Religion and Mission Research September 30, 2005 By Steve Fafel

We had a prospect who became a customer today who asked whether the software had any Christian icons in it. The answer is no, no icons of any religion are in our software.

We're not a religious organization. Some people who work here are religious, some aren't--it's not something we talk about here. We have Jewish customers, Christian customers, Muslim customers, Hindu customers, agnostics, and likely some atheists. We have Democrats, Republicans, Greens, and likely many more political parties. We sell to Amercians, Canadians, Singapore(ans), Brits, and I think in one case Nepalese. We'll sell to anyone the State Department allows us to, and we hope all of our customers have the best intentions to improve their part of the world.

We sell to animal rights groups, vegetarians, meat eaters, beer drinkers, wine drinkers, tea drinkers, ex-baseball players, ex-football players, politicians, doctors, ministers, rabbis, and just about any other kind of person working to doing something they believe in.

Our mission is to support your mission. We do that with low-cost, easy to use, beautifully designed, powerful software. GiftWorks 2006. $299; $499 with support.

Anyone out there from the People's Front of Judea?

Guest Post from Louisiana Disaster Zone September 27, 2005 By Steve Fafel

These emails came in today from Jefferson Dollars for Scholars , a Louisiana nonprofit that was ready to purchase GiftWorks. We've donated GiftWorks, but as you'll learn below, they have a lot greater needs right now: 

Everything here is still on hold.  The office was flooded and is being dried out but I know we can't do anything for a while.  Your RE conversions should be perfect by then and we will talk again.  Barbara has kindly been checking on us.  We have some damage at our home.  My mother has serious damage and I'm trying to help her too.  People in  New Orleans proper haven't even been allowed in yet.  NOT everything blew away or flooded but there is devastation and damage everywhere.  I don't know how a group like mine will be able to raise money with everything needed for survival.  Some schools are hoping to open next week, which will mean that the kids are 5 weeks and a lifetime behind. 

Hope things are going well with the program for you.

Lisa Conescu, Jefferson Dollars for Scholars

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Crystle charlie@missionresearch.com

Very sorry to hear. Listen--anything we can do, just let us know. Can I have permission to post your email to our blog? Maybe we can help get you some resources.

We're giving you GiftWorks 2006 for free--whatever you need. Tell other nonprofits there it's the same deal for them. We have to charge for support, but aside from service costs, you can get started with it. We'll help get you going, too. There might be some consulting group willing to help further--I'll put the word out.

Sound good?

------------

Charlie - That is so nice.  I may be going to a meeting tomorrow afternoon with other npo's in this area.  I'll pass along your offer.  Sure you can put this on your blog.  The assistance of others will be  greatly appreciated.  I know we will wish for some IT support too. 

Lisa

Running nonprofits by committees of volunteers September 26, 2005 By Steve Fafel

I really don't know how you do it, my nonprofit professional friends. Mom runs a small nonprofit that has substantial grant money, decent donor support, and an active support base. Way to go, Mom! It's a great group effort. She wants to use GiftWorks for sending out mail, but she has a problem. A big problem. A volunteer controls the list and uses Excel. And nothing against Excel, or the volunteer, but the volunteer wants to just give her the printed labels. Ok, I've got a little something against the volunteer, but I'll keep my mouth shut on this one.

So she can't track donations, she can't track the mailing, and she can't take advantage of a ton of great GiftWorks stuff just because this really great nice volunteer who isn't much into software doesn't want to give up control of the donor list.

I'm a business guy, so I say "Ma, ya gotta kick some butt and get control of the list!"

But you know how it is. Like Frank Burns said to Hullihan on M.A.S.H., "it's nice to be nice to the nice". Sigh.

GiftWorks 2006: Constant Improvement September 22, 2005 By Steve Fafel

Some of you ask really great questions! We have one person evaluating the software who couldn't figure out how to build a SmartList based on a donor's renewal date. And there's a very bad reason for that--we missed it. We're putting it in now and will put the addition in an automatic update--you'll just get it automagically if you're online when you start GiftWorks.

Since the release of GiftWorks 2006, you've found a few bugs, which we've fixed and sent back in updates as they've come in. The biggest one was in adding a pledge, which we just fixed and posted as an update yesterday. The rate of new bugs showing up has dropped to a very low level, while usage of GiftWorks has dramatically increased. So we're pretty happy about this release and are ready to push out a final update with additional help content and some refinements. Add that to the social networking, mass email, Quickbooks integration, and GiftWorks 2006 is well on its way to becoming the standard for nonprofits. The next major release will be GiftWorks 2007, with a major free update coming by March.

And while some of it is because of us, a lot of it is because of you--we listen to you, and the product improves. So thanks--thanks to existing customers, to consultants, and to trial users. You've all been so very helpful and forthcoming. Keep the comments coming! And tell your friends--$299 for a ton of value.

That Giant Sucking Sound September 19, 2005 By Steve Fafel

Last December, a huge tsunami hit Southeast Asia. Several weeks ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. In both cases, Americans responded by giving generously--as we should. How did the giving effect you? Did you raise the same, less, or more?

Please let us know by clicking on Comments below.

Rewarding Work September 15, 2005 By Steve Fafel

I'm drenched. I just finished playing Steve in an epic 5-game match of end-of-day Ping Pong--it was crazy. Diving for tough shots, long volleys, near-death encounters with the huge wooden beams in the office...great fun after a long day. I really love this place.

But it starts with servng nonprofits, which makes this job so rewarding to start with. Someone sent this to me today--we get these emails all the time, and it never gets old:

Again, Charlie ... I like the new version ... I'm excited to be associating with such a good software firm ... GiftWorks is so affordable,  for many organizations that never could have started with something like Razor's Edge, etc.

Please feel free to forward my email to anyone interested in my help getting started with GiftWorks ... my home and cell numbers are below ... I look forward to hearing from GiftWorks re: to how consultants can fit in to your business model ...

Earlier I was on the phone with two separate customers; one who wanted a substantial amount of additions and was willing to fund it, and another who challenged the way we handle organizations and gave us some great insight. Our customers are so engaged with us, driving us to take a great product and make it better. Great is relative, I guess. We've shown how good software can be, but there's always room for improvement, and our customers keep saying "this is wonderful, and can you add this other..."

I'm grinning while relating this--I don't mean to brag. I'm saying we work very hard to get this kind of response, and we've learned we can never  be arrogant about the software, because we can always do better. Our customers are right there with us, rooting for us, pushing us to make it better and better. We will.

Katrina Part II September 14, 2005 By Steve Fafel

If you work for a nonprofit in the disaster area, send an email to support @ missionresearch.com and we'll give you GiftWorks 2006 for no charge. If you're outside the disaster area, you can buy GiftWorks for only $299, which is a really amazing price given how good GiftWorks, easy to use, etc.

If you're an existing customer, please offer your GiftWorks help to our Louisiana & Mississippi customers by going here. We all really appreciate your participation.

GiftWorks 2006 Contact Management--We Use It Too! September 6, 2005 By Steve Fafel

We have a saying here--we like to eat our own dogfood. At different times over the past few years, we've used GiftWorks as our internal customer database, but have switched off it as our needs have changed and our resources focused on expanding GiftWorks, not our own sales and customer tracking.

Recently we've been using a fairly well-known CRM (Customer Relationship Management) provider, and we really, really don't like it. It's slow, it's hard to use, it's hard to get the reports we need, and it's sometimes not even available (it's an ASP). With GiftWorks 2006, we're going back to becoming a customer and eating our own dogfood--it's a great direct marketing and customer relationship management tool.

We decided early on that GiftWorks should not be an ASP--for a number of reasons. First, most nonprofits don't like their data out there on the web, where it's seemingly more vulnerable to hackers (and likely). Second, there were a number of failures of ASPs after the tech crash, where lots of nonprofits lost data, and recently a failure where some lost money (Pipevine). I developed the prototype for GiftWorks as a web application, and the core team comes from Chilisoft, a server software company. We had a bias in favor of ASP software, but the nonprofit sector (80%) told us it isn't what they trusted or wanted.

So we built GiftWorks as a web-enabled desktop application--a combination of desktop software and web-based software. How? I'll skip the details, but it means that your donor information is as secure as your own office and lives on your computers, while at the same time you can choose to send parts of that data to our servers to create maps of your donors, send them email, or other things we'll be announcing later. GiftWorks is a hybrid that gives you the great performance of desktop software and the utilty of web-based software.

So we're joining you once again as fans (and customers) of GiftWorks.

Katrina September 1, 2005 By Steve Fafel

I got an email from United Airlines offering 500 free air miles if I donate $50. I think their intentions are good--I certainly will donate this week. But I didn't need United Airllines to lure with with miles so I'd make a donation. I'm guessing the intent wasn't crass marketing, but a genuine attempt to help, but the assumption that it would take air miles..well, I'm just going to believe the intentions are good and leave it at that.

Everyone wants to help in some way--all of us here do, of course. One of our friends is heading down with the Red Cross for 3 weeks to help. I asked him what he was going to help with--software (he runs a software company) or logisitics? He said--whatever is needed. Load trucks, hand out water, whatever.

We have nothing new to add here--we're stunned just like everyone else. The American Red Cross is in the best position to help, generally, outside of the government. Here's their contact info www.redcross.org but the site is not responding. Other relief agencies? MCC is a very good one near us. http://www.mds.mennonite.net/Home