CDS Global Nonprofit

Sometimes Its Just About The People Around You

By Brett Ridge | May 11, 2012

Yep, its true. If you are a nonprofit leader (Executive, Staff, or Volunteer), you have a lot of responsibility. Your decisions can effect a great many people. Here’s hoping that all of your decisions are great ones, so that the effects are generally positive.

But what we seem to see too much of in today’s nonprofit world is a structure where the individuals and groups who should be empowered to make decisions are scared out of their minds to make the most important decisions in front of them. They get caught up in a game of what Kivi Leroux Miller calls the “What Ifs”. She elaborates here…Kivi About The What If.

The long and short of it is that our leaders are often afraid to make mistakes, not only for fear of losing their jobs but also for fear of causing their nonprofit to fail to deliver on its mission. In many cases, that’s an understandable emotion. Most nonprofit employees actually care deeply about the cause which they represent. The problem is that if you get caught up in the “What If” game, your organization will eventually be left behind.

This is particularly true when it comes to technology and data. But it can also be true for most all facets of your organization.

So, here’s the advice….(aren’t you glad I got around to it?). Surround yourself and your organization with additional leaders who approach the world with a confidence in new ideas, the cutting edge, and forward movement.

Do not put those who approach the world around them with a sense of negativity, fear, or mistrust in charge of committees and boards. If you do, you’ll simply get stuck in the mud.

Now I’m not saying that you always want people who just make change for the sake of making change. But you do want people who understand that the world around us changes fast and nonprofits can’t afford to get stuck in the status quo just because it is comfortable.

I’m convinced that any success I ever had as a nonprofit leader was because I recruited the right kind of people who had the right kind of attitude. They saw greater potential in our organizations and were not willing to settle. So when the future caught up to us, we were ready for it.

Bottom line, if you get support logistically, emotionally, and strategically from people who intuitively understand that your organization has some place to go, and there’s no way to get there by sitting in the same spot, you will empower yourself. You’ll not only find it easier to make solid and important decisions to move forward, but you’ll also feel really, really good about it.

Trust me. Work at it. Find THOSE people for your organization today!

 

 

 

 

Topics: Fundraising, Governance, Leadership, Technology Advantages | View Comments

A Day in the Life of a Donation, CDS Global’s New Nonprofit Video

By Clare Neller | May 9, 2012

At CDS Global, we’re focused on helping nonprofits increase their impact on the world around them. Did you know CDS Global is a leading provider of donations processing? We work hard to free nonprofits from back-end operations so that they can focus on what’s most important to them: their mission. CDS Global is committed to our growing range of not-for-profit clients, notable mission-focused organizations that include American Heart Association, American Red Cross, Marine Toys for Tots Foundation and The Salvation Army.

Find out how our nonprofit technology solutions can manage your complete member and donor management needs. Our donations processing solutions coupled with our full spectrum of paper-based and electronic data capture and customized communications services can save you money and better serve your constituents, all under one roof!

See first hand how a donation is processed at CDS Global and how it’s given back to a cause in our “Day in the Life of a Donation” video!

Topics: CDS Global Information, Fundraising | View Comments

#CDSGlobalPride: Employees Join Together in Celebrating 40 Years of Innovation

By xadame | May 7, 2012

On Friday, April 27 CDS Global kicked off our yearlong celebration honoring 40 years as a technology-driven company.  The event was both exciting and unifying. Teams and offices gathered together in our respective locations for birthday cake and a champagne toast. Connected across the globe through live video streaming and tweets tagged with #CDSGlobalTurns40, there was a definite sense of togetherness and pride. We applauded veteran employees Ellen Heater, Carlin Peer and John Seibert for their 40 exemplary years of service, and we pondered the heartfelt and energetic words of CDS Global’s inspiring leadership.

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Webinar follow up question – Is mobile considered a viable channel in the multichannel mix?

By Clare Neller | May 7, 2012

Happy Monday all! We have been following up on questions from our most recent webinar Harnessing the Power of Integrated Marketing in the Era of Digital Disruption here on our nonprofit blog. Make sure to keep checking back for the Q&A follow up!

You asked: Is mobile considered a viable channel in the multichannel mix? How does that affect how we should approach campaigns?

With almost 50 percent smartphone penetration, mobile is an avenue that deserves attention. Webinar speaker Reggie Brady agrees and suggests making significant changes to your email programs to make sure they are mobile-friendly. “It’s likely that 20 percent of B-to-B emails are read on mobile, and estimates are that 16 percent of consumers are reading on mobile,” she says. “Email design has to change, since many mobile environments do a lackluster job at rendering. Shorten the width of your template, put the most important content or offers on the left and raise font sizes. Remember that mobile users who want to interact with your call-to-action button need enough space around the button so that their fingers can click.”

If promoted properly, using mobile to generate text responses can be a clever way to jump start a campaign for a fundraising effort.

Source: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/2012-multichannel-marketing-questions-tackle-moving-beyond-2011/1

Topics: CDS Global Information, Fundraising | View Comments

Webinar follow up question – When should I use integrated marketing as opposed to one channel?

By Clare Neller | May 4, 2012

As I mentioned yesterday, we will be following up on questions from our most recent webinar Harnessing the Power of Integrated Marketing in the Era of Digital Disruption here on our nonprofit blog over the next couple of weeks…

You asked: When should I use integrated marketing as opposed to one channel?

As marketers, it is important to leverage every medium to communicate with donors to get the word out about your mission, services, events, etc. Today, there are so many channel options available to us, from traditional print, to direct marketing, to e-marketing, to mobile and social options — our avenues to communicate are endless. When trying to figure out what approach to take and what works, the following things are important to keep in mind:

1. Find the right balance of communication – Don’t turn donors off by over-communicating, monitor your communication frequency.
2. Identify the way in which your donors want to be contacted – When you find what works, stick with it!
3. Ensure that all of your messages are tied together in a cohesive manner – Create a strong impression of your organization and mission.

Topics: CDS Global Information, Fundraising | View Comments

Webinar Recap – Harnessing the Power of Integrated Marketing in the Era of Digital Disruption

By Clare Neller | May 3, 2012

Last week we hosted a webinar with Target Marketing titled Harnessing the Power of Integrated Marketing in the Era of Digital Disruption. Speakers Reggie Brady, President, Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions and John Goering, Vice President, Solutions Engineering, CDS Global tackled how marketers today can develop a comprehensive view of their customer by marketing to them through various touch points and in multiple channels. Over the hour-long webinar, they covered:

-Case studies showcasing organizations who have successfully leveraged integrated marketing

-How the power of print is still effective and relevant in times of digital disruption

-How to execute a true multichannel campaign through print, web, mobile and social

-How to effectively manage your campaign to track channel success

-How to leverage variable data to create customized & segmented communication

We had some great questions come in during and after the live webinar and will be addressing them here at www.cdsglobalnp.com over the next couple of weeks. Check back next week for more information. In the meantime, in case you missed it, you can check out the webinar here.

 

Topics: CDS Global Information, Fundraising | View Comments

Heartbeat of the Nonprofit Industry

By Clare Neller | May 1, 2012

While at 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference, Convio interviewed 70 nonprofit professionals and asked them what they thought the biggest challenge facing the nonprofit sector is today. Then they took the answers, identified trends, wrote up the Heartbeat of the Nonprofit Industry report and made a short video. CDS Global’s Senior Solutions Manager for Nonprofits, Brett Ridge, was one of the pros interviewed and featured in the video. The key findings of the survey included:

• Fundraising is always top of mind: 34 percent of nonprofit professionals identified fundraising as the current biggest challenge for nonprofits.
• Differentiating your nonprofit is crucial: 20 percent of those interviewed feel that there are many more nonprofits today than even 5 years ago, and the need to differentiate the organization is critical.
• Strategic communication and engagement is a priority: 31 percent of those surveyed identified effective communication/engagement with their supporters as something vital for nonprofits in an age of donor fatigue.
• Proper data management and effective technology tools: 11 percent of those surveyed identified technology and data management as a challenge that nonprofits need to understand and embrace to ensure success.

There are some really great insights provided throughout and it’s worth a watch! Check it out here: Heartbeat of the Nonprofit Industry

Topics: Fundraising | View Comments

Does Everybody Really Need A CRM?

By Brett Ridge | April 20, 2012

 

Do you really need a CRM? Or is your database sufficient if you use it to its fullest extent?

I had a really interesting conversation at the Nonprofit Technology Conference earlier this month. A woman asked me how much I thought it would cost her organization to put into place a new CRM.

Apparently her CEO had sent her there with the expressed purpose of finding a couple of products and then getting some pricing so he could apply for a grant to pay for it. The grant app was due in three days.

Now, the funny part was that there were at least a dozen workshops that dealt with the subject of CRM in some fashion at the conference. And she had been to at least half of them. But she was still unsure of what to do. And that’s because in her heart she knew that she/her organization was not really in need of a full blown CRM solution.

I first asked her how many constituents she had. It was a really small group…less than 500. They hoped to double it in the next couple of years. (Wow! So her CEO wanted to spend tens of thousands to keep track of 500 people. Remind me to think long and hard about whether they will get any of my money.)

So I then asked her what data she had to add her database that could not be seen in what they had now? She didn’t really know.

I asked her what they needed a new CRM to do that they couldn’t do today.  Again, she wasn’t sure. I asked her what their expectations were exactly of that CRM….what would be the important functions? Would they include communication/marketing, data crunching, or what?

She couldn’t really answer those questions. In fact she had told her CEO earlier that day that those were questions that needed to be answered first. But he was pressing on.

Its important to stop right now and remind you all that I am ALL about preparing your organization for the future. I will always preach that you need to plan/purchase/build for scale. But this situation did not indicate that they would be scaling to any large numbers soon, nor did it show that they really had any idea what a new CRM might do for them. All they knew was that there are more powerful tools out there, and they should have one.

So my advice to her was this….stick a number in the grant app of around $25,000 and see what kind of money you can get. In the meantime, make a solid list of requirements for whatever system you feel you need. And then build or buy your system based on those needs or requirements. Decide whether your organization is actually going to take data from all of its disparate systems and put it on to the new single system. If that were the case, this would actually be a good reason to buy. But if the organization was simply going to use it as a more detailed database, that would simply be a waste of resources (at least in this case).

Of course it is true that a CRM would also provide more tools for communication. But at this point we weren’t even sure how much communication or marketing they needed to do and/or why. There was a pretty good chance that with a single-minded organizational mission and a one-to-one recruiting strategy, mass marketing wasn’t going to be in her future.

CRMs are so, so, so powerful today that they are often much more than an organization can ever hope to use. So it is extremely easy to overspend.

Her better solution may have been to ensure that she had a really good database tool that had great search functions, a solid level of customizable screens to hold notes about constituents, and had a great query tool; then to look at the data that currently exists and think about what more she might want to know about those people.  It was such a small group, that outsourcing to build a datawarehouse  and conversely build prospect models from that data might well have been a much more targeted and economical answer.  There are many companies that can append or overlay a great deal of data to basic contact information and make it really valuable. And they can do this outside of the 360 CRM that everyone is showing off today. Plus, these companies actually know what to do with the data once you have it. With a 360 CRM, you still need to find (and usually pay) someone who knows what you should do with it.

Now please, make sure you don’t misunderstand…there are good reasons for many organizations to utilize a full blown relationship management system. All I’m saying is that its not a good fit for everybody. Before you buy, make sure you know what you want to do and why. Go back to the first lesson that we’ve talked about here from Day #1…..plan strategically and then follow the plan. In the case of a CRM, if you leap before you look you may well end up spending a chunk of hard-earned cash on a monster that you don’t really need.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topics: Fundraising, Governance, Leadership, Technology Advantages | View Comments

Quick Thoughts Following NTC 2012

By Brett Ridge | April 9, 2012

A few random thoughts from last week’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Fransisco….

*The nonprofit world has certainly become a different place over just the last 5 years. Conferences such as this one were just not as well attended, nor were they seen as being this important. But after surviving a recession despite numbers of donors continuing to decline, most nonprofits realize that they need appropriately scaled cutting edge technology if their organization hopes to survive. They know they need to find every way possible to lead in this new realm where dialogue with your donors is the key to a lifelong relationship that will make revenue a stream rather than a wave.

*Unfortunately, nonprofits are still struggling mightily with Boards and volunteers who are afraid of making a mistake on technology. You’d think that database/CRM advances, social media, tablets, smartphones, and data driven marketing concepts would have them excited. But culturally, it is still scary to take a leap of faith that goes beyond the tried and true. This is something we can all help with as we encourage nonprofits to make the moves that must be made to set up their success in the future.

*There are SO many software companies in the market today with a newer, better, or bigger CRM offering that is absolutely shocking that anyone can be completely confident that they are making the right choice. We’ll see if we can’t assist you along those lines in some future blogs. By the way, not everybody NEEDS one of these new CRM systems. Make sure before you buy one that you list out what you hope to do with it. There’s a good possibility that you’ll spend money on features you will never use.

*Apparently a good CRM takes the place of an intelligently used data warehouse? We at CDS Global would tend to argue with that premise….and will  probably do so right here in the very near future.

*In direct correlation to the CRM companies, dozens of database programming companies and consultants are starting to make a nice living for themselves through the performance of all of the customization that is needed by every nonprofit before any system is actually ready for use.  Apparently,  (in general) “off-the-shelf” products don’t really take you very far without some fairly significant tweaks.

*Unlike the CRM community, the land of the outsourced high-volume donations processor is not nearly as crowded. Very few organizations can process at the volume that CDS Global can. Most cannot image data in nearly as detailed fashion. And we didn’t find any that can combine paper donations processing with electronic donations processing for one seamless solution. It was kind of fun to be able to talk to so many people and truly tell them that we provide a service that you can’t get anywhere else.

*Cupcakes are king. While they were a bit of a pain to procure and take care of, the hundreds of cupcakes that we served at our CDS Global display were an obvious hit (especially with the rather lite offering of food at the conference). The cupcakes were each adorned with a chocolate “40″ in reference to CDS Goobal’s 40th Anniversary which we will celebrate later this month. I do have to say, I appreciated the fact that most attendees who grabbed a cupcake also stopped and talked to us about our company and what we do. Not only was it polite, but they were genuinely interested.

Finally, let me say that I found the NTEN Community to be one that was truly focused on doing great things for the world around us. It was so encouraging to see everyone at the event was willing to help each other with advice and thought from their own private experiences. I suppose that’s what its really all about. And this time, it worked.

 

 

Topics: Fundraising | View Comments

Donors care more about “what” you do and how it makes “them” feel

By Clare Neller | March 27, 2012

One to one marketing is extremely important for nonprofits. You want to be able to find out as much as you can about each individual donor on a personal level so you can communicate at that level. At the very least, you can make them “feel” that you care about them and “their” needs.

Make sure to invite via story, comment, or invite dialogue – the people that respond are the ones that a care the most about your organization. And those that care about your cause are the ones that are most likely to give again. Did you know that many studies have found that donating and thinking “occupy separate realms” of the brain. The important realm for nonprofits is the realm that feels. Only 25% of donors actually research orgs before giving – those who do research give less. Deborah Small, associate professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School ran a study last fall and shared that “What we find is that when people are thinking more deliberatively, they end up being less generous overall.”

In fact, The Stelter Company shared a study that found that when measuring the impact of a nonprofit campaign – 16% of people responded rationally with their donation contribution vs. 31% responding due to an emotional reaction! What this means is that people care more about “what” you do and how it makes “them” feel than they do about numbers and statistics you might be sharing in your communications.

 

Bottom line here is that in order to secure the recurring donations and lifetime value of a donor – nonprofits need to open up a two way communication and dialogue so they are a part of donor’s daily, weekly, monthly, yearly communications.

 

Topics: CDS Global Information, Fundraising | View Comments

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