Tag Archives: integration

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

If you’re convinced that integrated fundraising / marketing would help your organization but are finding it a challenge to implement, read these tips from Convio on how to break down your silos.  Also listen to this week’s free webinar from Fundraising Success on Strategies for Seamless Integration Across Fundraising Channels.  If multiple departments maintain their own calendars of constituent outreach activities, this is a good place to start by using an integrated calendar (and keeping it current).

Email isn’t dead yet, and many of us are still asking questions about what’s too much and how can we increase open / action rates.  For help, see 14 tips for making your nonprofit email more effective,   Make sure you think carefully about the subject line (which will affect whether or not readers decide to open your message) and test for stronger email performance.    Here’s more ideas on how much communication is too much.   Struggling with content ideas for your next enewsletter or direct mail piece?  Try these three stories every nonprofit should know how to write.

After this week’s announcement of the upgraded iPad, is it time to retire the PC in favor of laptops and tablets?  Seems to me that having a real keyboard is still helpful, especially on mobile phones which continue to boom.

If you’re planning to re-do your website, consider first what platform will serve you best, such as WordPress or Drupal.  The newly updated Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits is also a great reference.

Coming next week – a preview of Nten‘s Nonprofit Technology Conference, which I’ll be attending later this month.

 

How Not to Implement Online Strategies

Below are excerpts at my planned presentation at next week’s NY Fundraising Summit, where I will be speaking in the session Online Fundraising: Harnessing Technology to Build and Maintain Relationships:

When developing online strategies for your nonprofit, be careful if you hear any of these ‘assurances’ from your colleagues:

  • Everything is being done over the Internet, we don’t need much Information Technology staff. – Whatever vendors or products you decide to choose, you still need someone to not only select the best product for your organization’s needs, and then once it’s implemented, manage the relationship with the vendor.  Expecting any online product to just ‘work’ without some ongoing tweaking is a recipe for disaster.
  • We can get a better deal if we hire web designers from overseas – While it’s a good idea to hire the best web person you can find wherever they are, be careful about basing a decision strictly on economics.  Working on a web site overhaul involves much give and take during the design and implementation process, and email isn’t always sufficient to insure that the deliverables match the goals.
  • We don’t need to do a formal evaluation – I’ve worked with this person / vendor before. – What works for one nonprofit may not work for another.  In addition, making a decision based on a personal contact may backfire if that person suddenly leaves for a new opportunity.
  • Vendor says we can connect our online and offline systems and they will help us to do it. – As I’ve discussed in my recent post, Reporting Across Multiple Systems, integration can be a mine field.  Beware of any vendor that says this is easy.  Ask to speak with other clients who have already connected their systems successfully – and are using the same products your organization is.
  • Vendor suggests we should do things differently – Before speaking to any vendor, make sure you’ve outlined your requirements.  If you’ve done this, and the vendor questions your specifications and recommends a different approach, ask why.  Unless they can give you a satisfactory explanation – and provide alternatives that have worked well for other clients, find a different company to work with.

I will post my presentation after next week’s summit, which will take place Wed, June 3 and Thu, June 4 in New York City.  Hope to see some of you there.

Reporting Across Multiple Systems

Currently I spend a few days each week generating reports for transmission of information between my organization’s online and offline systems.  Matt McCabe of Orange Leap hosted a NTen webinar this week, Meaningful Reporting: A Holistic Approach to Reporting Across Multiple Systems which highlighted this issue.  While there are no easy solutions, there are some options to consider:

  1. Select vendors and products which connect well with other systems.  Salesforce is an example of a company which has many ways to link its CRM to other software.
  2. Before implementing a new product, figure out how you will synchronize its data with your existing systems.  If you need to spend considerable time running reports and exporting / importing data, you’ll have little time to focus on developing the synchronization.
  3. Consider how much information you really need to have in multiple systems.  Some products will allow you to transfer basic contact information, but may not  be able to handle synchronization of event data or custom fields.
  4. Unless you have a lot of money to spend, it won’t be possible to have a ‘real time’ synch;  decide how often it is practical to have your systems connect with each other.
  5. Make the synchronization run automated, preferably during off hours.  The more manual work you need to do, the more chance there is for error.  (But make sure you look at the error log to determine what didn’t work.)
  6. Confirm that you’re including all activity.  Donations and event registrations may not be available in the same report;  you may need to find a ‘transaction report’ that includes all activity (then confirm this by sampling different types of transactions)
  7. Stick to a schedule – and let your staff know when synchronization is taking place.  (My most common question from staff is why a particular transaction doesn’t appear in another system, and when they can expect it to show.)
  8. If you encourage constituents to fundraise for your organization using a tool like Convio’sTeamRaiser or Blackbaud / Kintera’s Thon, you’ll need to find a way for offline donations to appear quickly on constituents’ personal web sites when developing your synchronization schedule.

In his presentation, Matt described the steps of data extraction, consolidation, reconciliation between systems and presentation, suggesting that you compute the staff hours spent in completing these tasks – and making management aware of the actual price in making integrated information available.  His overall recommendations included:

  • develop standards, e.g. how does your organization define ‘online giving’?  Become familar with APIs (application program interface) and Active Messaging Protocols (XMLs)
  • seek platform independent tools, e.g. using OLAP data storage and a data warehouse
  • empower end users to generate their own reports

The benefit: more time to devote to mission, faster more informed decisions and higher morale, and an increase in staff morale, as they’re freed from tedious reporting tasks.

How are you dealing with this issue?

A Year End Donation Story

With 2008 ending soon, I realized this week that it was time to finish charitable donations to maximize our tax deduction.  Although my wife and I give to many of the same organizations each year, we usually make many contributions at year-end.  Since I so often talk about the advantages of online giving, I decided to make most of our donations on the web.

Interestingly, some of the nonprofits I support haven’t learned the lessons of integrating offline and online campaigns.  Many of the direct mail pieces we received came with increasing frequency, but offered no dedicated web address to use other than the organization home page.  When I went online on one nonprofit’s site, I couldn’t find a way to join or renew my membership, nor could I find a phone number to call.  With the help of Google, I found a phone number and asked that they please not keep wasting my money on constant direct mail requests when I 1) prefer to donate online and 2) want our donations used for the nonprofit’s mission, not for mailing costs.

I’ve also found that even for nonprofits who we support, I am still a bit reluctant to receive email updates throughout the year, possibly because they also come a bit too often and don’t offer enough incentive for me to open them.

Maybe some people take the time to read long direct mail pieces, but I’m not one of them.  Nor do I want to navigate lengthy email messages.  Interestingly, none of the organizations we support asked how often we wanted to be contacted and whether we preferred online or offline communications.  Perhaps these would be good questions to add to your donation form.

There’s one day left – make sure you donate to your favorite causes (even if it’s not as easy as it should be).

Integrated Fundraising – No Longer Optional

Probably the best book explaining the benefits of ephilanthropy I’ve seen to date is Ted Hart’s People to People Fundraising.  Multiple experts from nonprofit organizations and vendors / consultants who service nonprofits offer detailed strategies on why nonprofits must begin to embrace integrated fundraising techniques.  Some memorable takeaways:

  • Traditionally an organization’s web site has been under the control of either IT or marketing.  Whereas their goals and objectives may be well intended, it is fair to say that their core focus is not development  oriented. Development is often shut out from many of the Web conversations…Nonprofit organizations need to take a much more holistic focus of who controls and contributes to the overall online presence;  marketing, IT and development are just three of the contributors.
  • Many organizations hae been quick to jump on the online bandwagon without creating an effective strategic plan.  For example, it’s easy to ask people to visit your web site or leave an email address.  But without an effective plan for how you wil use email addresses and how your online activities will integrate with your offline activities, you may be creating more problems than solutions.
  • To develop integrated campaigns, an organization may not need to restructure, but it will have to to rethink how the departments within the organization interact with each other.

Some of the book’s contributors, many which I’ve heard speak at conferences and other industry events, include Blackbaud’s Steven MacLaughlin, Convio’s Sheeraz Haji, Network for Good’s Katya Andresen as well as Ted Hart, who has long been an expert on this topic since founding the ePhilanthropy Foundation.  Many case studies from nonprofits that have successfully utilized integrated fundraising strategies are profiled, as well as many ways to take advantage of social networking sites.

If you still think that collaborative campaigns won’t work in your organization, take a look at this book and find out why it’s so important.

Making Sense Out of Data Integration

Peter Campbell, IT Director of Earthjustice and author of Tech Cafeteria has published a wonderful primer on data integration, Understanding the Alphabet Soup of Data Integration.  Thanks to Idealware, which sponsored this article.

Exchanging data between applications can be done in a variety of ways, but many can be difficult to grasp.  Peter offers a clear explanation of how data can be stored, types of data formats and methods to transfer data, as well as how APIs are used.  What I found especially useful was his section on how to identify “data exchange friendly software,” in ways such as “Can I do data exports” and “Is there an API available?”

Tate Hausman who issued his Integration Proclamation also recently described to me how he is attempting to manage an integration project between SalesForce and Democracy in Action, two applications often used by nonprofits.

It’s clear that being able to share data is finally getting some attention, as evidenced by the recent announcements of Kintera’ Connect and Convio Open.  Wouldn’t it be nice if eventually we could select the applications that are best for each of our needs, and easily move data between them.

My take: data integration must be discussed before products are chosen;  if they don’t connect, look for an alternative that does.  Vendors must also do more to make this area understandable by non-programmers.  Why is this important for online fundraising?  Because everyone in a nonprofit needs to have access to the same information about constituents (not just development), and it shouldn’t be different depending on which internal system you use.

Direct Mail or Online Acquisition

In a recent article in Fundraising Success, Karen Taggart of Care2 explores offline vs. online fundraising. Many points seem to point to the benefits of online initiatives:

  • Online campaigns result in higher average gifts
  • Online approaches are particularly effective for emergency / current events related campaigns
  • Online giving is expected to continue to rise
  • Online fundraising is considerably less expensive than offline efforts

But another article by Abny Santicola points out that the most effective strategy is a multi-channel approach, not using just one or the other: “Numerous studies have found donors contacted via multiple channels are more valuable and give larger gifts than single-channel donors do. But analytics and match-back for integrated campaigns can be tricky because it can be hard to demonstrate how communication through one channel affected response via another.”

As I’ve posted previously, I definitely agree that using both channels together is definitely the best solution.  The challenge, however, is to get different parts of an organization working together that are accustomed to working separately.  This will only happen if those who are responsible for online strategies also recognize the benefits of integrating offline campaigns which clearly still have much to offer in raising funds and engaging constituents.