http://vocuspr.vocus.com/VocusPr30/Publish/515537/BlackbaudNews.xml Current News en-us http://news.vocus.com/click/here.pl?z1370509492&z=950239508 http://news.vocus.com/click/here.pl?z1370509492&z=950239508 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 - Customer Recommendations for Nonprofit Accounting Solutions Result in Two Campbell Awards Two products received coveted Campbell Awards for their exceptional ratings in a recent nationwide survey of approximately 2,400 users of accounting software for nonprofits. Sage Software's Sage MIP Fund Accounting has received a Campbell Award for being the most recommended product among users from nonprofits with annual revenue of at least $5 million. This is Sage MIP Fund Accounting's third-consecutive Campbell Award. The Financial Edge from Blackbaud received a Campbell Award for being the most recommended product among users from nonprofits with annual revenue of less than $5 million. 'We are very pleased to receive the Campbell Award for The Financial Edge, our fund accounting solution developed specifically to handle the complex and unique practices of nonprofit financial management,' said Lou Attanasi, Blackbaud's senior vice president of products. 'We have been partnering with nonprofit organizations for more than 25 years, and it is only through this tight connection with our customers and our focus on innovation that we can continue to offer leading solutions. To be recognized by our customers in this way is an honor and is evidence of our true collaboration with them.' Microsoft Dynamics GP and the nonprofit edition of Sage Software's Peachtree by Sage were also recommended frequently by responding nonprofit staff. 'We are honored to receive such high recognition from our customers,' said Krista Endsley, senior vice president and general manager for Sage Software's Nonprofit Solutions. 'Sage MIP Fund Accounting is designed to improve the daily lives of nonprofit accounting professionals, while our ultimate goal is to help organizations demonstrate financial and organizational accountability to their boards and constituents. Receiving this third consecutive Campbell Award speaks volumes to our product team's efforts to deliver a superior fund accounting solution tailored to not only smaller nonprofits, but also larger organizations.' One key finding of the study is that fully 10% of nonprofits that use commercial solutions for nonprofit accounting now rely primarily on Internet-based solutions for their accounting needs. The remaining 90% of nonprofits use locally-installed software. The trend is toward higher and higher percentages of nonprofits using Internet-based solutions. 'Nonprofit staff members seldom have an open-forum opportunity like this to voice their opinions about the solutions available to them,' said Dirk Rinker, President of Campbell Rinker. 'It is great to learn which software developers set the industry standard for usability and customer service, and we're glad to recognize their efforts with this Campbell Award.' The survey was conducted online between November and December of 2007. The survey gathered information on user satisfaction, pricing preferences, purchasing habits, and organizational scope. Campbell Rinker thoroughly screened respondents to ensure accurate results. Twenty-four percent of survey respondents have final purchase authority for accounting solutions, and more than eight in ten respondents report using their primary accounting solution at least once a week. Campbell Rinker specializes in providing market research to the nonprofit world. As members of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations and the Marketing Research Association, Campbell Rinker follows a code of ethics designed to set an example for others in the research community. Questions and requests for Campbell Rinker can be sent through campbellrinker.com/contact_us.html. Additional survey results are available at campbellrinker.com/temp/2007_SNP_Report.pdf. -END- http://ga0.org/nptimes/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=12955817 http://ga0.org/nptimes/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=12955817 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:57:00 -0400 Finance ... Putting fraud controls in place "Fraud? Us? We don't have much of it. Our controls will prevent it. Managers and board members review reports. Our people know what their responsibilities are. Most would never do it." Those are all noble sentiments. But as David Kilmer, senior applications engineer for Blackbaud Inc., told his audience at the recent Conference for Nonprofits, those common beliefs could well be replaced by five that are better: We don't know how much we have, but it's NOT zero; Our controls will prevent some of it, but a smart thief will often fool the controls; some managers and board members review some reports, sometimes; My people aren't sure what their fraud responsibilities are; and, Most have the potential to do it. In other words, fraud can happen. Because fraud can happen, Kilmer suggested 10 ideas for creating an anti-fraud environment. Assess your own environment; Define acceptable and unacceptable behavior; Have fraud expectations stated and understood; Codes of conduct that require reporting; A fraud policy in effect, documented and practiced; Ethics training; Develop strong internal controls, including employee screening and segregation of duties, prompt, effective review of control reports and monitoring of fraud indicators; Have prevention and early detection skills training; Create an Audit Committee; and, Make sure people know they will be punished http://www.nptimes.com/08april/news-080407-1.html http://www.nptimes.com/08april/news-080407-1.html Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:53:00 -0400 Revenue for the 70 large nonprofit organizations tracked in the Index of National Fundraising Performance by Target Analysis grew a median 1.5% from calendar year 2006 to calendar year 2007, with 61% of the organizations in the index having positive revenue growth. Meanwhile, the number of actual donors dropped again. The report comes after revenue growth of 2.8% the previous year and is below historical average rates of roughly 4% annual growth. When dollar amounts are adjusted for inflation, real index revenue declined a median -2.8% from 2006 to 2007, according to the Target Analysis index. Median index revenue generally parallels national economic performance but tends to grow more slowly than the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during periods of relative economic hardship. As the economy slowed down, people shifted their spending priorities away from charities, compounding the effects of an economic decline on fundraising, according to Tr. In 2007, not only was index revenue growth relatively slow, correlating to a general national economic slowdown, but it also significantly lagged growth in GDP. Index donors declined a median -1% from 2006 to 2007 on top of a -1.4% decline the year before. Only 41% of the organizations in the index saw positive donor growth in 2007. Donors have been on an uninterrupted decline since the third quarter of 2005, when many organizations had a spike in donors related to hurricane Katrina relief efforts. These overall declines in donor counts reflect continued difficulty attracting new contributors. New donor acquisition in the index was down a median -5.1% from 2006 to 2007, on top of a -10% decline the previous year. The animal welfare sector was the only industry sector in the index with positive new donor growth in 2007. Several sectors -- including societal benefit, international relief, and human services -- experienced particularly large declines, according to the report. As a result of recent donor declines, index donor numbers are down a median total -3.1% during the past three years from 2004 to 2007. Only 37% of the organizations in the index had positive donor growth over this three-year period. Ongoing, persistent donor declines have meant that the revenue growth that most index participants experienced in 2006 and 2007 was almost entirely due to increases in revenue per donor rather than increases in donor population. Overall index revenue per donor increased a median 4.1% from 2006 to 2007, on top of a 3% increase the previous year. Almost three-quarters (74%) of the organizations in the index experienced positive revenue per donor growth in 2007. For the full report, go to www.blackbaud.com/targetanalytics *** Clolery, Paul http://www.philanthropy.com/premium/articles/v20/i12/12f00201.htm http://www.philanthropy.com/premium/articles/v20/i12/12f00201.htm Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:23:00 -0400 Charities are working hard to compete for a smaller pot of dollars from companies that match employee donations By David Whelan Charles V. Flemming, a Purdue University alumnus, donor, and volunteer fund raiser, has matching gifts down to a science. The retired pharmaceutical-manufacturing executive, who worked for Schering-Plough and Roche, used matching gifts from his employer to increase his personal contributions of $240,000 to Purdue by another $160,000 during the 1990s before he stopped working. Now when Mr. Flemming meets with other alumni in the pharmaceutical industry and asks them to donate a $20,000 scholarship, for example, he shows them how to make the gift for substantially less money. Since many companies will provide $1 or $2 to match every dollar given by an employee, the typical donor will only have to kick in one-half to one-third of the total gift, Mr. Flemming says. At the most-generous companies, which offer three-to-one matches, the donor might only have to put up a quarter of the money. Companies generally put a limit on how much they will match each year; those limits tend to range anywhere from $500 to $20,000 annually. Matching gifts have long helped charities raise money. They got their start in General Electric's program in 1954. Since then the company has paid $320-million to match employee gifts. Other industrial companies and banks copied General Electric, making gift matching a common perquisite for workers and an alternative form of corporate philanthropy. Today it is still mostly big companies that offer such donations. Colleges like Purdue, which prepares many of its students for science and engineering careers, find it fruitful to tap matching-gift offers at companies where its former students land jobs. But other kinds of charities, which are less likely to know where their donors work, have also had luck with matching gifts, even though this type of corporate giving has become less common in recent years. After the economy slowed in 2001, many big companies slashed or eliminated gift matching for retired workers, while others reduced the amount of money available to match employee donations. Matches Decline In 2000, 150 employers — or 15 percent of the more than 1,000 companies with matching programs — gave $2 or more for every dollar contributed by their employees, according to HEP Development Services, a Leesburg, Va., company that tracks matching gifts. This year only 117, or 8 percent, of the companies match at that rate. And according to a survey conducted by the Council for Aid to Education, the average amount companies paid to match employee gifts to any single college or university shrank from $228,000 in 2001 to $209,000 in 2006. About one in 10 donations to charities can be matched with a corporate gift, according to HEP Development, and anywhere from 4 percent to 12 percent of the donors to most charities work for companies that match employee donations. While those numbers may seem insignificant, they can generate some substantial sums for charities that make a deliberate effort to obtain employer matching gifts. At the American Cancer Society, fund raisers have recently begun to focus on matching gifts. Matching is now mentioned in thank-you letters sent to donors and by call-center representatives who receive gifts by phone. The medical research and advocacy organization has also added employer information to its donor records. The cancer society scans its records for companies that both make generous matches for employee gifts and participate in one of its Relay for Life or other fund-raising events, and then looks for opportunities to increase matching gifts by the company and its employees. While the effort is still evolving, it has yielded impressive returns so far. Three years ago, matching gifts totaled $3-million. That number rose to $5-million the following year and $11-million last year. Still, that is only 1 percent of the charity's total fund-raising income. "There's still improvement that's needed," says Jim Hammelev, the cancer society's director of workplace mission-support initiatives. For example, he says, the charity could do a better job of training "team captains" who help recruit Relay for Life participants to discuss matching gifts with those individuals and help them complete the verification forms that most companies require before issuing a match. Software Support To seek matching gifts, the cancer society and other groups turn to companies like HEP and Blackbaud, a fund-raising software company that offers a program called MatchFinder Plus. The companies provide annually updated computerized listings of corporate matching-gift programs, their requirements, and their restrictions. That information can be checked against the employer information in a charity's donor records with a few key strokes. The companies also provide electronic listings of matching programs that charities can link to from their own Web sites; those listings enable donors to type in the name of their employer and find out if the company will match their gift and what is required. Costs for the services vary: HEP Development charges from $500 to $10,000 per year for its service, depending on the size of the nonprofit organization. Blackbaud's MatchFinder Plus charges a one-time $1,000 fee to cover start-up costs, plus $995 annually. The Detroit Institute of Arts has used such services over the last five years as it stepped up efforts to obtain matching gifts to help rebuild its facility, which re-opened in November. Officials there say the number of such donations has doubled in the past three years, even as local businesses have cut back on matches in the region's stubbornly depressed economy. The institute has succeeded in part by moving away from big businesses to small ones, asking them to match the donations of employees who give $50 or more to become museum members. Betty Stremich, the institute's executive director of development, says matching gifts help encourage donors to keep giving year after year. "Matching gifts increase donor loyalty and pride," she says. "The sheer fact that you are giving $150, but $300 is going in, makes you more of a stakeholder." Not Always Worthwhile But not every charity finds it worthwhile to pursue matches so actively. World Vision, in Federal Way, Wash., which encourages donors to make modest monthly gifts to sponsor children in developing countries, recruits donors with television and radio spots and through the Internet. The charity makes little effort to tell new donors about the option of getting a matching gift from their employer. Even so, World Vision sometimes gets donations matched anyway, and it has added a section on its Web site that allows donors to check whether their employers match donations. But at $2-million out of $2-billion in total donations, matching gifts are not a big priority for the organization's fund raisers. "Right now, asking for the employer, it's further down the list," says Chris Wolff, World Vision's director of employee giving. New York City Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter, spent $800 to add a link to its Web site in September that allows online donors to check if their companies match donations. The mission has always received a slow trickle of matching gifts. But after the link went up, the group received 43 matches compared with only seven in the same period a year earlier. Out of a total of $2.3-million raised last year, $8,000 came from matching gifts, says Tom Hall, the shelter's director of development. "We don't sink or swim on it," he says. "But it's extra money." Bruce Hufford, Purdue University's director of annual giving, says he has been able to increase matching gifts from $2.3-million to $2.9-million over the past three years. That money, separate from larger matching gifts for specific needs like scholarships, is a significant portion of the $22-million donated to the annual fund each year. But getting the matching gifts hasn't been easy, he says. Purdue has 98 percent of home addresses for alumni, but it only has employer information for about half of them, and much of that data is out of date. Another challenge is the wide variation in restrictions that companies place on employees who want their donations matched, with many requiring forms and receipts, which can make it difficult for donors and charities to get the matching funds. What's more, Mr. Hufford has found that many companies have scaled back their matching-gift programs, or they only match donations to certain causes, like disaster relief. Mr. Hufford uses direct mail to solicit matching gifts to his annual fund. If he knows that an alumnus works for General Electric, which provides a dollar-for-dollar match, he sends an extra reminder with the annual appeal to that potential donor with information about the company's matching-gift program. Alumni who receive the reminder are 10 percent more likely to respond to the mailing than recipients who don't receive it, Mr. Hufford says. If those who get the reminders don't respond, Mr. Hufford mails another reminder 60 days later. That mailing generates a matching gift from half of the recipients. Sometimes matching-gift appeals yield big returns. In his most successful effort, Mr. Hufford turned a $250,000 gift from a retired Eli Lilly executive into a $750,000 contribution by spreading it over five years. The company provided a two-to-one match, a maximum $100,000 annually, for each of the five years. "We are grateful to the companies that do it, and employees like it," Mr. Hufford says of matching gifts. "But it's not all smooth sailing. You have to work at it." Matching each employee dollar with a $2 or $3 donation is relatively rare among companies. Seventy-seven percent of companies offered a one-to-one match last year, with 7 percent providing $2 and another 0.9 percent giving $3 for every employee dollar, according to a Blackbaud survey of more than 25,000 companies and subsidiaries with matching-gift programs. Some of the most generous employers are not companies but charitable foundations. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for example, provides $5 for every dollar an employee donates, up to $50,000 per year, according to HEP Development. And some are very tiny. Douglas Quine, who runs a small consulting company called Triskelion, in Bethel, Conn., offers the most generous matching program in HEP's listings. Triskelion chips in $9 for every dollar donated. Mr. Quine says that when his company started offering to match employee gifts, charities started aggressively courting him and his employees for donations. One charity even volunteered to lend the first dollar to get the nine in matches. "That sounded illegal," Mr. Quine says. His company, which now has shrunk to only a few full-time employees, paid out $5,320 last year in matching gifts. "We're not single-handedly going to cure malaria," he says. Exxon is one big company that likes to publicize its matching program, which gives $3 for every dollar donated by employees to colleges and universities and also provides a one-to-one match for contributions to arts organizations, says Bill Carpenter, a program officer at the ExxonMobil Foundation. Last year the foundation paid $24-million to match higher-education donations by 5,760 employees who contributed to 954 colleges and universities. The foundation donated another $1.4-million to match gifts to arts groups. The matches are a sizable portion of the $138-million that the Irving, Tex., company donated to charities last year. Mr. Carpenter says the program is popular with employees and job candidates, and it generates recognition for the company and employees' generosity. But Mr. Carpenter says he is well aware that ExxonMobil's generous match makes him and every other employee a target, especially as charities refine their methods: "Several of the large universities go after our employees," he says. Whelan, David http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v20/i12/12003301.htm http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v20/i12/12003301.htm Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:42:00 -0400 As traditional fund-raising methods falter, charities look for new ways to appeal to online donors By Holly Hall This week the Nature Conservancy will kick off a campaign to ask online donors to give $1 apiece to help the charity plant a billion trees in Brazil's rain forest. But conservancy officials have no idea if the electronic drive will meet its goal of raising $1-million. The Plant a Billion campaign is designed to attract people who have never previously given to the environmental organization. But it could "go gangbusters or be a flop," says Sue Citro, the charity's senior manager for digital membership. For an organization that raises more money than all but a handful of charities, such uncertainty is unusual. But at big charities across the country, fund raisers face that same queasy feeling as they try to figure out a solution to an unsettling reality. Traditional approaches to seeking new donors by mail or telephone are growing less effective and more expensive every year, yet online appeals are not raising enough to replace them. "Direct mail is on life support," says Michael Hoffman, chief executive of See3, a Chicago consulting firm that specializes in nonprofit fund raising and communications. "Charities that have relied on direct mail to get new donors have to start thinking about what's next, or they will wake up one day and find that an aggressive start-up has taken their place." Mailings Lose Ground Plenty of charities still raise most of their contributions with direct mail, but mass mailings are losing their power to attract new supporters. In 2007, the number of new donors who responded to charity mailings dropped by a median of 6.2 percent in a study of 72 of the nation's biggest charities, on top of another 10.4-percent median drop in 2006. Online fund raising offers a promising alternative, especially since people who make their first gift to charity online give one and a half times as much as those whose first gift was made by mail, according to Target Analytics, a Boston company that conducted the studies of both online and direct-mail results. Repeat gifts by online donors also tend to be larger. But persuading donors to give online for the first time is not easy, says Ettore Rossetti, associate director of Internet marketing at Save the Children. The charity has solicited donations from people who signed an online petition to help needy children, but that approach has achieved only "mixed success," he says. "Advocacy people tend to be engaged in lending their voice, not necessarily opening their wallet." To figure out what approaches will attract first-time donors, many charities are hiring extra staff members to devise and test new ideas, and are upgrading software to analyze the results. Until such solicitations become more lucrative, however, most charities are still spending about as much as they did on direct mail, telemarketing, and other traditional ways of finding new donors. "I get executive directors all the time who want to abandon direct-mail acquisition completely," says Jeff Patrick, president of Common Knowledge, a San Francisco company that advises charities on online fund raising and marketing. "Online fund raising will continue to grow, but it will not replace direct mail in five years," Mr. Patrick predicts. The movement from offline to online giving, he adds, "is an evolution, not a revolution." Other fund-raising experts agree that online fund raising has a long way to go before it becomes a successful way to attract new donors. "This is an extremely confusing period," says Mark Rovner, president of Sea Change Strategies, a Takoma Park, Md., fund-raising consulting company. "The old ways aren't working, and the new ways are not clear." Still, fund raisers have found some new approaches in recent months that are helping them better attract donors who can eventually become the lifeblood of an organization. Among them: Make pitches in person. World Vision, the international relief group, asks people who make monthly gifts to "sponsor" a needy child overseas to volunteer to seek donations from other people. Two and a half years ago, the charity started recruiting people to give presentations about monthly giving to their colleagues at work or church. People who give at least eight presentations a year are named "Child Ambassadors." Members of the ambassador group, which has grown to 255 people, must apply for the volunteer position and agree to a background check. Last year, volunteers recruited more than 4,000 new monthly donors. Vicki Casper, a flight attendant at Southwest Airlines, is World Vision's most successful recruiter. She has single-handedly persuaded 400 people in the past two years to become monthly donors, including a passenger on a recent flight to Indianapolis. He offered to sponsor a dozen children for at least a year and, as he got off the plane, handed Ms. Casper checks for each child totaling more than $5,000. If her results don't attest to Ms. Casper's dedication, the recorded greeting on her cell phone does: "Hi, this is Vicki Casper, World Vision Child Ambassador, standing as a link between you and the poor and needy of this world." With the ambassadors, "we've seen big potential," says Miyon Kautz, World Vision's national director of volunteers. In fact, she says, the charity has just finished training three new staff members who will recruit ambassadors regionally. The goal for each region: obtaining 1,000 new monthly donors over the next 12 months. Tap existing online donors. Charities can take a lesson from the "member-get-a-member" drives held by professional societies, says Kevin Whorton, a Bethesda, Md., consultant. After running direct-mail fund raising at Catholic Relief Services for several years, Mr. Whorton now advises associations. Holding contests and offering prizes or other rewards can improve charities' ability to get donors engaged in finding new supporters, he says. As an example, he points to the National Association of Home Builders' annual membership day, in which local branches compete during the year to see which one can sign up the most new members. Winners receive modest prizes, such as an upgrade to a better hotel at the association's annual conference or a fleece jacket, notes Mr. Whorton. The most recent membership day yielded more than 12,000 new members. "It is fascinating to me how the member-get-a-member thing, which is an old-school technique, gets new traction in this new world of online relationships," says Mr. Hoffman, the consultant. He is now working with American Jewish World Service, an international relief group, to design an online campaign to persuade the charity's donors to get involved in finding new supporters. Mr. Hoffman suggests, based on his research into what makes such campaigns successful for associations, that charities include in their pitches to existing supporters incentives such as the chance to win a trip, a clear description of what difference donors' participation will make, easy-to-use online tools, and concrete goals for enlisting new donors. "You can't just say, 'Tell your friends about this great organization,'" Mr. Hoffman says. "It is far better to say, 'Help us recruit 500 new members by June 1 so we can send 5,000 mosquito nets to Africa at the beginning of mosquito season to fight malaria.'" Couple advocacy projects with online fund raising. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America knew that anti-abortion protesters planned to show up at 10 of the charity's clinics over 40 days in the fall, so it used the occasion to start "I am Emily X," an online video diary and blog. The site featured videotaped statements from Planned Parenthood clinic workers who described the effects of the demonstration on both themselves and patients, some of whom were harassed by the protesters. Visitors to the site were invited to post comments and messages to the clinics throughout the protest, and they were asked to pledge a small amount of money, anywhere from 5 cents to $10, for each of the 511 protesters Planned Parenthood counted in front of its clinics. The site, coupled with e-mail appeals about the project, raised $96,531, and more than half of those who gave were new donors, says Tom Subak, Planned Parenthood's vice president for online services. "We got a phenomenal response." Test fund-raising elements of Web sites. Amnesty International is using new software to randomly send online visitors to slightly different versions of a single Web page so it can see which online elements do the most to persuade people to make a donation or visit other parts of the organization's site. After two months, Amnesty found a version of its donation page that increased the number of people who made a gift from 35 to 55 percent, says Steve Daigneault, managing director of Internet communications. In the month of December alone, he says, Amnesty raised $128,000 more with the improved donation page; than it would have otherwise. Those returns, he adds, are many times greater than the cost of the software. Mr. Daigneault is now conducting additional tests to improve the organization's online action center, where visitors can sign petitions and engage in other forms of advocacy; that part of the site is the main way in which Amnesty collects e-mail addresses of potential donors. "I don't think many nonprofits realize how important this is," he says of the tests. "Once people catch on, it will be huge." Get a celebrity to talk up an online appeal. Save the Children recruited 1,800 new donors and generated more than $50,000 with an online campaign that enabled visitors to its Web site to download or send electronic Valentine's Day cards in exchange for a donation of $1 or more. But the holiday alone was not enough to make the online greeting cards work for the children's charity. The key to success, Mr. Rossetti says, was the actress Julianne Moore, who agreed to lend her support to the effort. To that end, she promoted the online cards when she appeared on The View, a popular daytime current-events show aimed at women. The actress has agreed to promote the e-cards again next year. Do a year-end campaign online. Planned Parenthood has recruited thousands of new donors by sending a series of e-mail messages during the final month of the year. In December, before asking for any money, the charity sent 50,000 people a survey via e-mail to assess their interest in Planned Parenthood programs. That was followed by two other e-mail messages: a holiday greeting and a link to a YouTube video slide show highlighting the charity's work over the past year. A fourth message asked for a donation. The monthlong online campaign raised $1.6-million, including more than $500,000 in a single day, December 31. Out of the 8,957 donors, more than 1,200 contributors who gave a total of $246,000 last year were new to the organization. The online year-end campaign has proven to be "one of our primary recruitment methods," says Mr. Subak, the charity's vice president for online services. Promote online projects in social networks. Internet Sexuality Information Services, an Oakland, Calif., group, initially drew few entries when it asked people age 15 to 30 to enter an online video contest to express their views on sex education. That began to change after two staff members began combing through social-networking sites, commenting on blogs, searching online news outlets, writing to reporters, and sharing the group's own news — that it had received the first 10 entries, for example. By the time the deadline for entries passed three months later, the charity had received 70 entries. While the video contest was not designed to raise money, the publicity efforts are helping the group attract contributions from new donors, says Deb Levine, executive director of the organization. Three foundations have asked the group to submit proposals, two for six-figure grants. "This is a result of the visibility we generated through the contest and our positioning ourselves as thought leaders online," she says. Build a dedicated Web site. Some charities are creating stand-alone Web sites for specific projects, rather than just sending people to find information on one big site. The separate sites can be promoted to potential donors with related interests. Avodah: the Jewish Service Corps, which involves young people in yearlong public-service projects in Chicago, New York, and Washington, has a new Web site that promotes its plan to start working in New Orleans in September. The charity tested the new site in December, using it to raise $15,000 to match a grant of the same amount contributed by an anonymous donor. "People went to this site who we wouldn't have contact with normally," says Ilanit Gerblich Kalir, Avodah's associate executive director. She says that the charity is seeking another challenge grant and plans to promote the site more aggressively online in coming months to people who have an interest in New Orleans and relief work. "This is a low-cost way to get the word out to an audience you would otherwise not reach," says Ms. Kalir. "We are a very small organization. We don't have the money to do acquisition with direct mail." Hall, Holly http://www.nptimes.com/dishoftheday/story2_08.html http://www.nptimes.com/dishoftheday/story2_08.html Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:13:00 -0400 Fundraising conglomerate Blackbaud announced the availability of an exclusively-SaaS (software as a service) version of its Web site management solution Blackbaud® NetCommunity™. The “Universal” version will provide a Blackbaud solution for Internet marketing and communications to nonprofits with third-party CRM databases without sacrificing a holistic view of constituents, according to the company. Leveraging its Infinity platform, Blackbaud® NetCommunity Universal™ (formerly code-named “Scorpio”) will enable distributed executive reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs), data exchange through an open Web services API, and automated batch processes for rapid processing and data integrity protection. Blackbaud NetCommunity Universal enables organizations that rely on online communication and fundraising to formulate and execute strategic, integrated multi-channel marketing campaigns by increasing data accessibility and response rates, and enhancing Internet communications. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com. Clolery, Paul http://www.charlestonbusiness.com/pub/14_6/news/11652-1.html http://www.charlestonbusiness.com/pub/14_6/news/11652-1.html Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400 In his two years at the helm of Blackbaud Inc., President and CEO Marc Chardon has worked to grow the company, which designs software specifically for nonprofit organizations, by finding ways to broaden its customer base. In addition, Chardon brings to the company an intimate understanding of the nonprofit world that stems from his family history. Throughout its more than 25-year history, Blackbaud has engineered its software to serve primarily mid-size nonprofits. However, key acquisitions this yeareTapestry, Target Software and Target Analysis Grouphave opened the door for Blackbaud to serve the full spectrum of the nonprofit sector, as well as to improve upon its current products and services. In May 2007 the company released a new technology platform that will boost the performance of existing software and support new software that can more easily be customized and will allow for heightened levels of IT security. I think I was brought here (to Blackbaud) to identify how to serve more customers and service existing customers more deeply, said Chardon, who worked as an executive with Microsoft from 1998 to 2005. Thats what I did at Microsoft. Im adding on to the foundation built by founder and former CEO Tony Bakker and former CEO Robert J. Sywolski. In 2005, Blackbauds first year as a public company, it generated $166 million in revenue. In 2006, Chardons first full year as CEO, annual sales increased nearly 16% to $192 million. The total revenue reported for the third quarter this year is 36% higher than what was reported for the same period in 2006. And since 2005, the companys customer base has increased by nearly 50% from 13,000 to 19,000, in part, because of the acquisitions of eTapestry and Target. In the two years prior to accepting his current position, Chardon served as CFO of Microsoft's $11 billion Information Worker Business. In that role, he was responsible for developing a sustainable growth strategy and plan for the business. Chardon joined Microsoft in 1998 as general manager of Microsoft France, then a 650-person subsidiary. Before his Microsoft stint, Chardon spent 14 years with Digital Equipment in a variety of international marketing, business, and operational roles, including head of corporate strategy and general manager of Digital France. Chardon, who graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics and holds dual citizenship in France and the United States, grew up in Massachusetts and later spent seven years working in Europe. A Charleston resident, he has two children and was married to Marnie Ross in February. Chardon enjoys boating and is a member of Charlestons chapter of Confrrie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, a society of Burgundy wine enthusiasts. He also serves on the Board of Governors for the College of Charleston School of Business and Economics. Chardons understanding of the world of nonprofits extends far beyond his expertise in creating software for them. As a young man, Chardon volunteered with the Waterfront Historic Area LeaguE, a nonprofit founded in the 1960s by his grandmother, Sarah Delano, to preserve the historic whaling town of New Bedford, Mass. Later, Chardon volunteered with Alternatives to Violence, a worldwide association of volunteer groups offering experiential workshops in conflict resolution, responses to violence and personal growth. I think you cant work (at Blackbaud) convincingly in a visible role without knowing what its like in the nonprofit world, Chardon said. Blackbaud recently received the South Carolina Lowcountry Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals 2007 Outstanding Business Award for its impact on philanthropy in the Charleston community. In addition, Blackbauds endowment with the Coastal Community Fund topped $1 million. At a certain point in your life when youve had a particular amount of success, its easy to forget how fortunate we are to have had the education and opportunities that got us where we are, Chardon said. With power and success comes a responsibility to give back to the community. Kristen Poland is a staff writer for SCBIZ. E-mail her at kpoland@setcommedia.com. Kristen Poland