July 2008 - Posts
Blackbaud announced today the official release of Blackbaud NetCommunity v5.5. The release also contains some important updates to our Online Campus Community (OCC v2.5) solution.
"We designed Blackbaud NetCommunity from the ground up as a content management and online fundraising solution to serve the needs of the nonprofit community. Since it was introduced in 2004, more than 600 nonprofits have selected NetCommunity to create an online presence and recruit and retain donors in the online space." - Marc Chardon, Blackbaud CEO
BBNC v5.5 includes improved site design features and a native social networking feature called “Wave,” that will provide nonprofits with an opportunity to further engage their constituents online. Additionally, the release unveiled a new set of NetCommunity Open Platform APIs for creating custom parts, integrated web services, and custom transactions.
"With Wave, Blackbaud has introduced a new way to leverage social networking—both within the application and by integrating to social network services like Facebook—which will add to the viral nature of our work. Being able to have an easier way to reach out through social networking channels will help us extend our audience as we move more and more in that direction. Additionally, the ease of integration between Blackbaud NetCommunity 5.5 and our other Blackbaud systems will help us close the loop between our online and offline direct marketing efforts and really take our reporting, data management and usage to new levels.” - Michael Sola, Director of Information Technology, Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Here are some more details about what is in the new release:
Content Management – The solutions now support “workflows” by allowing designated users to approve and publish submitted items from content authors. The improvements also supports versioning and roll-back capabilities of content. Multiple image uploads (even from Facebook!) and easier document linking are just a few of the other content management enhancements.
Fundraising and Marketing Enhancements – The latest release significantly improves the management of donations by allowing website visitors to make multiple donations or registrations via a single transaction. Viral marketing and fundraising efforts are enhanced through support of eCards and page sharing links that embrace Web 2.0 concepts. And to support direct marketing initiatives, we now provide an easy way to create “friendly URLs” and external source code tracking.
Improved Internationalization, Accessibility, and Extensibility – The latest versions provide improved compliance with online accessibility standards, including Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and Section 508. Re-captioning of fields on many forms, allowing website content to appear in multiple languages, is also supported. Best of all, these versions make our open APIs even more powerful, allowing richer customizations by clients and partners.
Social Networking – Wave, Blackbaud NetCommunity’s new social networking feature, is the first natively-developed social network in an Internet solution designed for nonprofits. BBNC 5.5 & OCC 2.5 now go beyond simply allowing the sharing of information with Facebook to allowing organizations to provide their website visitors tools for their very own social networks, complete with personal messaging, Circle of Friends, self-forming groups, and expanded Facebook integration.
Customer Requests – And of course, every release gives us an opportunity to incorporate more customer requests, and this is no exception. Great features such as a scrolling donor wall for TeamFundraising pages and printable event calendars will make clients’ websites more friendly to visitors, the updated EE PlugIn will make their work easier, and additional security options, including reCAPTCHA online fraud prevention, will protect them behind the scenes.
We're already working on the next few releases of BBNC and OCC to keep the momentum going. Innovation doesn't sleep or take holidays.
Blackbaud NetCommunity v5.5 is probably one of the biggest releases we've ever done with the product. There are just a ton of great new features and improvements that take it to a whole new level. (Enough new things to fill 65+ pages of documentation alone.)
For nearly two months, I sent out a "BBNC v5.5 Treat of the Day" to key internal stakeholders and members of our Blackbaud Interactive team to promote some of the new things in the release. I thought that I would share my Top 30 treats, and keep in mind that this only scratches the surface for what you'll find in the release. Enjoy!
1. Page Sharing including social media linking
2. Email Notifications for social networking and content approval
3. eCards, eCards, and eCards
4. Document linking made simple
5. Improved editing from the page level
6. Recaption all donation part fields
7. Custom donation part confirmation pages
8. Friendly URLS for pages, team fundraising, social networking, and more
9. Support for Moneris as a merchant account option
10. Language settings and language selector controls
11. Associate an image with a role
12. Giving Search functionality integrated to The Raiser's Edge
13. Multiple image upload
14. Recaption the login part
15. Social networking in BBNC
16. Personal messaging in social networking
17. Groups in social networking
18. Floating CSS modal window
19. Recaption nearly everything in social networking
20. New user security settings
21. Event registration custom confirmation page
22. Firefox support for admin tools (including the Mac)
23. Targeted content interface improvements
24. Calendar view and printing updates
25. Versioning in content management
26. Directory search fields
27. Anonymous postings on a discussion board
28. Social networking info on user tab
29. Optional reCAPTCHA on donation forms
30. Content approval at the page editing level
A big thanks goes to everyone in the product development, quality assurance, and release management teams for their hard work for the past several months. And thanks to all the clients, consultants, and people that have provided us with ideas, feedback, and inspiration along the way.
Maybe for an upcoming release I'll post the treats on this blog or something. That might increase the traffic already pouring in from certain geographic locations. ;-)
There's a lot excitement around Blackbaud this week with the release of Blackbaud NetCommunity v5.5 on the horizon. This week's blog postings will be devoted to covering lots of news, notes, and information about the product. Here are a few things to have a listen and look at for today:
The Baudcast - Episode 12
This episode's panel discusses Blackbaud NetCommunity v5.5, efficiency thru integration, multi-channel messaging, BBNC API, BBNC Idea Bank, social networking, Blackbaud Delivers, NetWits Live @Portland, Socialthing, VoteTheBay.org, and more. The panel discussion includes Chad Norman (Internet Marketing Manager), Melanie Milonas (Public Relations Manager),Garrett Keating (The U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association & Foundation), Michael Sola (Chesapeake Bay Foundation), and me.
BBNC Custom Menu
Over at Blackbaud Labs there is a another new custom part sample that has been posted. This one is a custom menu sample that shows off some of the new changes in the Blackbaud NetCommunity v5.5 API improvements. The sample demonstrates how to build a completely custom menu with <ul><li>-based hierarchy represented, CSS based elements, no Javascript required, no dynamic pop-out sub menus, and graceful down-level rendering for accessible and mobile browsers. This puts a lot of flexibility and capability in the hands of clients to enhance their online solution.
This is a busy travelling work week for me. So here are some things of note and some tunes for a Tuesday:
We Are Media
NTEN's Social Media curriculum project where the community is the curriculum. Each week there will be a new theme related to social media and nonprofits. One of the goals of the project is to help identify the best existing resources, people, and case studies that will give nonprofit organizations the knowledge and resources they need to use social media to change the world. This week's theme: Dealing with Resistance
The Baudcast - Episode 11
This episode's panel discusses the Target Index of National Fundraising Q1 2008 findings, CAN-SPAM rule changes, the NTEN We Are Media project, PCI compliance, eTapestry in Spanish, the Kintera acquisition, the iPhone 3G, increased volume levels, and more. The panel discussion includes Chad Norman (Internet Marketing Manager), Melanie Milonas (Public Relations Manager), Jamie Holiday (Internal Communication Coordinator), Chris Harris (Email Services Specialist), Nigel Tufnel, and me.
Building Your Presence on a Budget
The Chronicle of Philanthropy's latest live discussion is today and it's all about building your online presence on a budget. Beth Kanter, nonprofit social media guru, and The Nature Conservancy's Jonathon Colman are the guests on this panel discussion. If you can't join in at 12pm today then just wait for the transcript to be posted.
The Workin' Man
What does it say about the influence of gaming when Rock Band helps to unearth a never released guitar solo on the classic Rush song Working Man? Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson did an interview where the hidden track came from. You can give "the vault" version of the song a listen on YouTube. Next stop could be re-releasing the song on iTunes.
Today's blog entry is coming from Washington, DC and the 2008 American Marketing Association's Nonprofit Marketing Conference. This is a three-day conference with a variety of speakers and sessions all around the theme of "Telling Your Story: From Vision to Results."
This morning I'll be doing a 4-hour workshop called "One to One Marketing: Using Technology to Connect with Individuals" with Michael Cervino, Vice President and Co-Founder of Beaconfire Consulting.
The session is going to try and demystify channel communication and how to do some real integrated marketing. Lots of information, several examples of integrated marketing in action, and then we'll give some attention to the most effective online channels. It wouldn't be a workshop without some interaction so there will be a audience analysis and communication planning exercise.
Get more information about the session and download a copy of the presentation by visiting the Beaconfire Wire blog.
There are a couple of new and very cool things posted over at Blackbaud Labs regarding the Blackbaud NetCommunity API. The release of BBNC v5.5 later this month will include a further expansion of the open toolset.
"Lot's of effort has been put into expanding the API into new areas of the platform, primarily around giving the Custom Part developer much more access to core platform features like RSS feeds, Document Libraries, built-in dialogs, donations, user accounts, and programmatic part creation, to name just a few." - Michael Andrews, Blackbaud Distinguished Engineer
The open platform capabilites in BBNC have been native and haven't required any additional cost for clients to use since the product was first released in 2004. These new changes, additions, and improvements should help developers currently using the BBNC platform and those that plan to in the near future. To get a little bit more information about what's new I went straight to the source. Here's a little Q&A between me and Michael Andrews:
Q: You noted that a change in the BBNC Open Platform is improvements to the object model names and structure. Can you talk about how this should help developers already using BBNC to build custom parts?
A: Consistency and discoverability mainly. Growth of the API will be more organized
Q: I noticed that the Transaction Property is now built-in to BBNC v5.5. How does that help reduce the development time to build custom donation transactions?
A: For BBNC v5.5 we are supporting recording real donation transactions as if they were recorded by our donation form part. This means you can create your own donation form, process it (credit card, debit, pledge etc) via the API and have it recorded for you. It will show up in RE / eCRM as if it were from one of our donation forms. You no longer have to define a custom transaction for it, nor create a custom transaction processor in RE for it, and all the other mumbo jumbo that goes with those steps.
There is even an option to pre-fill “donation transaction object” with the current user’s bio data which you can use to pre-populate your custom form – so it eliminates the Custom Web Method you would have had to create to go get that data from RE as well. AND if that’s not enough, you can design an email template providing custom merge fields (and the donation fields), that can be sent as the acknowledgement email. The thinking there is it seems likely that if you were doing your own form (say for eShopping) you may want to include what they bought in the email. There is a similar set of functions around creating new users and the corresponding built-in signup transaction. Very useful if you wanted to easily associate getting a user account w/ your custom part, very common in an eCommerce world.
Q: What was the goal behind opening the Custom Server Controls? Will this continue to grow in the future?
A: The idea there is to allow custom programmers access to common UI elements to use in their parts like selecting/uploading images, queries, funds, summoning a part’s editor, the HTML editor, etc. This allows your part to do some real powerful stuff and feel more like its built in. Yes, lots of potential to add more like this. These components safely wrap up the internal javascripts and server-side business logic for some otherwise complex code.
Q: There are a couple of Blackbaud developed custom parts available for download. Any hints at what might be released next?
A: Demos of all the new stuff. Donations, adding users, RSS feeds, document management, DIV based menu, breadcrumbs, good times.
Look for more things to be posted on Blackbaud Labs in the near future.
Update: Here's a link to a review of the changes posted on the Customizing NetCommunity weblog.
Blackbaud announced today that is has completed the acquisition of Kintera. This means that we can begin moving forward on several important initiatives to better meet your needs.
When the deal was first announced we were not allowed to comment or make any further announcements according to government regulations. This meant having to be less transparent than we preferred, but those are the rules.
Now that the acquisition has formally closed there are probably a lot of questions that clients and those in the broader nonprofit community might have. Let me try to address some of the ones I've heard specifically related to our Internet products.
Will Blackbaud keep the Kintera CMS (Sphere) Product?
Yes. We will support all of Kintera's current offerings, including Sphere, FundWare, and P!N. There are several aspects of the Sphere system, in particular "Friends Asking Friends" and advocacy capabilities, which enrich Blackbaud’s drive to provide products that are ideal for nonprofit organization that are ideal for nonprofit organizations. We believe nonprofits want robust online solutions, regardless of whether or not your current CRM happens to be from Blackbaud.
Will Blackbaud keep the Kintera Connect initiative?
Yes. We will continue this program. It's been very successful, and it's a great fit with some of the Blackbaud NetCommunity API initiatives already in place. We intend to explore ways to encourage both clients and partners to develop extended functionality for our online solutions. This underscores our efforts to increase the use of our products and their ability to meet the unique needs of the nonprofit community.
Will Blackbaud integrate the Kintera CMS (Sphere) to The Raiser's Edge?
Yes. Blackbaud plans to develop an integration solution from Sphere to The Raiser's Edge that is the best in the industry. Nonprofits place a high value on having a truly integrated solution combining online and offline interactions in a single database. This is one of our highest priorities now that the acquisition is complete and will be available before the end of the calendar year.
Will Blackbaud NetCommunity continue to be offered and supported?
Yes. BBNC continues to grow extremely well. In just four years it has been chosen by more Raiser's Edge customers than any other major provider serving nonprofits today. The combined R&D resources of Kintera and Blackbaud will allow us to continue to deepen BBNC's functionality. We think there is a lot of value that clients will realize from the combined experience, knowledge, and technology we have gained from working with the more than 4,500 customers using one of our Internet solutions.
I am sure that there will be additional questions that come up as we move forward. I will continue to post relevant and important information as it becomes available. I encourage you to send questions or post comments.
Over the past year Blackbaud has been doing a lot of experimenting with the web and social media to be much more open. I know there's been a perception in the past that we're a walled fortress. You can either choose to ignore that or work really hard to make reality the new perception. A lot of people from around Blackbaud choose the latter option. Here's some of the things we've done:
Forums - Earlier this year, Blackbaud re-launched its user forums, but with a new twist — anyone can access them. This has really increased their usage and some new features have improved the online experience. You also find Blackbaud staff engaging in the forums and breaking the fourth wall to help answer client questions.
Podcasts - One of the first experiments was The Baudcast, which is now posting a new episode every two weeks. Chad Norman plays host of the show and gets to break out all of his recording and editing equipment. Blackbaud Interviews is the latest podcast that we're trying out and Melanie Milonas will be doing more of these shows in the future.
Design Playground - The idea was simple: Give people access to our new products to get feedback, ideas, and sign-up for usability testing. Judging from the traffic, it's getting a lot of attention not only from clients but from the competition too. (I guess we'll see if imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.) Brenda Murray and her product design team have been able to get a lot of valuable client interactions from this approach.
Blackbaud Labs - Blackbaud's CTO Shaun Sullivan launched the site originally to show off the new Infinity platform. The site has continued to grow since then and also includes a wiki for the BBNC API. Michael Andrews recently rebooted "labs" using Blackbaud NetCommunity and lets users download some sample code. Look for lots more new stuff on this site in the coming future.
Blogs - The original Blogbaud.com started it all back in 2007. Now there are at least 14 different Blackbaud blogs and the list keeps growing. Some of them are product specific, like The User's Edge, The Thread, and The Ledger, and others like From the Doc Side and The PCI Compliance Blog cover other topics. A big change from the days when blogging was frowned upon.
BBNC Idea Bank - This is the newest little experiment to allow clients to post ideas and feedback about our products. Think Dell Idea Storm with a few more features that let us update you on the progress of the ideas. Blackbaud's Director of Responsiveness Andrea Sanders led the effort around this and is already getting a lot of use only a week after launch.
Other Stuff - You'll find a bunch of people from Blackbaud on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Lots of people are talking about what they do, how they do it, and showing that there's a human side to technology. And I'm sure over the coming weeks and months there will be other ways that we use two-way communication tools to open things up a bit more.
There is a common thread to all of these initiatives — more communication is always a good thing. Those conversations, interactions, and communication channels can take many forms. Some people are fine with reading or listening to content and others want a much more hands-on experience. Having different approaches for different types of users with different goals in mind is perfectly ok.
This also points to something about new technologies that I recommend to clients all the time: Experiment first. Plan later. Don't form a committee or a task force. Go try some stuff. See what works. See what doesn't. Adjust the settings. Enlist savvy people to try new things too. Then when you start to see some results get more formal about growing things.
Nearly all of these Blackbaud examples started off as one person taking the initiative to try something new. There wasn't a committee. There wasn't a budget. There wasn't some highly complex strategery behind it all. Once they started to take off some support structures were put in place to help them grow and thrive. And we're just getting started. I'm looking forward to seeing what we come up with next.
Target Analytics, a Blackbaud company, announced the latest Index of National Fundraising Performance for the first quarter of 2008. The index compares trends in key fundraising indicators from 72 organizations, including over 36 million donors and more than 66 million gifts totaling over $1.8 billion in revenue. The index findings include giving data from direct mail, online, telemarketing, events, and other fundraising channels. You can get a complete summary of the latest index findings here.
Helen Flannery, a Project Director with Target Analytics, co-authored the report and provided these comments about the findings: "Direct marketing organizations struggled this past quarter. It looks like societal benefit and international relief organizations had the most difficult time. But there are some bright spots in among the bad news; animal welfare and environmental organizations both had revenue growth in the first quarter, and animal welfare organizations also had huge increases in new donor acquisition.”
Nonprofits in the Index of National Fundraising Performance saw donor numbers in the index fall -4.0% from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008. Revenue fell -1.8% from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008. This was the first time in two and a half years that revenue fell, but revenue per donor grew 2.1% from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008, on top of 3.6% growth over the same period one year before.
The findings continue to show a year-over-year decline in donors from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008 that is part of a longer-term pattern. In spite of disaster-related spikes in 2005, donors were down significantly in total over the past three years. From the twelve months ending Q1 2005 to the twelve months ending Q1 2008, donors declined a cumulative -5.0%.
The index findings note that rolling index revenue has historically grown at an average of about 1% per quarter. Revenue continued to slow throughout 2007, paralleling the weakening economy, and had a steep downturn in the first quarter of 2008. When adjusted for inflation, revenue has actually declined -3.6% in real dollars over the same time period from Q1 2005 through Q1 2008.
It is important to note that this is also the first time in several quarters that increased per donor revenue could not make up for the overall donor decreases. For most organizations, overall donor declines have been due primarily to declines in new donor acquisition. New donors declined -2.3% from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008, on top of a -5.3% decline over the same period one year before.
Donor retention and reactivation rates are also playing a role in donor declines. Retention rates dropped by -2.4% from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008. The greatest decreases in retention came in first-year donor retention, which declined -6.6% in Q1 2008 over the same quarter one year before. Reactivation rates declined -5.0% from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008.
Keep in mind that the first quarter of the year typically contains the smallest number of donors for the year and donors have only had three months to renew. These factors all impact the statistics and trends. Please also note that individual payments greater than $5,000, soft credits, and matching gift payments are excluded from the index findings.
The Animal Welfare and Environmental sectors had the best performance among all the other groups. The Societal Benefit sector continued to have the biggest challenges and Human Services was essentially flat. International Relief witnessed the biggest decrease in new donor acquisition followed by the Health sector. More detailed information from the results can be found online here.