Convio Makes It Easier for Nonprofit Supporters to Connect, Advocate and Engage With Comprehensive Product Release

Event Fundraising Tools Make it Easier to Engage and Coach Participants to Raise More Money Facebook™ Connect and New Letter to the Editor Features Leverage the Power of Social Networking to Spread Mission-Focused Messages

Austin, Texas (August 6, 2009) —

Convio today announced Summer '09, the company's new software release, that delivers innovative features and openness to improve online marketing, fundraising and advocacy success for nonprofit organizations. Convio’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model provides clients with major upgrades each year that deliver the latest innovation and product enhancements without the hassles, headaches and costs of traditional software upgrades and maintenance. Convio handles the infrastructure, allowing charities to focus on their mission, grow their organization, as well as reach, engage and move people to support their cause.

“Convio’s clients continue to lead the industry in using the Internet to enhance relationships with donors, volunteers, advocates and other supporters,” said Gene Austin, CEO, Convio. “With these new, innovative features and core product enhancements, nonprofits can raise more money while efficiently and effectively reaching and inspiring more people to engage in their mission. As supporters move online to communicate with their family and friends, it is fast becoming the primary channel for engagement with their charity of choice. More and more nonprofits are turning to Convio because of our passion to deliver innovative software and services that drive online fundraising and marketing results that support their mission.”

Key new Summer ‘09 features:

• TeamRaiser™ Participant Center – new and improved features provide even easier-to-learn and easier-to-use fundraising tools for a nonprofit’s event participants. Participant Center delivers an updated, action-oriented toolset for participants to reach out to friends and family in support of a charity’s TeamRaiser-powered fundraising event to broaden and strengthen event participation.
• Facebook Connect – encourages supporters to take action by publishing or sharing “stories” from the nonprofit’s website to their Facebook wall and to their friends’ feeds, helping the nonprofit leverage the power of social networking to raise awareness.
• Fundraising Milestones – allows the nonprofit to set motivational goals for event participants using TeamRaiser. The feature makes it easier for event administrators and managers to coach and reward participants as they make progress toward fundraising milestones to drive fundraising success. 
• Advocacy Letter to the Editor – enables supporters to easily send a letter to the editor of targeted newspapers/publications to take actions, such as endorsing the organization, their cause or important issues, or promoting fundraising or advocacy events in the area. This new capability helps nonprofits foster further engagement from their most passionate supporters and leverages that engagement to drive awareness and activity.
• eCommerce QuickGiving – a new option in the eCommerce store that allows an organization to display some or all of the products from their store on a single page making the donor/shopper experience more user friendly and productive with the goal of creating higher sales conversions from visitors.

Convio Online Fundraising, Marketing and Advocacy — Economical and Successful

Convio is the only online fundraising, marketing and advocacy platform for nonprofits which is built on a multi-tenet SaaS or cloud computing infrastructure. SaaS represents the most economical way for a nonprofit to run their organization. Convio’s clients have raised more than $2 billion dollars online. The combination of new clients, addition of significant new events and organic growth in the existing client base enabled Convio to process $777 million in online donations on behalf of clients during 2008 — a 72 percent increase over 2007. Convio clients sent more than 3.1 billion emails to constituents during that period with an industry leading deliverability rate in excess of 95 percent. Charities of all types used Convio to power more than 3,500 web domains as well as complete 44 million advocacy calls to action. For the first six months of 2009, nonprofits organizations have used Convio to raise more than $422 million online.

Convio has been validated Level 1 PCI compliant and successfully completed the SAS 70 Type II audit with no exceptions. Convio clients benefit from these certifications when “turned on” as the organizations avoid the costs and hassles of pursuing their own certifications and compliance when they use Convio.

Press Contact:
Karoline McLaughlin
Director, Corporate Communications
Convio, Inc.
kmclaughlin@convio.com
512-652-7865