Choice + money = all sorts of goodness.

That goodness just got a bit gooder for our do-gooder clients with the addition of Braintree Payments as a payment processor option. Now our clients have the choice of PayPal Pro, Authorize.net, or Braintree when it comes to folks swiping their credit cards virtually to support their cause.

Why Braintree? It’s not just for the name which makes us feel smart and earthy every time we say it. They’ve developed quite a rep for being both developer-friendly and customer-friendly. Just check out to what Pascal Finette, Director of Mozilla Labs at Mozilla, makers of the Firefox browser you just might be using to read this, had to say about Braintree:

Goodness AND awesomeness. That’s quite a one-two punch – and now it’s available in Soapbox.

If you’d like to see a list of this growing community of socially responsible businesses, the new BenefitCorp.net website will grant that wish. And given that their Benefit Corp search directory is fed live from B Lab’s CRM database—Salesforce.com— you’ll be able to see the list automagically grow almost before your eyes as more and more organizations join the ranks.

You can also explore B Lab’s other resources such as a directory of attorneys that help organizations pursue Benefit Corp status or a list of third party standards relevant for current Benefit Corps.

These search directories are powered by PICnet’s homegrown Salesforce Search tool which allows you to pull data from any one object in Salesforce to your website, removing the need to update lists in multiple places. With Salesforce Search, your Salesforce instance can act as your database of record for your website to display lists of members, recent donors, pledge signers, even images or files from your Salesforce instance!

Contact us to learn how your website can get in on this love with our Salesforce Search tool.

If you’re not already using Salesforce.com, visit the Salesforce Foundation’s website to learn more about how your organization can get started with this amazing CRM tool. And since it’s donated to 501(c)(3) organizations, and deeply discounted for certified B Corps, there’s no reason to wait!

Visit B Lab’s website to learn more about socially responsible businesses.

Did we mention that PICnet has been a proud B Corp since 2010?

But don’t just take our word for it. PICnet had the pleasure of working with New York-based non-profit, The Bridge, on their handsome new site. Here’s what they said.

“Soapbox was exactly what we were looking for in terms of sophisticated and search friendly design. We are thrilled with the way our new site looks and functions. Thanks to our PICnet team!”  - Ann R. Hyatt, Director of Development & External Relations, The Bridge

What got Ann so excited? First, let’s look at the before and after shots.

Before

After

Quite the improvement, right? But it’s not just the aesthetics that make a great site. Let’s dive deeper.

As an organization dedicated to the incredible task of changing the lives of the most vulnerable–”people with serious mental illness or substance abuse, the homeless, and people with HIV/AIDS”, The Bridge understands the important role that their website plays in 1) providing easy access to resources to those who need it while 2) raising awareness about the transformative power of rehabilitative services which are woefully underfunded.

Migrating to our Non-Profit Soapbox CMS afforded The Bridge a virtual transformation of their own, with the following benefits:

1. improving user accessibility
   The old Bridge site was heavily image based which made pages load at a crawling pace and didn’t allow users to copy useful text and resources easily. The new site is much more intuitive to browse and find the information you need quickly.
2. improving SEO
   Along the same lines, if a site is difficult for users, it’s difficult for Google to crawl as well. The new site opens up a wealth of text-based resources to search engines and will help more of those in need find what they need.
3. easy to use CMS
   The Bridge staff struggled to keep their site populated with fresh, compelling content with their old clunky platform, but now that they have the power of Joomla and Non-Profit Soapbox behind them, they are happy accidental techies.
4. adding blogging and commenting functionality
   With their upgraded CMS, The Bridge is now able to maintain two vibrant blogs (main blog and a program blog) to spark conversation around the issues they care about.
5. leveraging embedded media
   Again, thanks to Non-Profit Soapbox, The Bridge can now easily include embedded media such as YouTube clips and slideshare items like on this page.
6. getting on the social bandwagon
   Following The Bridge on Twitter is as easy as visiting their homepage, thanks to their ever-useful Twitter feed of recent tweets.
7. learning from your audience
   How often do you get a chance to take a step back and reevaluate your website strategy? Take a cue from The Bridge: a redesign is a great opportunity to work with focus groups to get feedback and direction for your new site.
8. capitalizing on the wow factor
   Just look at it! W-O-W!

Now that you’ve got the argument down, get on that Soapbox!

I organize the meetings for the DC “Accidental Techies” on the fourth Thursday of every month while my co-worker, Lauren Grau, coordinates the San Francisco NTENers one night each month.  The NTEN Happy Hours are a great way to meet more people in your field, learn something new about non-profit management, and keep up with today’s ever-changing technology. And don’t worry; you don’t have to be an NTEN member to join, so invite your friends!

This week is a very busy one on the PICnet social calendar as both Lauren and I have happy hours. Find details below.

Washington DC NTEN January 2012 Happy Hour

When: Thursday, January 26, 2012

Time: 6:00 pm EST

Where: Science Club – 1136 19th Street, NW Washington, DC

What: This month’s speaker, Andrew Hunt of AGH Strategies, will be talking about solving problems that go beyond technology. As always, we’ll have great appetizers and happy hour specials for all to enjoy!

RSVP here.

San Francisco NTEN January 2012 Happy Hour

When: Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Time: 6:00 pm PST

Where: John Colins – 138 Minna Street (between New Montgomery & Third Streets) San Francisco, CA

What: Melissa Roberts from Free Range Studios will be discussing the usefulness and relevance of mobile apps.

RSVP here.

If you’re in the DC or SF areas, I hope you can join us for these great events – see you there!  If not, check out this list to find your local Tech Club: http://www.nten.org/techclub

One of the things we’ve documented are the record types utilized by the NPSP.  These record types are important, as we’re able to have our Soapbox service pass event registrations, petitions, donations, and more through Salesforce.  This seemed a little difficult for us to find, and we’ve been seeing some inconsistencies in the creation of record types in the NPSP (I think others have as well), so I thought we’d document what we’ve found.

Have others found similar differences between these NPSP installations?

Now, let’s get to the real business at hand:  what can be done now to ensure technology service prices go down, not up, in an era of mega consolidation?  Our answer:  a fresh approach with a dose of healthy competition.

I’ve been hanging around our non-profit sector for many years.  Heck, I still remember walking into Ed Batista and Holly Ross’s N-TEN office back in 2004, complaining about the lack of open source software support in the sector while Ed drew his famous nptech circles on a piece of scratch paper.  I remember going to some of the first events organized by our friends at Aspiration Tech, where the promise of innovative and free (as in “liberty”) technology was the buzz.

Throughout the years, however, it seems to me that prices seem to have remained flat (or worse, gone up).  I think our own Tim Forbes summed up how many organizations feel in his recent blog post “We are the 99%: extending the benefits of nonprofit tech beyond the few“.  The bells and whistles organizations are presented at conferences are always enticing, but when the price tag comes out, you can hear the air of hope sucked out of a room full of budget-strapped non-profit leaders.

Back in 2004, I expected that as companies like GetActive, Kintera, eTapestry, and others were bought, their purchases would represent a market focus on lowering prices and increasing innovation.  Today, I’m not sure that’s what ended up happening.

More importantly, while “mid-market” and “large” organizations might be the targets for NASDAQ traded companies, I see that the vast majority of organizations (most all of them small-to-mid-sized) continue to be under-served.  I expected the reverse to happen.  I figured that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would enter the scene with dramatic fashion, preferably with a lightening bolt or something awe inspiring, and impressively flex a downward force on prices, opening the doors to small organizations whose passions are missions are equally as important as the top 10% of our sector.

Unfortunately, Adam Smith seems to have been busy trying to deal with other sectors’ woes recently.

As the market behemoths merge, a new era of opportunity opens for nimble companies to dive in and fill the gaps left in the marketplace.  With platform-as-a-service offerings growing, new companies no longer need to invest large sums of money into hardware, networking, etc.  Additionally, since new players don’t have a legacy client base to migrate from earlier or conflicting products, they’re able to turn more quickly with the changing winds of the market’s needs.

Since 2001, we’ve been focused on delivering effective and affordable website management tools to the non-profit sector.  We’ve been able to achieve this by growing in a sustainable manner (a business practice we follow with our fellow certified B Corporations), wholly owned by our company’s leadership (not outside investors) and by contributing to and working closely with open source software communities which enables us to lower costs.

In 2012, we’ll continue in that tradition by extending our services to areas in which organizations are looking for affordable options.  We will offer a new product to the non-profit sector that will provide a true choice to small and mid-sized organizations looking for the cornerstones of their fundraising and communications systems.  This offering will work together as a cohesive unit, not as separate puzzle pieces that need to be patched together to work properly.  By doing so, we aim to give organizations an opportunity to have an integrated, 360-degree view of their community engagement.

Today’s Blackbaud-Convio merger news isn’t the catalyst for our next step for non-profits, but it’s certainly a motivator.  It’s a call to action for our sector’s technology providers to continue to pursue more sustainable and affordable solutions, and to promote competition.

I’m excited to be on this journey, and I look forward to fulfilling the goals Grey and I created when we first started PICnet:  every organization, no matter its size, should have access to effective and affordable technology that enable them to more efficiently achieve their missions.

And then you look at the price tags being charged to leverage all of this fancy, powerful stuff. It can be staggering. It isn’t uncommon for us to attend conferences and sit in rooms with panel discussions showing off a nonprofit’s custom-built solution to integrate their website, constituent relationship management system, email marketing platform, and other communication channels. The screenshots are slick. The crowd is wowed. The mind races with the possibilities for one’s own organization.

Until the price tag is quoted. It’s usually toward the end of the presentation. It’s often mentioned almost as an afterthought.

“We paid $100,000 to a web development firm just for the front end web interface. The CRM setup was separate.”

Or, “we raised $200,000 for this implementation.”

Staggering. And everyone leaves the room feeling as if they live in a two-room shack and just watched an episode of Cribs that highlighted what they can never have. It’s all great and impressive and inspiring – but the real question rolling around in everyone’s head as they hit the hallway to go to the next session is:

“Damn! How in the world could they raise six figures for a web project?!?”

We usually see the 1% on stage at those demonstrations. They’re the big organizations whose names everyone knows. They have crazy amounts of supporters and large piles of cash. Or they are one of the lucky few who landed some angel donor with a broader vision and deeper pockets than most.

Even when we’re not being wowed by price tags for custom build outs at conferences, we’re wowed by price tags for off-the-shelf CRM/web integration solutions that cost an arm and a leg. And with the news today of Blackbaud buying out Convio, we’ll be curious to see if the reduced number of players in the marketplace means that cost is going to go up by the other leg.

We’re not alone in recognizing this. Our good friends over at Big Duck were concerned enough about the trend that they proclaimed that “Just as the middle class in America is disappearing, so too are mid-level websites.” They bemoan the great divide between the haves and the have nots in the nonprofit web world: those who are on stage at conferences or dropping thousands a year on off-the-shelf solutions and the rest who are cobbling together web communications tools with spit and bailing wire.

We never liked spit or bailing wire.

It doesn’t need to be like this. The industry can do better to serve more nonprofits with powerful tools at fair and reasonable prices so more than just the few can take advantage of what is possible.

PICnet has made a start. With our web integrations with Salesforce, nonprofits can accept donations, manage event registrations, run petition campaigns, search and display data from any Salesforce object, and submit data to any Salesforce object all seamlessly from their website – all for a reasonable price.

And at the dawn of 2012, we’re pledging to push even harder this year to innovate tools to make nonprofits more efficient and effective – and to offer them at prices nonprofits can afford.

We are the 99% – and we’re here to serve the 99%.

This Nonprofit Technology Teach-In aims to help you learn new techniques and best practices to take advantage of online tools for your work. Aspiration events are famously hands-on, highly interactive and follow a question-driven format.

Together you’ll tackle the following questions:

• How can I write a good email message and send it to thousands of folks?
• How can I track where my nonprofit and issues are being mentioned online?
• How can I use social media to support campaigns and advocacy?
• How can I better organize my online communications?

If you’d like to suggest a topic, contact help@aspirationtech.org

Space is limited, so register today!

Bring your questions and stories for a fun, collaborative day designed to meet your specific nonprofit technology needs. Click here for more information

Our thanks to the Aspiration team for sharing this wonderful opportunity!   Learn more about Aspiration

Not a bad way to get a jump on the new year!

A couple of the findings caught our eye. As folks doing web development for nonprofits, we were happy to see organizations rank their website as their most important tool. Job security and all that, you know!

Their website was followed closely in importance by Email Marketing / E-Newsletter. That Iowa-Republican-caucus-like close second is not surprising when you see that 78% of nonprofits say they’ll email supporters at least monthly in 2012.

That’s a lot of emails – and, for anyone who has priced mass email services, those mass emails ain’t cheap. So, again, it’s not surprising that the list of what scares folks when it comes to nonprofit marketing in 2012 includes some big, juicy orange words revolving around having enough resources and funding to pull off all of this marking stuff.

That leads us at PICnet to ponder a simple question for our own nonprofit technology sector:

Can we do better?

As 2012 dawns and more and more nonprofits move away from traditional mailings to engage in regular email marketing campaigns, can our industry innovate to keep pace by developing new, more cost effective ways of delivering those services and do so in ways that more tightly tracks outcomes tied to individual recipients rather than dubious metrics like open rates?

For those lovers of nonprofits who are convinced that technology can supercharge their missions to make more flowers bloom, more hungry folk fed, more truth shine, and more peace reign, we should finish putting away our holiday lights and cleaning up after the New Year’s bashes. There’s a world that needs changing and it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to do it.

• easy-to-use administrative interface
• improved WYSIWYG editor
• slideshow service
• search engine optimization (SEO) benefits, such as search engine friendly URLs
• …and more!

Paul Howard, CUCS’s Associate Director of Training and Consulting Services worked closely with us on this project. He says,

“The thing I am looking forward to the most about our new site is the ability to add slideshows to our website and use customized templates to help set CUCS apart.”

CUCS’s mission is “to end homelessness for as many people as possible and to provide opportunities for low income individuals and families, particularly those living with disabling conditions, to be productive members of the community.” It is great to know that while we can find a new home for their website this year, they are working to find new homes for individuals in the community day in and day out.