure the information is correct.  Yes of course, but this should be the responsibility of everyone, not any one individual or department. (sigh!)

Wishing everyone a healthy and peaceful holiday season.

Attended an Nten Webinar this week on Marketing for Non-Profits, led by Robert Rose of CrownPeak Technology, providers of content management software.

Highlights from the presentation:

• While it is not a good idea to have a lot of ‘private content’ available only to members or subscribers, it is wise to provide premium content in exchange for site visitors providing their email address and other personal information.  Many constituents will ‘register’ in exchange for a useful study or informative enewsletter
• If you’re going to use web 2.0 tools such as blogs and podcasts, you have to commit to a regular update schedule.  Building an audience requires quality content and takes time to build.
• Use a variety of tactics to engage constituents;  I find, for example, that while it’s convenient to get RSS updates, I open my email daily but don’t open my RSS readers as frequently.  In addition, subscribers can signup for RSS feeds without providing any information while email newsletters require, at a minimum, email address.
• It’s more important to analyze who is visiting your web site than how many.

I asked Robert whether it’s still a practical goal to create custom web content for segments of your audience, as I’ve heard many vendors preach.  The reality – it’s usually enough of a challenge for a nonprofit to keep its content up to date for everyone than to develop targeted content for specific groups.  There are some good reasons to integrate CMS with your CRM database (e.g. so subscribers can access their past donation history online and print receipts) but the ability to customize web content isn’t one of them.

Robert also suggested that it is rarely necessary to build custom software, no matter how ‘specific’ your requirements may seem.  I agree. With so many strong CMS packages available, I don’t think there’s any excuse for any nonprofit not to have an updated web site as the foundation of its communications strategy.

Sat, Oct. 13 I attended the NYC Joomla Day run by PICnet and sponsored by Google.  Joomla is currently the most popular open source CMS (Drupal and Plone are also widely used).

As a relatively new Joomla user, I found the ‘Joomla 101′ session helpful.  Louis Landry, a core Joomla developer, also reviewed the history of the development of upcoming 1.5 version and why it has taken a while to be released (it will be fully internationalized).

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I am a big believer in data integration, and that applications should be able to share data with each other.  (I’m not alone in this effort – see the Integration Proclamation.)  Ryan Cozimek of PICnet led an afternoon session to explain why integration of CMS & CRM products is important.   Some benefits include allowing constituents to manage their profile on the web, providing a way to search data in inventory systems, making available help tickets to users and allowing for ACLs – access control lists, as a way to customize web site content.  PICnet is currently developing tools to integrate Joomla with SalesForce and Democracy in Action.  Recently announced integration initiatives by the big nonprofit vendors are Kintera Connect and Convio Open.

If your organization doesn’t have an current web site because it takes too much time to update content, using a content management system will help. With an active community and developer base, Joomla looks like the strongest option in the open source CMS market.

Since my current organization has used Kintera since January 2005, I eagerly signed up for yesterday’s Nten conference call with Scott Crowder, who joined the firm as Chief Technology Officer earlier this year.  Although I’ve raised nearly $7 million in online fundraising revenues, working with Kintera has been a challenge, especially when trying to integrate with Raiser’s Edge, our offline fundraising software.

In addition to Scott’s arrival, Kintera also hired a new Chief Executive earlier this year, Richard LaBarbera, replacing the firm’s founder who had long held the position.  Recently, Kintera announced a new initiative - Kintera Connectwhich promised a new approach to integrating with other systems, a complete reversal from Kintera’s past strategy.  However, when few details of this program were available, I feared this was mostly talk with little substance.

By agreeing to do yesterday’s call, Scott made himself available for questions by the entire Nten community.  Although Kintera Connect was a main topic, he also addressed many other issues including one that Kintera has always sought to bury – the company’s financial viability.  After detailing many new technical initiatives currently in process, Scott described the firm’s goal of reaching profitability later this year and that they are “almost there now.”

Scott also described how Kintera no longer wants to do “everything for everybody,’ which has led to it having a product which tries to do too many things, not all which it does well.  By opening up to tie in with other systems, Kintera seems to now realize that it must focus on its strengths: e.g. CRM, CMS, advocacy, and leave the rest to others.

Other announcements included:

1. implementation of Akamai technology to enhance performance
2. data center migration
3. sharp increase in capacity to send mass emails
4. enhanced CMS, replacing current system

Although I’ve often been a critic of Kintera in the past, this conference call shows that the new management at Kintera is determined to set things right.  I’ll wait and see if the results equal the promise, but Scott’s willingness to talk openly is a promising sign.  A recording of the conference call is available at Nten’s site.

On June 5, 2007, I participated in a panel at the Boston Technology Conference which discussed how CRM and CMS tools can be effectively used by nonprofit organizations.  Below are some major points:

CRM: A set of processes and supporting technologies used to acquire, retain, and enhance the relationships with all different constituent groups who interact with an organization.

CMS: Software tools that allow non-technical users to update a website without having to be a website designer.

Chris Atwood of SalesForce discussed how a CRM is used for marketing, sales and customer service.  He also mentioned the importance of identifying constituent groups (e.g. donors, volunteers etc.), outlining processes and workflow and the role of nonprofit staff in managing, analyzing and reporting donor data.  While Chris’ presentation was clearly not product specific, he pointed out that all nonprofits may receive 10 donated licenses to use SalesForce through Sales Force Foundation.

I then presented on how content management tools can be used to quickly add / edit / remove web content, and described types of CMS products (e.g. locally installed, hosted, open source vs. proprietary) available.  I also outlined several variables to consider when selecting a CMS:

• Staff expertise
• Frequency of site update
• Approval levels needed
• Type of site content
• Budget
• Stability of vendor
• Integration with other systems
• Availability of support

I also discussed the issue of whether to integrate CMS and CRM tools.  Integration provides the advantage of being able to easily send out segmented emails and web site content oriented towards specific groups of constituents.  Joomla, an open source CMS products which was presented briefly by Pradeep Suthram of PicNet, is especially strong in this area,   PicNet’s Nonprofit Soapbox, a hosted CMS tool based on Joomla, was also mentioned.

We ended our presentation with a recommendation of various resources:

• Idealware – evaluations of nonprofit software
• Npower Seattle – support for nonprofit organizations
• Techsoup – online resource
• Joomla! – open source CMS
• Drupal – open source CMS
• One Northwest – focused on environmental organizations
• Groundspring/Network for Good – Internet fundraising, email & advocacy for nonprofits
• Selecting a Content Management System – resource provided by SF based consulting firm
• Open Source CMS – ‘try before you install’

Thanks to Tech Foundation for sponsoring this conference and to Chris & Pradeep for sharing their expertise.

This week I attended the quarterly meeting of Not-For-Profit Webmaster Roundtable, which has been run successfully by David Milner for several years.  We discussed the arrival of super fast Internet connectivity through services such as Verizon Fios and how this will affect how nonprofit web sites are developed,

At least one organization represented at the meeting, the Rainforest Alliance, is already taking steps towards adding video to its web site, although it has not yet allowed constituents to submit their own videos.  With the amazing popularity of YouTube and other video sharing sites, it seems that it is only a matter of time until videos are widely available on nonprofit sites.

We also discussed content management systems, an area which commonly comes up for debate.  I suggested that organizations first determine who is likely to handle content updates, and then select a product which matches these users’ expertise.  My preference is usually towards packages that are easy to use even if they lack all the bells and whistles of more advanced offerings.

Other topics: how to best implement organizational blogs (make sure they are updated frequently), web statistics (Google Analytics new version is reported to be very nice, and it’s still free) and the availability of tools such as Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer to find out what pages on your web site are currently indexed.

Listened to an NTen sponsored call today with Sheeraz Haji and Tom Krackeler of GetActive and Gene Austin and Dave Crooke of Convio.  Both companies seemed very optimistic about their planned merger which will aim to take the best from both companies, e.g. online fundraising from Convio and advocacy / CMS from GetActive.  Time will tell how things will play out as current customers learn more about migration.

Meanwhile, the issue of how to connect data in different systems was squarely addressed in a comprehensive report on Open APIs by Michelle Murrain and Katrin Verclas, available free from NTen.  At my current organization, we’re struggling with two separate integration projects, one which involves two products from the same company.  Open APIs are important because then you don’t necessarily have to get everything from the same vendor.  While Convio & GetActive will make a good try, it’s hard for any one company to offer the best of breed for many different applications.