Back to School

Freshly sharpened pencils.  Check.
Notebooks.  Check.
Scientific Calculator.  Check.
45 pound backpack filled to zipper ripping capacity.  Check.

The kids are back in school. Which means that fall is upon us and end of year fundraising is right around the corner. Are you ready? Do you have your end of year fundraising checklist?  Well if not, then put on those new school shoes and get ready!

September: Clear the Decks

• Conduct a database audit: make sure supporter records are up to date and identify any missing data records and amend them
• Make sure you have email, street addresses and phone numbers for supporters—when you get ready to run a multi channel campaign is NOT the time to discover you don’t have more than one way to reach a supporter.  Plenty of appending services out there that can help you with that NOW.

October: Plan for Year End Greatness

• Identify campaign concept and case for support
• Write campaign copy and design creative
• Define segmentation strategy
• Discuss matching program with board members
• Plan messaging within other stewardship pieces and website

Next month in our quarterly magazine, npENGAGE, we’ll have November and December specific tips and action items for a successful end of year campaign. And if you are coming to bbcon (Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in DC), lucky you – you’ll get a first look! 

Blackbaud and Convio: Stronger Together

Not even a whole summer on the Blackbaud team, and we are knocking things out left and right. Last month we shared our “quick wins” and today we’re ready to share our “stronger together” initiatives. 

Our “stronger together” initiatives are key areas where we knew we could plan better solutions once we put our minds together.  Jana Eggers, Sr. VP of Products and Marketing, says it best.

In summary,

1. We’re improving duplicate management for Blackbaud CRM by using the Luminate name database.
2. We are adding a complimentary Wealth Audit for Luminate CRM and Common Ground in August.
3. In November we will launch integration between the Financial Edge and Common Ground to enable a seamless post between the two systems and reduce reconciliation time.

For more information on our integration or any of the Blackbaud products, be sure to read the KnowHow product blog. If you’d like to provide feedback (and we hope you will), please do so in the comments below or on our Product Discovery page which now includes the Luminate and Common Ground suites.

Integration for the (quick) win

What are the three most important factors to a successful integration? Speed, speed and speed.

With our heads down and noses to the grindstone, we’ve taken that mantra very seriously for the past month. And we’re finally ready to (briefly) come up for air and share our first results with you.

Our “quick wins” integration initiative is doing exactly what it was intended to do – identify and execute on actions that in extremely short order can improve your ability to serve your mission. Our quick wins include

• Integrate Raiser’s Edge and Luminate Online to smooth the process, reduce constituent duplicates and improve data quality, for release in Q1 2013.
• Extend complimentary Data Health Check to Convio products by Q4 2012.
• Improve data warehousing and reporting offering for large direct marketers in Q3 2012.
• Enable Blackbaud Merchant Services for Convio customers by Q1 2013.
• Combine bbcon and Convio Summit for 2012.

Each one is exciting in its own right and I’m sure that list has only whet your curiosity whistle. Hop on over to our product blog, Blackbaud KnowHow, or watch this short video by our Senior VP of Products and Marketing, Jana Eggers, to learn more. And please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below or through the form on our integration web page.

Commencement

This week marks the end of Convio as a distinct company. This is a week of lasts. The last exec staff meeting on Monday, the last Donut/Bagel Tuesday, my last managers meeting on Wednesday, my last 1:1’s on Thursday, culminated with a Convio Closing Ceremonies party on Friday. It feels like graduation week did in high school, except nobody is signing my yearbook and there’s no cap and gown.

When I arrived here almost four years ago (time flies when you are in the best job you’ve ever had) Convio was a gawky teenager—through the start up angst, but not quite ready to be a grown up either. So I did what I do best from a professional standpoint, I helped it mature. The marketing team had a lot of talent already when I got here, but was a little short on process. It was particularly short on processes that could SCALE. And when you’re trying to grow, and grow fast, you have to get really good at lather, rinse, repeat. Enter me. I’m proud of our results, and I’m proud of my team.

The executive team at Convio is really something special.  I’m sure everybody thinks that about the people they work with, but in 25 years of doing this I have to say this is the best TEAM I’ve ever worked with. Gene Austin did that, and for that I will be forever grateful. He hired good people, but he didn’t hire superstar ball hogs. He hired the best TEAM. And then he made them better, both as individuals and as team players. Kind of like the 1980 US Hockey team, but without the throwing up at practice. My peers have made this job extraordinary and I thank each and every one of them, particularly those who will leave us: Dave Hart, Jim Offerdahl and Vinay Bhagat. I will miss them and I will miss this team. I’m glad that most of my pals will be part of Blackbaud, although we won’t be sitting around the table together as much as we used to.

Monday marks the first day of a new era, and like a high school senior, I’m anxious, excited, and worried about all the stuff I don’t know. Which, when I think about it is pretty much like every job I’ve ever taken. And if history serves, the jobs I took where I was the most anxious, and feeling the most over my head have always turned out to be the best jobs. So I’m sure this will be no exception. I’m looking forward to all the great things we can do together with all of this combined talent. While competing with Blackbaud has at times been fun, I’m actually looking forward to putting all that competitive energy into something else.

This week is for saying goodbye and preparing to move on. Commencement, we called it in 12th grade. I always thought that was a funny word for the end. But now I realize it really is just the beginning.

Integrated Marketing - It's Everywhere!

I don’t know how many of you have bought a car recently, but have you ever noticed that BEFORE you actually buy the car, you don’t really notice how many are on the road? And then once you own it, it seems as though every car that catches your eye is the very same one you thought was so unique? It’s uncanny.

I’ve noticed the same phenomena occurring when it comes to “Integrated Marketing.” It seemed when we kicked off the idea of this board back in October there were lots of people talking about this topic, but the actual number of good case studies and thoughtful research were few and far between. But seemingly overnight every publication I pick up is featuring great content.

But unlike my car example, when you are depressed realizing that every car looks like yours, I view this as a GREAT development, because we all know there’s no cornering the market on a great, innovative idea and you never get tired of seeing more.

This month's Fundraising Success cover story, "Healthy Fundraising,” features two organizations in the health field that have both seen some amazing results with recent multi channel, integrated marketing campaigns. In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m proud to say that CaringBridge is a Convio client, so of course I am thrilled to see their work showcased, knowing that Convio has some small part in powering it. The second organization, HealthConnect One (not a Convio client but now they are on my prospect list) provides an interesting twist on the definition of “channel”-- by viewing their Board of Directors as just that— and putting that channel to work.

Read on to see how both these organizations got spectacular results out of both these multi channel, integrated efforts.

This post originally appeared on the IMAB Blog.