Hi, Nichole,

We are using a customized version of the store for our donations.  It's been a challenge because we want folks to give to World Hunger and allow them to add their own dollar amount instead of a fixed amount (i.e. $10, $25).  This is the customized part of it.  We have given the Blackbaud programmers a huge challenge in doing this.  If you are selling items using the store, then I think that National Geographic has a great site for this.

Thanks.

Pat

What is the NetCommunity Store?

 The NC Store is an online storefront with limited but sufficient capabilities if your main goal is not to run a retail outlet. There is no fulfillment or inventory functionality, but if your goal is to sell a couple small items that may generate income for you organizations ( t-shirts, booklets, CDs, etc.) and you want to track who is buying what -- it's a great tool. It also comes automatically with RE in v 6.15, I believe. Used to be an extra price, but now is included in the overall functionality of the product. The good is that it is fairly straight forward once you have the initial store set up. The cons, other than inventory control and fulfillment, are simply getting the store up and running, and getting started. Once you see how the store is built, it makes more sense. If you need more "fancy features" then you may need to customize the tool. Otherwise, it's the right price for a small storefront.

If you go to www.regionalparksfoundation.org , you will find an event-only online store. For this particular organization, you must be entered via online event registration in order to see the online store. Once you are on the store pages (see seperate sub-menu on the left), you will then be able to print or buy online event-related products. 

I had no idea this was included with 6.15 -- I thought it was still an additional expense.

We asked to have e-store installed with intent to use it for a "symbolic giving" catalogue (ie donors purchase a service (for us, for example, one choice is to pay for Spaying a Cat, and then give that as a gift to someone else. )  Unfortunately, I immediately discovered that the "e-store" functionality does not account for the very specific e-receipt requirements of the Canadian Revenue Agency.  Not being able to issue e-receipts was a deal breaker for us, so I took a different route and created a "pseudo e-store" using the Payment Part as my "shopping cart" and having individual donation forms for each item in the catalogue. This also allowed me to assign specific e-cards for the user to send with each service purchased.  It works very well for a symbolic gift catalogue.  If you want to take a peek, it is at www.ottawahumane.ca, under Heart Warming Gifts.