Nov/Dec 2008

Leveraging Today’s Tools to Jumpstart Next Year’s Success

by Meg Murphy, Director, Product Marketing, Convio

There’s never been a better time or more technology choices available to nonprofits to help you turn your ideas into reality. With the new year just around the corner, now is the time to take a look back at the applications and services introduced in 2008 that can help you reach, inspire and manage more people. Adding these tools to your plan can help you achieve your goals in 2009.

Build Stronger Relationships with Your Supporters: Common Ground™ CRM System for Nonprofits

Released in the fall of 2008, the Convio Common Ground CRM system is designed to help you build stronger relationships with your supporters — all supporters, not just donors, by making it possible to pull together constituent information from multiple tools, across all of your organization’s departments. Common Ground is built on one of the leading CRM systems in the world — the open technology platform Force.com^® from salesforce.com^®. This allows Convio to leverage the services and functionality of a comprehensive, proven and continually improving CRM foundation, and build a customizable, flexible system that’s tailor-made for nonprofits. Learn more about Convio Common Ground.

You Can Do It, Too: Great Online Fundraising and Marketing Programs with Convio Go!

Convio Go! is designed to help resource-constrained nonprofits achieve online fundraising and outreach success, while allowing staff to focus their efforts and expertise on programs and services. This program is specifically designed for organizations that recognize they need a strong online presence, but have been anxious about having the right mix of staff resources, their knowledge-level or ability and availability to use new online marketing technology. Convio Go! combines software and services with a guided approach to help clients grow email lists, launch fundraising campaigns, and maintain regular communications with constituents. Learn more about Convio Go!.

Go Mobile: Integrated CRM Mobile Solutions

Convio and Mobile Commons have launched the first integrated CRM Mobile solution so nonprofits can go mobile without ever having to worrying about managing two sets of data. With integrated mobile capabilities, organizations can leverage the latest technology to deliver messages, drive membership, raise awareness, increase response rates and maximize participation. Learn more about Mobile Commons (PDF).

Coordinate Your Affiliate Organizations: MultiCenter

MultiCenter helps solve the most common challenges of multi-affiliate, or federated, organizations by making it easy for chapters to coordinate and share data and best practices across the organization. MultiCenter makes it easy for affiliates to manage their own data, campaigns, and constituent relationships without assistance from an administrator from the organization's headquarters while sharing constituent records, campaigns, content and branding across the entire organization. Learn more about MultiCenter (PDF).

Open Initiative Extends Your Reach and Links World to You

During 2008, Convio introduced a number of new extensions that extend your reach beyond your website. These include Facebook gifts and custom interactions, extensions for Flickr, Google Maps integration, YouTube Video, Plaxo, RSS, Bookmarklets, Google Analytics integration, Simplified single sign-on implementation and CMS form actions. Learn more about Convio Open.

To better link your world to Convio, we introduced five new APIs:

• Constituent API
• TeamRaiser API
• Transaction API
• Participation API
• Events API

Transforming Nonprofit Websites into Socially-Enabled Communities

ThePort Network, Inc. and Convio have worked together to help nonprofits enrich their websites with social networking features that engage core audiences with new ways to communicate and interact online. ThePort Social Media Suite enables nonprofit organizations to quickly infuse potent social media and social networking capabilities into their existing web properties, making it possible to provide a more dynamic online experience that allows community members to interact with each other, contribute content and share perspectives and information online. Nonprofits that integrate ThePort Social Media Suite are able to better maintain donors and attract new ones, increase interest and participation in current initiatives, and connect with the next generation of technology-savvy supporters. Learn more about ThePort (PDF).