April 2008 - Posts
This morning started rather early as I had to catch a flight to Atlanta before heading on to Montréal, Canada for Blackbaud's 2008 Conference for Nonprofits. I'm hoping a few years of French in high school and college come back to me rather quickly. But somehow I doubt I'll be able to cough up more than some simple phrases. Montréal is a very cool place and I'm sure they're already preparing the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for next month's Grand Prix du Canada.
I'm really looking forward to seeing some of our Canadian clients and unveiling some very cool new features for them. We've got some great new enhancements for international language support in Blackbaud NetCommunity that will handle Canadian French, like le français québécois, as well as native French. We are doing some other i18n and l18n improvements as well that I hope will get people excited. More on all of this in a future blog post.
Across the pond tomorrow morning is the "Social Networking for Charities: People to People Fundraising" event in London. The event is part of the UK launch for the People to People Fundraising book. I understand that the event is completely sold out, which is great news! I'm sure I'll get some reports from how it went later in the week.
I spent part of yesterday and will devote most of today to meeting with a variety of nonprofit industry consultants that Blackbaud has invited down to Charleston. It's a great opportunity to reconnect with some great people and to meet some new ones too.
I had the chance to chat a bit with Michael Cervino from Beaconfire last night and the topic of client projects inevitably came up. And we both seemed at a loss to describe the trend of client's hiring consulting firms to do more project oversight than pure strategy work these days. Somehow the term "project sherpa" came to mind and it seemed to fit the description the best.
The importance of having a project sherpa can't be overstated for both organizations and businesses. Having someone who knows the territory, has crossed treacherous caverns, and can help guide the client is a valuable service. And even when the project involves cutting edge ideas or new technologies the value of a project sherpa remains high. Proven consultants have acclimatized themselves to dealing with unknowns and working without guide ropes.
Before you start off on your next adventure stop to ask yourself: Who's your Tenzing Norgay?
Each day the certainty of the changing tides is the one constant. I suppose it's more obvious when you live in a coastal city and less apparent if you're landlocked. Low tide gives way to high tide and back again. Get caught out at low tide and you might end up stuck. Get too comfortable at high tide and you might lose sight of the dangers below. We live our lives between the tides.
And just like the tides, change in our lives is never instantaneous. It takes place over a period of time. Although the rate of change may vary, just like tidal ranges and patterns differ depending on your location, the basic concept remains the same. This isn't a tale by Washington Irving and there's no fast-forward button or TiVo to skip past what happens in-between. When you wake up tomorrow, there won't be a robot butler waiting with your food tablets and flying car ready to go. It never works that way.
Technological change is no different. It is a constantly evolving hive of chaotic balance that ebbs and flows. Some changes happen quickly and others seem to take an eternity. But how do you live between the tides? How do you balance the old way of doing things with the new way of doing things? How do you transition the ways you fund your mission without cracking the foundation? How long do you hold on to what has always worked before you risk getting caught high and dry? One day at a time. One tide change at a time.
"The old systems get broken long before new ones become stable." – Clay Shirky
The horse and buggy was broken long before the automobile was perfected, and even after 120 years we're still trying to get the car on the good side of Mother Nature. The typewriter was broken the moment the personal computer debuted, but no one would say it doesn't still need improving. The record album business was broken by the cassette tape, which was then undone by the CD, then digital music files changed everything, and something else is sure to come along. The frozen TV dinner was broken the minute the first microwave came out, but popcorn still gets burnt 50% of the time in one. The newspaper classified ads were broken forever by the Internet, thanks to a one-two punch from the likes of Monster and Craigslist. The direct mail world was broken the instant the first email was sent, but 80% of all email sent is spam.
And the nonprofit fundraising world is being broken a little bit at a time too. Kiva breaks it. Room to Read breaks it. GlobalGiving breaks it. GOOD magazine breaks it. Causes on Facebook breaks it. People to people fundraising breaks it. Care2 breaks it. And this list of new-but-not-yet-perfected things will go on and on. You can choose to ignore it all, but that won't stop the changing tides. You can dismiss some of these things as fads or just a flash in the pan. You can cover your eyes right up until the moment you find yourself stranded on the exposed rocks. That's your choice.
Change is messy. Who will win? Who will lose? No one has a crystal ball and you can't call Miss Cleo either. The technology landscape of the past 30 years is littered with big hits and even bigger misses. Remember Betamax or Laserdisc or ColecoVision or Iridium satellite phones or PointCast or WebTV. And yes, even Apple once bombed with the Newton. Thomas Edison tried 6,000 different filaments before he got the light bulb right. Success is usually the end result of a series of failures. And sometimes the things that looked like failures the first time around often reappear down the road. Anything look familiar about Blu-ray or Xbox or the iPhone?
The industries change and the professionals do too. When is the last time you called on a cobbler, cooper, lamplighter, wheelwright, tinsmith, farrier, or a telegraphist. What's next on the career extinction list? There might not be some for a while, but every career path is now on the transformation list. The profession of a major gift officer, volunteer coordinator, international programs director, alumni relations manager, event planner, annual fund manager, donor services manager, fundraising system analyst, marketing communications specialist, overseas missionary, online content developer, and just about every other career path in the nonprofit world is changing with the tides. Are you changing with it? More importantly, are you seeking out people with a healthy appetite for change? Or do they get sea sick?
The technology providers are not immune to the tides of change either. What got you here won't necessarily keep you there in the future. And what makes you novel today can quickly make you a nobody tomorrow. The price of more novelty is always less understanding. What you deliver has always been more important than how you deliver it, but even that changes with the technology tides. Back in the day, Blackbaud used to hand-deliver the hardware and software to our clients. Now we let you choose who hosts the bits and bytes, and those bits and bytes are changing too. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The rate of change in the nonprofit world has been steadily increasing over the past decade. This is in part because the easier you can communicate, the faster change happens. But it has also been driven by major events like 9/11, the Asian Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina. And the 2008 U.S. presidential election are giving us a whole new glimpse of the multi-channel communication and fundraising industrial complex in action. This isn't the world of tomorrow. This is the world of today. The tide has changed.
Nonprofits used to have the luxury of letting other organizations take the plunge first. But those days are quickly coming to and end. Depending on the mission and constituents that you serve, then you might already be past the tipping point. Many of you are already seeing the tide going out on some of your fundraising efforts and are working to adapt to the changes. There will be organizations that get lost in the depths and others that thrive at the edges. Everyone likes change, but no one likes changing. This is never easy, but it is necessary.
All of this change is spurring the growth of more nonprofit organizations than ever before. In a world where businesses keep consolidating to survive the nonprofit world is actually expanding more and more. These new organizations may not be as large as the old growth nonprofits, but they aren't carrying the same baggage and bias about change either. If you started your organization over from scratch today, then what tidal patterns would you pay attention to first? Now just take out the "if" and get started.
Amongst the chaos and the uncertainty is where the innovation happens. This panics some people and drives the passions of others. These are the exciting times to live in. This is where nonprofits finally overcome the roadblocks of the past, and get on to fulfilling their missions in dynamic new ways. It starts with experimenting with new strategies and technologies (not the other way around). Try one new thing, measure where you started and measure where you finished, and then adjust. Fail fast. We live our lives between the tides. It can be a great place to live if you are willing to give it a try.
They say that every day is really Earth Day. But sometimes we need a subtle reminder. Here's a unique view I got last week flying above Nova Scotia.
Go out and find your own unique view today.
Over the next few weeks I'll be blogging about the upcoming release of Blackbaud NetCommunity version 5.5. My goal is to give a sneak peek at some of the new features and functionality, and hopefully demystify some of the inner workings of our product development group.
A major piece of new functionality is BBNC's social networking capabilities. This set of features has actually been in the works for the past few months. Before covering the specifics I thought I would explain a little bit behind our decision to develop social networking components inside of the product.
One advantage of working with such a large and diverse set of nonprofit organizations is that there is never a shortage of feedback and sounding boards. So when it came to deciding exactly what we wanted to do it made good sense to talk to members of our Customer Advisory Board for BBNC. We approached some of our most innovative and leading nonprofit clients and asked them about three potential choices that Blackbaud could make:
1. Partner with another vendor in the market to provide a solution.
2. Build the functionality ourselves.
3. Do nothing.
While partnering might have produced a short-term answer, the overwhelming feeling from our clients was that introducing another vendor into their online efforts would create nothing but long-term questions. What extra costs would be involved? Who would they contact with support needs? How good will the integration be? What happens if the vendor you choose closes shop or changes their focus?
Doing nothing always has to be an option. Deciding not to do something is still a choice. When we're making decision about what to do and sometimes not do in a particular release it's important to know what clients really value. And the resounding feedback we got was that this capability was wanted, needed, and valued by our customers.
The clear message we got from customers was to build social networking capabilities within BBNC that complemented external sites, but also allowed them to maximize the integration back to The Raiser's Edge. As one member of the CAB put it: "I know you'll build something that works and you'll be around for the long-haul."
So what did we end up developing? Well, our approach was simple: Provide the basic building blocks for social networking and a platform for growth.
Personal Messaging - The ability for users to exchange messages between each other that encourages community and site loyalty. Throw in a pretty robust messaging tool complete with plenty of options and privacy settings.
Friends - Add, remove, block, unblock, reblock friends or whatever you want to call it. We let you edit all the captions!
Groups - Add, manage, or remove both pre-defined groups and self-forming ones too. Join, message others, and interact online.
Photos - Upload your images, create photo albums, and even pull in images from your Facebook account. Did I mention multiple-image uploads?
Preferences - Want to show or hide your status? Ok! Want to setup a friendly URL? Go for it? Want to get email notifications for messages, friend requests, etc? Check the box.
Gardening - Every good social network needs care and weeding from time to time. We built in plenty of settings, controls, reports, and eco-friendly gardening tools.
Extensibility - Just in case we left something out for the moment, or you want to add some other features, we put in plenty of hooks through the BBNC API. (Thanks Tim!)
Now, you may be asking why you would use this or one of the other social network websites out there. That's so old school thinking. The great thing about this Web 2.0 stuff is that it allows you to avoid the "Tyranny of the OR" when it comes to making decisions.
Instead, you need to think about it as the "Freedom of the AND" because there's nothing that says you can't use this and that and that and that and that and anything else. Web 1.0 thinking was all about trying to get people to come to you. Web 2.0 is all about going to where the people are and let them engage with you on their own terms.
So being present at more than one gathering point is a good idea. And certainly there are some spots or nodes or webs that make more sense to be depending on your audience. (For example, the average type of constituent on Eons is different from the one on MySpace.) The key difference between the social network you can develop using BBNC and all the external ones is all about degrees of relevancy. The more people with shared interests, views, involvement, experiences, etc. in a social network the greater the degree of relevancy.
To be clear, BBNC's social networking capabilities are not a substitute for other sites, but instead a counterpart where relevancy goes up to 11. That's because once your supporters, members, alumni, volunteers, staff, activists, major donors, team fundraisers, parents, missionaries, event attendees, or any other constituent group are brought into this social network the people-to-people connections quickly get amplified.
And like all technology we're sure that clients will take it into new, different, and exciting directions. This is where things start to get really fun for us too.
Blackbaud Interactive is holding an Internet Symposium in New York City on Thursday, May 22nd. The event will have a good mix of topics and presenters. And I'm sure we'll have a few good surprises to show as well. Get more details below:
Where: Grand Hyatt New York | 109 East 42nd Street at Grand Central Terminal
When: Thursday | May 22nd | 8:30am to 5:00pm
Who: Nonprofits in the NYC area (limit two per organization)
How: To register please visit: http://www.blackbaud.com/internetsymposium
Space is limited so register early.
Yesterday's gloomy morning turned into a mostly sunny day in Halifax. Today is my last day at the conference here in Canada and as luck would have it my favorite band, also from Canada, is releasing a new live double-album today.
First thing this morning I'm presenting the following session here at the AHP Canada conference: "Unleashing Integrated Online and Offline Strategies to Get Results"
I am going to try and sit in on another session this morning before leaving for the airport. I have a week hiatus from the road and then it's off to Blackbaud's Conference for Nonprofits in Montreal. After two years in Vancouver it'll be nice to mix things up again.
Good morning from Halifax, Nova Scotia. I got in late Sunday night as there's a one hour time difference here. I got to the hotel in time to see the Montreal Canadians lose in overtime to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. This is my first visit to this part of Canada, but one of my favorite television shows actually takes place in nearby Cole Harbour.
I am spending the next two days at the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy Canada's regional conference. This morning's keynote speaker was Derek Hatfield, skipper of the Spirit of Canada, who is one of only 126 people to go around the world in a single-handed yacht. Derek and his crew of supporters are now raising money to participate in another around the world race later this year.
The room for Derek's speech was absolutely jam packed. He started off by showing a brief video to give people a sense of what it was like during his 182 day journey around the globe. He recounted a tale from 1996, when he almost quit a cross-Atlantic race after capsizing, where he needed a pep talk from his father to get his "butt back in the boat" and finish. It took 13,000 volunteer hours to build the 9,000 pound boat named the Spirit of Canada. The 50-year-old sailor from New Brunswick set out in his 40-foot boat and took second place in the first leg from New York to England, despite getting some lobster traps caught on the keel. Leg 2 was from England to Cape Town and Derek finished third. Leg 3 was from Cape Town to Tauranga and he was half-way through his journey. Leg 4 was from Tauranga, around Cape Horn, and up the coast of South America. Derek was caught up in a big storm, nearly ran into the Diego Ramirez Islands, and battled 60 foot waves. He thought the worst was over.
Then the boat rolled over, the mast snapped, and Derek was caught underwater in the rigging before the boat rolled back over. It took him 45 minutes to cut loose the mast using a Leatherman that was tied around his neck, put out a cabin fire, and headed up the Beagle Channel thinking that his race was over. Thanks to volunteers, he was able to get a new mast in 10 days and finally finished Leg 4. Derek started Leg 5 from Salvador to Newport and finally completed the race.
Now Derek is getting ready to take on the Vendée Globe race, which is a non-stop around-the-world race where no assistance is allowed. They have been building a brand new Open 60 boat since 2005 and the project has required a tremendous amount of sponsorship, education partners, and donors. And this time it is more like a marathon than a series of sprints. Derek took a wide variety of questions at the end of his remarks, including a very simple one: "Why?" Derek said that he does it because of the challenge and you just take things on one storm at a time.
There are a lot of sessions today and I am going to try and sit in on a couple of them. At the end of the day, I plan on catching Nicholas Offord's session called "Key Issues in Hospital Fundraising within the Next 10 Years." The people at AHP Canada have done a good job of mixing up the topics to include fundraising, communications, and technology.
Professional Fundraising magazine over in the UK has published my "No donor is an island: don’t maroon yours without a paddle" article this month. The good news is that the concept for the piece came from my "No Constituent is an Island" blog entry from back in January. The bad news is that you have to be a paid subscriber to read the online version.
Not ideal, but I won't debate the whole free vs. fee content that the publishing world struggles with. So instead I thought I would offer up something else to read today.
The People to People Fundraising book continues to be getting a very positve response out there. I have gone ahead and posted my chapter from the book online and you can download and read it for free. Click the link below to get your hands on it:
"The Changing Nature of Community: Leveraging the Internet to Build Relationships and Expand the Reach of Your Organization" - by Steve MacLaughlin in the book People to People Fundraising: Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Charities
This is the opening chapter of the book at sets the stage for everything that follows. I wanted to provide some context for how we got here and where things are going next.
I also wanted to note that the ePhilanthropy Foundation will be having a Nonprofit Social Networking Symposium at Columbia University on June 14th that will include several authors from the People to People Fundraising book. I am doing a session called "Leveraging the Internet to Build Relations and Expand the Reach" that will discuss concepts from the book and some brand new ideas as well.
Three conferences down. Two more to go this month. Good times. A few connections and thoughts while catching up on some blog reading:
Don't Tell the Donor was kind enough to blog about my blogging from the past few conferences, in particular the Team Approach User Forum. As long as I've got battery power and a wireless connection, then I'll continue to post entries from the conferences that I attend. It's not quite like actually being there, but the more information you can spread the better.
Get well wishes go out to Doc Searls, who reminds us to obey the warning signs. I got to know one of the original blogfathers when I first started blogging back in 2001. From time to time we'll share an email or a link or a laugh. His advice this time is as wise as usual.
Seth Godin reminds us that an inbound call is the ultimate in short-term permission. It's also another contact point with your organization that shouldn't be wasted. How much would your email file grow by asking for a caller's email address while you're on the phone with them? How many simple contact information mistakes could be corrected by taking a few seconds to review them with the caller?
Beth Kanter posts about some Facebook insights gleaned from a college student at the University of Tampa who is working on a class project. If the web subverts hierarchy, then social media also tries to subvert it on a whole new scale. People want to find a way to get away from organizations so that they can get closer to other people. Disintermediation has hit nearly every aspect of our lives. The fundraising world won't be an exception.
This morning got started with Jon Duschinsky's keynote address. He started things off with the Shift Happens video that many of you might have seen on YouTube. His session is called "Fundraising on a Pancake - Are You Ready for the Flat Philanthropic World?" Jon is a very energetic speaker. Just what many of us needed on an early Tuesday morning. Jon is a big believer that in five years every nonprofit organization in the US will be in competition internationally for fundraising dollars.
Part of Jon's presentation was a deep dive on Médecins Sans Frontières' website and how it looks more like the BBC homepage than a nonprofit's homepage. Duschinsky really focused on the global philanthropic opportunity that is take shape faster than most people think. And he made the point that "vision" is the most powerful tool you have to make meaningful change in your organizations and the world. Jon used a variety of images and videos, including one from Croix-Rouge Française (French Red Cross) that can be found here on YouTube. His final point was simple and direct: Get out there and make it happen.
After this session I'm going to sit in on Richard McPherson's "The Future of Online Fundraising: The Changing Rules of Web 2.0" session. I had the chance to finally meet him in person last night. I highly recommend his Digital Giving book for people still trying to get a handle on all this online stuff.
Then I'm going to try and catch Chuck Longfield's "Passion Matters: Modeling and Cultivation Strategies for the Donors Who Love You Most" session. I always try to hear Chuck's presentations as I end up taking pages and pages of notes. (He has more stories from the fundraising world than I have analogies.)
(Updating Regularly)
Another week. Another conference. This time it's the Team Approach User Forum here in Boston. This is my first time at the conference and I'm really looking forward to many of the sessions. There are about 600 people in attendance at this year's event and the opening session of the day of jam packed.
Today starts off with the "Welcome to Better Ideas for Better Fundraising" general session that was presented by Lee Gartley (President, Target Analytics and Target Software), Marc Chardon (CEO, Blackbaud), and Chuck Longfield (Target Founder and Blackbaud Chief Scientist).
Lee Gartley started off by talking about some of the new clients that have implemented Team Approach during the past year and highlighting some of the other changes that have taken place. Lots of growth in terms of staff, product development, and technical infrastructure. Lee also noted that there are about 100 vendors in attendance at the conference as well.
Marc Chardon was next up on stage and he spent some time discussing five big trends Blackbaud is seeing in the nonprofit space. Here are some notes from Marc's remarks:
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Needs are growing - Governments are funding less and less. Demands on programs are growing more and more.
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Number of nonprofits are growing - New organizations continue to take shape and increase competition for fundraising dollars.
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Need for accountability is growing - Donors, agencies, and others all want more information about where their donations are going.
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Donors are changing but not growing - Average donation is up, but the number of new donors is down. There is a need to engage the millennial generation.
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Need to better leverage technology - The technology allows nonprofits understand the entire relationship, just not it's parts.
Chuck Longfield began his presentation with a few quips about sight and memory that got some good laughs. Chuck reflected on the past year and discussed some of the challenges that nonprofits are facing. One point Chuck made was how things like donorCentrics and other data services are transforming how customers are turning their systems into powerful knowledge tools. The future of these systems is taking fundraising knowledge and using it to call attention to and provide direction for users about what their data is really telling them. Chuck went on to note that the key metric on acquisition is the ability to retain the donor. If all your acquisition cost is up-front, then your ability to retain that donor beyond the first year only helps to control fundraising costs. But retaining the donor takes patience and it will take some different approaches and technology.
Stat of the Day: By not printing all of the presentations from the conference over 250,000 sheets of paper have been saved.
Later this morning I am presenting a session called "Let's Get Personal - Leveraging Information to Enhance and Drive Results from your Donors Online Experience" which will focus on some familar themes. I will also be showing how far we've come with Blackbaud NetCommunity Universal since last year's conference. It was just about a year ago when Blackbaud CTO Shaun Sullivan gave an early glimpse of the product.
I had the chance to sit in on the "Benchmarking Online Fundraising: How to Measure Success" session earlier this morning. Carol Rhine from Target Analytics presented some new findings from the latest donorCentrics online benchmarking studies. Andrea Palten from American Humane Association talked about their online presence and some important lessons that they have learned with metrics. Peter Kaizer from Catholic Relief Services had some tips and tricks around using email. A good variety of information, stories, and also some challenges being faced on the multichannel communication front.
(Updating Regularly)
Over at labs.blackbaud.com there's some new and cool things posted. Michael Andrews, the original mastermind behind Blackbaud NetCommunity, has posted both a white paper and free sample code to use BBNC on a variety of mobile devices.(Much more compelling than a press release.)
A couple of highlights from what's been published:
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You can take donations from a mobile phone that will flow to The Raiser's Edge (RE) or Blackbaud Enterprise CRM (BBEC), just like any other BBNC donation.
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You can access secured RE/BBEC data in real-time from your mobile phone.
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You can auto-redirect website visitors to your mobile phone homepage if the browser is from a mobile device.
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You can use the same page design tools you already use in BBNC to create content and forms for mobile phones.
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You can share news, contact info, slideshows, donations, directories, and many other types of content.
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Most smartphones (iPhones, BlackBerrys, etc) will treat the displayed phone numbers and email addresses as actionable links.
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And it's free.
The white paper also mentions some improvements we're making to the BBNC API in version 5.5. We are continuing to reduce the amount of effort on the part of developers to build new functionality and exchange data. Some of the improvements include new functions for creating user accounts, logging users in, access to more page information, access to the back office code tables, additional server UI controls, and yes, the ability to create donation forms without starting from scratch.
Because we're not having to spend time and effort on the data side of things it has allowed us to focus on simplifying and expanding what clients can do with the functionality. We also think that making some key tasks easier to implement will help our clients to further push the boundaries of what they are doing online. When you're freed up from some of the grunt work, then lots of innovative things start to happen.
On a side note, Blackbaud customers in the UK have the ability to use inbound and outbound SMS text messaging through the optional Text Messaging Service in The Raiser's Edge v7.83. This capability combined with the mobile BBNC functionality could really create some groovy possibilities.