Common Ground Q&A with Idealware

A couple weeks ago, we announced the retirement of Common Ground to help focus our CRM products serving small- to mid-sized nonprofits. Understandably, there have been many questions surrounding the decision to retire Common Ground, including the options available to nonprofits currently using that product and our continued commitment to Salesforce. To provide more information and clarity, Jana Eggers, our Senior VP of Products and Marketing, recently answered the following questions on the Idealware blog.

1. Common Ground seemed to hold a specific, useful niche in the CRM space, and at Idealware, we’re disappointed to see it go. In light of its viability in this market, why did you choose to retire this particular product?
 
After the acquisition of Convio, the combined team evaluated our full product portfolio. For fundraising and CRM products serving small- to mid-sized nonprofits, this meant looking at Common Ground, eTapestry, and The Raiser's Edge. In three months, we reviewed the solutions, evaluated current customer usage, looked at industry reports, and talked to customers about their future needs – all efforts focused on determining which solutions would most drive success and satisfaction for nonprofits.
 
It was a difficult decision, as all of the solutions have strong presence and benefits. And, the Salesforce.com platform was one clear benefit of Common Ground.  In the end, the decision netted down to:

• Decreasing the number overlapping products. We could not define a clear market for Common Ground that did not almost fully overlap with eTapestry and The Raiser’s Edge.
• The amount of investment needed to bring Common Ground to the state customers expect from a full-featured fundraising and CRM solution. It is at an earlier stage than our other two products.
• Number of customers impacted. eTapestry has over 10,000 nonprofits using the product. Common Ground has about 400.

And we also had:

• eTapestry with a proven track record of providing a simple, easy to use, and affordable solution for over 10,000 nonprofits.
• The Raiser’s Edge as the market leader for nonprofits and provides the most complete solution for a nonprofit's fundraising and CRM needs, being used by over 13,000 nonprofits.
• eTapestry and The Raiser’s Edge with integrated Internet capabilities and add-on solutions, and a robust partner and cohort network to lower the cost of deployment and use.

Minimizing the number of customers impacted by any decision and maximizing our customers’ ability to be successful was the key part of our decision.

We are working with all Common Ground clients to discuss their specific options moving forward.
 
2. If Blackbaud felt Common Ground was extraneous, it stands to reason that other products in your line are similarly extraneous—what does the future hold for Luminate CRM, Sphere CRM or other related products in the Blackbaud line?
 
Extraneous is not how we felt about the product. This was a difficult decision and we did not take lightly the impact we would have on customers or partners. The decision came down to us being able to better serve the nonprofit industry by focusing on eTapestry and The Raiser’s Edge in this area.
 
This is not new for us, though some have argued we haven’t done it enough. Sphere CRM is one example of how Blackbaud has refocused a product. After our acquisition of Kintera in 2008, we went through a similar review process and decided to focus that product on the peer-to-peer fundraising space and to stop offering it as a CRM product. Since then, the vast majority of customers who were using the Sphere CRM functionality have moved to other Blackbaud products and are much happier than before.
 
Regarding Sphere, again, we looked at customer impact and market served in this review. Sphere supports over 3500 customers, and specifically serves small to mid-sized nonprofits well. Team Raiser supports larger nonprofits well for their peer-to-peer fundraising needs. The markets are distinct.
 
Regarding Luminate CRM, we are committed to the Salesforce.com platform. We see a group of organizations adopting the platform – a psychographic more than a demographic, in this case. We believe that for those organizations, the Salesforce.com platform is the right solution and we want to support them with the best nonprofit-specific solution on that platform. We have a roadmap for Luminate CRM’s continued development and are integrating it with other Blackbaud offerings, like Blackbaud Direct Marketing and Blackbaud Merchant Solutions. We believe the Salesforce.com platform will continue to play an important role in the nonprofit industry and we will continue to develop on it and integrate our products with it.
 
3. The result of this action is that Blackbaud is consolidating product. In the Content Management Space, you currently have three tools: NetCommunity, Luminate CMS and Sphere CMS. Do you plan to retire some of these products to consolidate that line, as well?
 
Blackbaud has solutions in the online fundraising and engagement space which requires a certain amount of content management functionality to support those needs. Most of our clients use these products in conjunction with another CMS.
 
Let me explain the different markets the products you mention serve:

• Blackbaud NetCommunity only works with The Raiser's Edge and Education Edge. It is optimized to work with these Blackbaud solutions, but it is not a standalone internet marketing and fundraising solution.
• Luminate Online, while integrated with Luminate CRM and soon to be integrated with The Raisers’s Edge, is a standalone solution. This serves the needs of nonprofits that want to start with internet marketing and fundraising independently of their CRM solution.
• Sphere (as covered above in #2) serves the peer-to-peer fundraising needs of small and mid-sized nonprofits.

4. What is Blackbaud’s vision for Common Ground users in April 2014 when the product is discontinued? Will the system be turned off? Should users be looking to migrate to a new system now?
 
First, there is no immediate disruption to Common Ground customers. They do not need to migrate now. We are working with each customer to build individual plans to migrate them efficiently. These plans will include incentives such as implementation, conversion, and comparable pricing.
 
Although we hope that all of our Common Ground customers will move to another Blackbaud solution, we recognize that some may want to pursue other options. We are committed to treating every Common Ground customer, regardless of their choice, with the sincere and thoughtful care they deserve.
 
As a summary:

• Before March 31, 2014, we will work with each Common Ground customer to support their migration to another solution.
• We will not extend current contacts ending before March 31, 2014 past March 31, 2014.
• We will continue to fulfill our contractual obligations to clients with valid contracts past March 2014 through the end of their contract.
• After March 31, 2014 or the end of the contract with a specific customer, whichever is later, that customer’s users will not be able to access the Common Ground package, the support portal, or external applications that run Common Ground Fundraising, like online forms.

We will be addressing questions collected from the Common Ground community during [yesterday's] Common Ground Town Hall meeting and encourage people to attend for the latest updates.
 
5. Is Blackbaud considering making Common Ground available to users beyond the sunset, or retirement, date by either extending the managed package licenses indefinitely, making Common Ground available as a no-cost, unmanaged package through the App Exchange or another platform, and/or releasing the Common Ground code under an open source license?
 
We will not be offering options like these because we don’t believe they are ultimately in the best interest for our customers.
 
6. As you think about the Blackbaud roadmap and continuing to innovate your products, how will you decide what innovations to take on?  As you have a number of different products on different platforms, does your roadmap involve concentrating on specific products, integrating product together, or somehow trying to build features that enhance a number of your products at once?
 
To drive product decisions, we consider many aspects: customer needs, opportunity fit, market and product status, and a business analysis. Consideration of platform is part of this analysis, but not an overriding factor.
 
To drive innovation, we use a Discovery process to go deeper into the customer needs and drive to an understanding of how we can solve those needs well. Product experts across engineering, product management and user experience work together to accomplish this. As an example, it is not uncommon in this process to talk to 30 clients and iterate on 25 prototypes before writing a single line of code. If you want to read more about the general methodology we follow, check out Inspired: How to Create Products that Customers Love.
 
And we are absolutely interested in making sure products that should integrate together do -- like we have with The Raiser's Edge and Blackbaud Net Community, Blackbaud CRM and Blackbaud Internet Solutions, and in the future both The Raiser's Edge and Blackbaud CRM will integrate with Luminate Online.
 
Our guiding principle for our products is for nonprofits to say: ”Because of Blackbaud I spend more time on my mission.”

The Outcomes Business

Blackbaud CEO Marc Chardon and Outcome Guide Hal Williams have joined forces on a Huffington Post series "The Imperfect Storm" to examine the current nonprofit environment. Varying circumstances and key shifts in the sector are coming together to create the potential for continued rough times.

The first shift Marc and Hal identified was nonprofits needing to engage donors. As their article says "Donors don't just want to give money. They want what we call 'personal discovery' that involves a give and take of information, shared by both the donor and the organization. They want to advocate, volunteer, test things out and be a part of the cause. They want, through all of their gifts, to find meaning."

The second shift "nonprofits need to define themselves by their results" is the cornerstone of today's article. Marc and Hal argue that "moving to a clear report card of results, published annually, puts nonprofits in the outcome business, which is where they should be."

In thinking about your organization, how are you addressing these two shifts? Are you consciously engaging all, most, some or any of your donors? How are you reporting back on your successes? What outcomes are you tracking and how?

Read today's full article and share your experiences, ideas and quuestions in the comments below.

Why Should You CARE?

We all have a desire to be connected, to know that what matters to us most is something others also care about. This is especially true in our close relationships, both on a business and personal front.

For those of us passionate about the nonprofit community, being connected, compassionate and caring hold an even deeper meaning. They’re synonymous, and we want those with whom we keep close company, especially our significant others, to selflessly subscribe to our sentiment. What better way of expressing this then when we commune through donating our time and, often more heart-touching, our dollars to those in need.

So, how does this act of caring and sharing apply to you and your organization? Our new research paper, Insights into Integrated Marketing Constituent Behavior, is based on the results of a study Convio conducted with CARE and it reveals that high income, married donors that like dual channels (online and offline) are, indeed, really valuable.

• Dual channel donors give the most: On average, dual channel donors give $123.29 annually, 46 percent of greater value to a nonprofit than direct mail only donors.
• Dual channel donors are married: 72 percent of dual channel donors are married.
• Dual channel donors earn the most: At a household level, 43 percent earn more than $100,000.
• Men are offline, women are online: 55 percent of offline only donors are men; 56 percent of online only donors are women.
• Boomers are flocking to social sites: Boomers are one of the fastest growing segments on social sites, up 60 percent from 2010.

It seems pretty clear to me why you should care. Effectively leveraging integrated, constituent engagement marketing strategies to attract and retain these types of donors pays off, and BIG!

Ask yourself, are you designing and deploying communication efforts that are consciously coordinated, orchestrated and targeted – based on particular audience segments and their individual preferences? Are you engaging in multiple channels, including mobile and social media? Are you actively listening and then clearly responding with what they want to hear?

Because, if you are, imagine all the beautiful music you and your donors can make together. All it takes is perfecting the harmony and keeping rhythm to the same beat.

And the Survey Says...

All roads are heading north! Here at AFP International in the spectacular northwest city of Vancouver, BC, it’s evident from the conference sessions I’ve attended so far that with the economy seemingly back on an upward trajectory, fundraising is also heading in that direction.

Today, the NRC, Nonprofit Research Collaborative, of which Convio is a member, announced the results of our spring survey. In 2011, over half of all the nonprofit organizations surveyed in both the U.S. and Canada saw increases in contributions. In fact, the results indicate that this is the first increase seen in the U.S. in four years. That is indeed great news!

Even better news, more than 70 percent of the organizations surveyed anticipate increases in charitable contributions received in 2012. Still, a third said the economy is the greatest challenge and a looming determinant in what lies ahead.

The sentiment at AFP? I’d say it’s largely optimistic. Yes, nonprofits realize that many of the factors Convio highlights in our 2012 predictions cannot be ignored, but rather embraced: online; mobile; peer-to-peer; and integrated marketing. Scott Harrison from charity: water reinforced that himself in his opening day keynote when he emphasized the need to tell stories and give donors a reason to care about the “why.” Essentially, if you have a compelling story, the money will follow.

My City Made the Top 10 – So What?

Almost every day I see some sort of “These cities made the top 10 because … they are the greatest places to live, they have the most active lifestyles for singles, they raise the most organic chickens,” and so on. If your city makes one of these lists, that is great and good reason to celebrate! Unless, of course, you live in Austin, TX like I do and are seeing the floods of people moving here because of all the “our city is so great” lists we’ve been making as of late. Oh well, the natural ebb of all things great... it’s hard to keep them a secret in today’s cyber world!

On the complete flip side, if your city made the top 10 because of the “worst places to buy shoes” or “worst places for BBQ,” then it takes on a whole different twist. Typically people in those cities aren’t pounding their chests and shouting “we’re so great” from the rooftops.

So what’s the point? When you’re in a city of great, be proud! If you’re not, do something! 

Today we announced our 4th annual ranking of most generous online U.S. cities. Not surprisingly, the top 10 cities didn’t change much year over year from 2010 to 2011. Economic influences have been consistent over the past couple of years, and the online giving numbers stay true to the course.

However there were a few moves of note: Seattle, WA climbed the ladder three spots to be this year’s #1 and also showing northwest corner pride, Bellevue, WA made it back into the top 10 at #9 after slipping to #11 in 2010. Cambridge, MA fell three to #5 and Minneapolis, MN fell out of the top 10 for the first time into the #14 spot.

Our report ranks the 273 cities with total population of more than 100,000 based on per capita online giving and total amount donated through Convio’s online marketing and fundraising suites. The average gift size remained steady in 2011 compared to 2010 at $65, as more than $435 million was donated by people who reside in these major cities. Signs of consumer confidence rising and bank accounts opening, the donors in these cities increased their total online contributions by more than 11 percent over 2010!

As for the bottom 10 cities, similar to the top, there wasn’t a ton of movement, but one surprise is Newark, NJ that slid 18 spots to #267. Bottoming out? Brownsville, TX. After some upward momentum in 2010, they regained their ‘low man on the totem pole’ ranking for 3 out of the 4 years we’ve been reporting this data.

And here’s my challenge to you. Make a difference! While we’re often limited in having a profound influence on outcomes, nonprofits and causes of all kinds are counting on us for every bit we can contribute, whether it’s our time or our dollars. Make your city proud and be proud, no matter where your city ranked in 2011. It’s a new year and you have an opportunity to upwardly influence your city’s 2012 ranking. And since we’re talking about online giving here, I know where you’re reading this so, you are in a perfect position to get started on the right foot with a right mouse click while the year is still young.

As for Austin, the city of all things great, we didn’t make it into the top 10 most generous online U.S. cities. We came in at #12, 3 spots better than 2010 and certainly not too shabby, but that’s not good enough. I, for one, am going to do something about that!

Where did your city land? Check out the complete large city ranking at: www.convio.com/onlinecities.