May 2008 - Posts
A few hours ago came the official public announcement by Blackbaud of our plans to acquire Kintera. You can read the press release and corresponding details here. I am expecting a lot of speculation, blogging, tweeting, and other online opining about this announcement. But there are some different circumstances involved this time that people should understand.
Because both Blackbaud and Kintera are publicly traded companies there are very specific Federal Trade Commission rules about what can be said and done until the deal officially closes. This may take as many as 30 days and until then both companies will perform as separate units, competing with each other as they did prior to this announcement. (Who knew that Master’s thesis in Online Investor Relations would ever come in handy?)
What I can say is that this is very exciting news for many reasons including:
- Blackbaud becomes the leading provider of online solutions and services to the nonprofit industry with over 4,500 clients
- Both Kintera Sphere and Blackbaud NetCommunity are strong Internet solutions that largely serve very different segments, including The Raiser’s Edge, Team Approach, eTapestry, and non-Raiser’s Edge customers.
- Blackbaud plans to continue to support and invest in both products.
- Kintera’s other offerings, FundWare, P!N and certain capabilities within Sphere (e.g., Friends Asking Friends) are well-recognized and respected in the marketplace.
I am sure that this announcement will bring with it a lot of questions. Wherever possible we’ll try to answer them, but please understand that in certain instances that might not be permitted until the deal officially closes.
Also, I’m sure some other vendors in the market will use this as an opportunity to exploit the situation. I will let you judge for yourselves what that says about them and who really has the client’s best interests in mind.
The ePhilanthropy Foundation will be holding a Social Networking and Nonprofit Online Strategies Symposium next month in New York City on June 14th. The event will be hosted by Columbia University and you can register now for the event online.
Here's the list of presenters that will be taking part in this upcoming event:
ePhilanthropy Unplugged: What You Need to Know Before You Turn the Computer On
Mark Rovner, Sea Change Strategies
Same Game, New Rules: Everything You Need to Know for Online Success
Jay Frost, FundraisingInfo.com
Peer-to-Peer Fundraising and Community Building
Nicci Noble, Salvation Army National Headquarters
How Individual Supporters Use Online Fundraising Pages to Make a Difference
Mark Sutton, Firstgiving, Inc.
Leveraging the Internet to Build Relationships and Expand the Reach of Your Organization Online
Steve MacLaughlin, Blackbaud Interactive
Designing to Engage: Getting More from Websites and Campaigns
Leanne Bergey, Verve Internet Solutions
The Search for Sneezers: How to Fund Fundraisers in Epidemic Proportions
Phillip King, Artez Interactive
This should be a great day-long event and something you should really consider attending.
An early morning here in Gotham City. Getting ready for a sold out event and a day full of speakers. Here's a run down of what's happening:
Blackbaud Interactive Internet Symposium
Grand Hyatt | New York City | 5.22.08
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Breakfast
9:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Track 1
The Right Message, The Right People, The Right Time — Making the Most of Email Marketing
Allison Van Diest, Blackbaud
Track 2
Web 2.0 — A Buzzword Demystified
Andrew Mosawi, Blackbaud
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Track 1
The Power of Integration — The True Story of TrueCRM™
Nora Isaac, ALS Association, Greater Philadelphia Chapter & Courtney Sakre, Blackbaud
Track 2
What Social Networks Should Be Doing For You
Steve MacLaughlin, Blackbaud
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Lunch
1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
Track 1
Online Communications — Pipeline to More Revenue
Tim O’Leary, McPherson Associates
Track 2
Blackbaud Listens — Internet Solutions Focus Group
2:15 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Afternoon Break
2:45 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Blackbaud® NetCommunity™ Demonstration
Blackbaud® NetCommunity™ Universal Demonstration
I'm spending some time this morning finishing my presentation for this week's Blackbaud Interactive Internet Symposium in New York City. I have developed a reputation for constantly tweaking my slides right up until the last minute. Alfred Hitchcock once said that "self-plagiarism is style" and I guess this has become my style.
I've spoken about Web 2.0 in the past, but this time I'm planning on going a few levels deeper. My latest presentation is called "What Social Networks Should Be Doing For You" and I'm going to attempt to answer some key questions including:
- What is Web 2.0?
- What is Social Networking?
- Who uses it?
- What are they doing?
- Where do they get all that free time?
- Why should you care?
- What are Nonprofits doing with Social Networking?
- What is and isn't working?
- What should you be doing?
- How do you get started?
- Where do we go from here?
A lot of things to tackle in 75 minutes. I also need to find time to explain some concepts, show how the moon landings were a hoax, and attempt to answer some questions from the audience. I'm looking forward to it.
Chad Norman puts together his $0.02 on Google Friend Connect and what it might mean for online social networking. Give it a read...
Ali Cherry at Beaconfire blogs about three challenges shaping the future of online marketing that is worth a look too.
I'm getting excited about next week's sold out Internet Symposium in New York City on Thursday, May 22nd. Should be a lot of first-life social networking going on.
Gotta go for now...
The response to Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar continues to be the focus of efforts for many nonprofits. Up until this morning, Google gave main page attention to giving to UNICEF and Direct Relief International. (It was replaced with a voting contest for logo doodles.)
Other organizations like Save the Children, World Vision, and Médecins Sans Frontières are also actively involved in the relief efforts. We have seen a steady climb in online giving to our international relief clients over the past few weeks, but it is not as large as what was seen during the 2004 Asian Tsunami.
Clearly there are some political and socio-economic factors at play here beyond the control of any of the organizations. I can't help but think about how much the situation is beginning to look like Darfur, the Bam Earthquake or other disasters where people get caught in the middle of the political maelstrom.
There is also a geography lesson here as people might have heard of Burma, but not Myanmar. (And few could find it on the map.) Myanmar was also impacted by the Asian Tsunami, but certainly nothing like the scale we are hearing about from the cyclone. To understand a problem, you first have to know where the problem is relative to you and the rest of the world.
And unlike the Tsunami, you don't have the same amount of mobile phone video captures coming in to help show the severity of the situation. No first-hand eyewitness reports or blogging to any major degree outside of what reporters or media have been able to do. There's no seaside resort being consumed by a giant wave. No vacationing celebrities in distress. Just people caught between nature and nations.
Technology only goes so far sometimes when it's met by the firewall of politics and geography. Thankfully the work these organizations are doing does make a measurable difference, and when disasters like this happen they are the first to answer the call. You can't blockade the innate human instinct that wants to make things better.
Yesterday Blackbaud re-launched the labs.blackbaud.com website and it's built entirely on Blackbaud NetCommunity. Michael Andrews prefers to call it "drinking our own champagne," but I think you get the point.
There are a lot of new things to be found on the site, including a set of Blackbaud Labs RSS Feeds, because the site covers a broad range of topics. You'll also find a new downloads area where we'll continue to be unveiling functionality that our clients can utilize.
This whole approach to sharing ideas, tools, and sample code continues to get a lot of positive feedback. And we think that continuing to support clients and partners that are developing their own extensible applications helps the entire ecosystem.
Bonjour! Another early morning here in Montréal at the last day of the conference. Molly Maple and I are presenting the "Deep Dive into Blackbaud NetCommunity" first thing this morning. We'll be showcasing a lot of the new capabilities in BBNC v5.5. Plenty of good stuff for our Canadian clients. We covered a lot of things, got a lot of great questions, and there were quite a few moments of applause. That's always the best feedback that we got it right!
I'm now sitting in on Blackbaud CTO Shaun Sullivan's "Emerging Technologies: Blackbaud's Technology Roadmap" presentation. Shaun started off by explaining the Infinity platform and the first applications we've shipped: Blackbaud Direct Marketing, Blackbaud Enterprise CRM, ResearchPoint, and NetCommunity Universal. And we're currently developing the 8.x versions and upgrades of our existing offerings.
Shaun then went into some of the technical parts of Infinity around scalability, Open API, performance, and other really cool stuff. And there will be a "cloud catalog" for "adornments" that others develop for the platform. "Open isn't dangerous." (Plenty of security and checking, of course.) Speaking of performance, the testing done so far let Infinity do 57 batch gifts per second. And then the UI...and the oohs and ahhs began. Showing the configuration options in Blackbaud Enterprise CRM, language options, and role setup and data presentation.
Then the "Reach" topic came up....like using RSS, KPIs, widgets and gadgets, web-based report writer, web dashboards, and mobile devices through the Infinity platform. The KPI example got some big cheers. But not as big as when Shaun played "Mac Guy" and pulled up a web dashboard through Infinity on a Mac in Safari...and then started making edits on the fly. And then create your own gadget and drop it on the desktop...of a PC or a Mac. Then he opened up the iPhone SDK and showed an Infinity application that allows an iPhone user to search for a constituent in the system over the phone, complete with a photo that looks a lot like Manny Ramírez. A little example of Yahoo! Pipes + Infinity at play.
Next was little bit about Pervasive Business Intelligence and how Infinity handles it out of the box. Including geocoding location intelligence and a very carefully designed star schema with supporting OLAP cubes. And how we're thinking about options to provide this for the current Raiser's Edge 7.x customer base. What about pervasive search? Sure! People are going to expect applications to act like Google and so that has been built into the discoverability of Infinity. Quick example of search and how help content can also kick-in. (And it's pruned by security.) (And could include web items like Blackbaud's Knowledge Base.) This was followed by an on-the-fly answer to a question about query and smart query tools in the Infinity platform.
Shaun jumped to a discussion about how Blackbaud NetCommunity works with the Infinity platform. Discussion about the BBNC API, stuff posted on labs.blackbaud.com, and other cool things. Shaun gave a sneak peek of the rebuilt labs.blackbaud.com using BBNC Universal. And a couple of more things that we've posted. Just a ton of information covered. (My brain hurts.)
I finished up the day with a presentation of "The Power of TrueCRM: Unleashing Integrated Online and Offline Strategies to Get Results" which is a presentation I've been refining over the past year. I was really glad that people asked questions related to other concepts and ideas they've picked up throughout the conference.
The day ended with getting an opportunity to show Blackbaud NetCommunity Universal to some Canadian and International consultants. I think we got a very positive response. Not only is there a huge need in North America for a multi-channel solution but in Europe as well.
Montréal was a great place to hold the conference and I'm already looking forward to next year's event. Au revior!
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Things are off and running in Montréal at Blackbaud's 2008 Conference for Nonprofits. I'm presenting first thing this morning in a session called "You've Got Email! Now What?" I think that I was able to put over two hours worth of material into just over an hour.
That means I have the chance to spend the rest of the day listening to some of the other presenters. So I'll be jumping from room to room today blogging as long as my battery lasts.
The first session that I sat in on was "Building an Online Village" which was presented by Ann Edmonds (VP of Information Technology - YMCA of Greater Toronto) and Sandra Luther (Manager of Internet Solutions - Blackbaud Canada). The big focus of the session was around the basics, benefits, and possibilities with online communities. A lot of questions, answers, discussions, and stories. Some really interesting exchanges about privacy, getting people to engage online, and managing the data end of it all. The session ended with explaining how to get your house in order, crawl, walk, and run with your online initiatives.
Blackbaud's president and CEO Marc Chardon gave the opening remarks over lunch. I think the audience really keyed in on his message about how the world and the nonprofit industry is changing. It takes time to hone a message and make it your own. The last step is to get the people listening to really engage in that message and get something valuable from it. I've seen Marc speak at conferences and events over the past three years, and this was his best speech to-date because he's gotten to the last step. (This might sound like being a cheerleader, but anyone who knows me would probably never use that adjective to describe me.)
After the lunch break I’m going to attend the "Web 2.0 — A Buzzword Demystified" session by Andrew Mosawi from Blackbaud. (Andrew will also be appearing at the Blackbaud Interactive Internet Symposium in New York City on Thursday, May 22nd.) A pretty jam packed room listened to Andrew explain the basics and get into the complex bits of Web 2.0. "It's about relationships...it's not about the technology." Andrew showed a lot of examples and how nonprofits are leveraging different forms of Web 2.0. "People are linking to people and organizations...and (nonprofits) need to be part of it." The blogosphere thrives because of authenticity. You either have it or you don't...and you can't fake it. (Feel free to call me out.) People to people fundraising blurs the line between friends, their social networks, and nonprofits. Then throw in a remix of YouTube, Flickr, widgets, mashups, and other interactive media. And then add in a big giant slice of social networks. Disintermediation in the nonprofit world is a reality. These are things you can't ignore and they aren't going away.
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