Patrick Shaw’s Weblog

My colleagues at NonProfitCrm have a terrific post explaining many of the factors associated with using a CRM. Here at NPower Seattle, that CRM is most often Salesforce.com - the Salesforce Foundation provides 10 free licenses to nonprofits - and that means we can focus our energy on making crucial customizations that work for your nonprofit rather than on building from scratch!

You should read the posting - it’s pretty short - 10 minutes or less. Some of the items they mention may not match your nonprofit. For instance - on our smaller projects, we don’t invest in a series of “how does this look?’ with our customers, because that can be expensive - I call that “moving the house around the couch”.  Some quick highlights - in no particular order!

• Data migration - getting you old data cleaned and in one spot for import. This can be the most expensive part of the process!
• Defining your business needs - how do YOU define a top donor? A certain amount of lifetime giving? A certain amount in the past 18 months? We need to know that answers to these questions before we start!

Here’s my two cents, though. Make sure you plan first. You can do a lot of homework on your own, and a small investment in planning before you implement will save you time and money and will result in a better outcome!

Great news today from the folks at Vertical Response - they offer an enewsletter delivery system that integrates with Salesforce.com -so if you are using Salesforce and Vertical Response, you can keep all of that key information in one place.

They’ve just announced a “Non-Profits Email for Free” program - all of the details you need are here - but here are some of the key items:

What you get

VerticalResponse for Non-Profits is a program that enables Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) to effectively communicate with their supporters via email. Once accepted into the program, NPOs will be able to leverage VerticalResponse’s email marketing to send up to 10,000 emails per month. All for free!

How it works

Once you’re enrolled in the program, you’ll get 10,000 free credits at the start of each month. It’s a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ system, so credits will expire at the end of that month. Not to worry – we’ll give you 10,000 more the following month. Simple, right?

Getting started

If your organization is a 501(c)(3), then you’re eligible. Simply fax us the application form, we’ll check to make sure that you’re not fibbing about your 501(c)(3) status, and flip the switch. You’re ready to start sending professional looking emails.

I’ve recently watched a lengthy exchange about this topic on a local nonprofit list. It’s pretty gripping, actually - there are a lot of thoughtful people asking great questions about profit, motive, business practice, tax status, efficiency, salary structure, board governance and more.

It’s a great conversation to have -and it can be polarizing - but it doesn’t have to be.

My colleague Jon at ONE/NW recently pointed out a pretty thoughtful essay on the subject by Paul Graham. You should read it - it will take just about ten minutes.

Here’s my take-away (and the title of the post, by the way): Be good. That’s right - be good - in the way you run your agency and treat your customers, in the way you develop your practice, consider creating programs. Paul suggests that this is more than just an attitude - but that it actually works.

One of the things I love about my work here at NPower Seattle is that if the tools and expertise we have to offer to the nonprofit community isn’t a great match for one of our customers - we do our level best to be the first to know and point that out! My team won’t be successful if we don’t keep our customers best interests at the top of our list!

One of the advantages of using a hosted solution such as Salesforce.com is that your vendor manages many of the update/backup/keep secure items that you’d have to manage if your software were installed on your computer or server.

Salesforce has a solid track record with all of those things and have a lot of redundancy -after all -their business model depends on you having access to your data!

At the same time - they’ve made it easy for you to get a backup of your data -and you should - that data most likely drives your important work, and having an additional layer of backup makes sense.

Some quick notes, though, about what you actually get (and what you don’t):

• You can request your data weekly in a CSV (comma separated value) file - but it isn’t incremental. That is, the data you get today is a full snapshot of your data. And if you get another snapshot next week - it’s also the whole enchilada - everything from last week, PLUS the changes. So you can’t “easily restore” just a few contact records without some hard work.
• We can’t help you easily integrate an older CSV file with your live data. If you remember your initial data migration process - this would be similar.
• We MAY be able to integrate a subset of data more easily.

Here’s how to request a backup:

1. Click on Setup | Administration Setup | Data Management | Data Export
2. Select the “Include attachments” check box (if desired).
3. Select any data that you would like to include by checking the box next to the name of the object. Selecting the “Include all data” box will include data from all tables.
4. Click the “Data Export” button

A confirmation email will be sent when the export has completed, with a link to the export files. Thanks to Chris Atwood at Salesforce for the how to steps!

When to Request a Backup:

• Just before you make a substantial change to your data!
• Weekly or monthly, depending on your internal IT practices
• Just before you ask a vendor to make modifcations or updates to your Salesforce instance.

Salesforce and Google are in the news again -this time because they’ve announced new integration features. Information is still trickling in - but it looks like Salesforce will now integrate with Gmail. Additionally, Google Docs are also going to be integrated in Salesforce. I haven’t had a chance to dig too deeply here - but am generally excited about the possibilities. This may mean that some nonprofits could use those two offerings for all or most of their practice.

There are a lot of news stories this morning - here are links to a few:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080414/tc_nm/salesforce_google_dc_1

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080414/tc_pcworld/144505

No, not really!

That’s because databases really aren’t that simple. Don’t get me wrong - they might only do two or three things - but to make those things happen well requires a lot of behind the scenes work.

For instance, you may want to have volunteers sign up for a volunteer opportunity. Sounds pretty easy, right? And it should be - at least from the experience of the volunteer! But here are some things that you’d want to make sure you did well:

• Each user would probably need to login and have a user name and password, and you probably don’t want to have to manage all of those passwords - the system should!
• You probably want to make it easy for a volunteer to sign up for more than one event - so you’ll have to maintain an “inventory” of volunteer opportunities to include when, how often, how many can volunteer and so on
• You’ll likely need to view and print reports - who is volunteering, which opportunities are open or closed, how many hours of service are being delivered and so on.
• Your volunteers may also be donors - so you might want to consider importing, integrating or otherwise having a 360 degree view of those key people - so you might start to lean towards a donor tool, too.

Those are just a few small items that need to be addressed BEFORE you start. Add in maintenance, documentation and training for your staff and your volunteers - and you can see that a tool that only does a few things really well isn’t all that simple!

So - what SHOULD you do?

I recommend investing in a great planning process. This might be the best investment you make - gather your key stakeholders, find out what you have on hand, work with a professional to describe what you need (we call this a requirements gathering process) and get some budgetary estimates. The value of great information is enormous - and at the end of that planning process you should know if you should proceed, how - and how much it might cost to get that volunteer database up and running!

The folks at TechSoup continue to provide quick and salient information about web design - I’ve blogged about a lot of these - but a reminder almost always helps. The article (which you should read) mentions 5 Principles - here’s my favorite:

Design is not Art.

Art is about personal expression. It is about the life, the emotions, the thoughts and ideas of the artist. It matters very little what observers do; their activity is not required, only their appreciation. The practice of Art doesn’t require them. It is a necessary activity for the artist and the artist alone.

Creating a terrific design is hard work - but you can help your designer by providing:

• Your logo and your brand
• Your audience identification
• A color palette
• A sense of screen layout - top navigation or side navigation for instance

The more you provide - the better chances that a designer will deliver something on the mark!

Just a quick note - I had a terrific meeting with one of our customers on Tuesday - we helped them move most of their nonprofit data into Salesforce, and they’ve really done a great job of using the tool. We’ve added a few features here and there, and a bit of support, but they have really been committed to using the tool - and it shows.

They are getting a new website, and we met to talk about modifications to Salesforce so that they could provide more information via the web. And while we were talking about one possible feature, the customer asked how much it would cost.

When we said we thought we could build that feature for about $500, she said to skip it - it wouldn’t add enough value.

I was delighted - that is exactly the type of conversation I want to have with my customers - are we adding $500 (or more!) worth of value by implementing something? If not -we shouldn’t implement!

So - next time you need an addition, or a feature, or a modification - be sure to ask - and make sure you have an internal sense of how that feature or addition will return value to your agency!

I’m a distance runner, and during my running career I’ve crunched a lot of numbers to determine how I can run faster and longer. And at NPower Seattle, I manage our web and database team, and help customers figure out what sorts of technology solutions they can implement that will help them better meet their mission.

Both of those areas of my life collide around looking at data - how much, when, how fast, how often, how much work, what’s the return on investment, how can I do better - those apply to both running and to donor management.

My running watch quit recently, and I had to send it back - so for the last two weeks I’ve been running without access to the real time data to which I’ve grown accustomed. So lately, instead of glancing at my watch, measuring my heart rate, checking how fast I ran that last mile - I’ve been thinking of what data is really important.

Before I tell you about what running data is important to me - you should take a few minutes to think about a few key questions regarding your donor management:

• What is the core set of data that you need easy access every day to measure your success?
• Have you made sure that the data you want to collect is the right data?
• Are you distracted from your everyday work by the data that lives on the fringes? The extra phone number field that you don’t really use, the summer mailing address widget, the “this donor is connected to that donor is connected to that funder is connected to my best friend Lou” feature? (Don’t get me wrong - that might be the data that you need to have a successful donor management practice - but you should make sure those features all add commensurate value!)

So - here’s what I re-discovered about the tools I need to help me run better:

• I need to know the total duration of my run
• I need to know how fast I completed each mile
• I need to know how hard I worked

And that’s it. I don’t need (but can be distracted by) multiple countdown timers, the altitude and temperature, the fraction of a second measurement in between heart beats, my pace in meters, miles per hour and so on. But if I pay the most attention to the duration, the speed of each mile, and the effort required - I’ll run better.

And those other things add some value around the edges, to be sure. And they’re fun. And frankly - on some days it’s easier to obsess about why my GPS unit didn’t measure the distance properly. But those things don’t help me achieve my running goals - measuring the time, the speed and my effort level do.

So - what’s happening in your donor management practice these days? Are you distracted by what your tools aren’t doing and is that preventing you from reaching out to your donors? Are you measuring the right things? And do you know how to use those measurements to further your mission?

If not, take a look at your tools, sure. But make sure you know what you want from those tools first!

Here’s a longer comparison - both from personal experience!

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