Sept/Oct 2009

Wow Factor: Nonprofits Taking Advantage of Convio Open

by James Young, Senior Product Manager, Convio

Every day, I am energized by the progress I see happening inside Convio as we move toward becoming an open platform. What began as an idea two years ago has steadily grown into a reality.

As with most growing things, we’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. Our documentation is constantly improving as we listen to and interact with our partners and clients as they use Convio APIs. (You can see the new and improved documentation on the Open site.) Our internal processes for supporting clients and partners using APIs have become more robust, and a professional support analyst is now dedicated to answering your questions. Our community is thriving with discussions and sharing on a wide range of topics. If you are a Convio client or partner, please join in the fun.

Most rewarding of all, our clients and partners are wowing us with new experiences built using the APIs. Take The National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) as an example. Their This Place Matters campaign offers constituents engaging opportunities to share through Google Maps and Flickr photostreams, while seamlessly integrating with the NTHP Constituent360™ database via the Constituent API. Not only is NTHP engaging with their existing constituents more deeply, but they’re also beginning a relationship with a significant number of new constituents who have already expressed a keen interest in their mission.

Insight For Living is another great example of a Convio API in action. By building a custom donation “widget” that lives in the wrapper of their site, Insight For Living has made it easy for constituents to support the organization’s mission no matter what ministry page they are viewing. With an integrated video and nifty Ajax-like appearance of information, the donation form looks and acts unlike their typical donation form, and makes it easy for website visitors to become donors.

The Paramount Theatre utilizes the Events API to present upcoming shows in a prominent, omnipresent drop down in the top navigation of any page, except the home page. The drop down is easy to find and is automatically updated with the latest events.

Partners such as Charity Dynamics and Common Knowledge are leveraging the TeamRaiser™ API to create unique Facebook Applications that allow an event participant to promote their fundraising effort inside Facebook. The result has been great for the events, increasing both participant counts and dollars raised.

Inside Convio, we haven’t been idle. The APIs are progressing quickly. This past summer, we developed a new set of methods that make it possible for you to completely customize the TeamRaiser Participant Center.

Coming in October, you’ll also find a slew of new open platform tools:

• New methods on the Donation API to support flexible sustainer giving and designated giving
• Convio Web Services will become available to all clients, enabling movement of large batches of data for synchronization, or for creating custom data-driven applications like a desktop application used by PBS clients to view real-time donation totals from a telethon
• A revamped Open site designed to increase its usefulness for the developer community

We’ll continue to work hard in 2010. Expect to see a dramatic increase in the number of transactions and interactions exposed via APIs, allowing you to build the custom experiences that will make your organization unique. You can also count on a lot more social media integration in the constituent experience, empowering viral sharing via the largest social networks in the world.

The open platform movement at Convio is very real, and is quickly maturing into a way of life for our company, clients, and partners.