Support Idealware.org June 27, 2006 By Steve Fafel

We've benefitted from Idealware's research, as have many nonprofits. You might too--check them out. If you find it useful, please consider donating to them or helping them find someone who can help subsidize it.

Thanks

GiftWorks Volunteers Testing June 27, 2006 By Steve Fafel

First--should it be GiftWorks Volunteers, or GiftWorks Volunteer Center? I like the latter, but it does take up a lot of space.

Next--a bunch of us worked yet another weekend, this time nailing down semantics and some user interface questions. By te end of the day yesterday, we had cleaned up most of it and we're close to going to testing. More long nights ahead.

If anyone wants to be on the beta and you haven't signed up yet, please do so by emailing beta@missionresearch.com

Thanks!

Fundraising Day in New York June 23, 2006 By Steve Fafel

I love these conferences--tons of great people getting together to talk about fundraising. I'm heading over the Nonprofit Technology talk at 9:50.

One of the problems I see with nonprofits and technology--and I'll speak from a nonprofit volunteer perspective--is we try to fix problems with the assumption that technology is the key. I don't think it is -- not at all. And I'm a software guy who believes anything is possible through programming.

But start from the beginning: what are you trying to accomplish? What results do you want to achieve? What are the outcomes you'd like? Define that, then work back from that to define the how, and question the how along the way:

• is this the most efficient way of doing it?
• does an efficiency gain in one place create inefficiencies elsewhere?
• Where can we make process improvements?
• If we challenge every assumption, what new things do we learn?
• what can we automate? Not merely because we can, but because it makes us the most efficient or most productive.
• If we automate thorugh technology, what are the training implications?

Challenging assumptions has been a major part of our sustainability efforts within the company. We assume nonprofits want a printed receipt. But consider the cost of the paper to us and the environment. Consider the time it takes to process the receipt and order. The cost of mailing, the diesel fuel to get it delivered. Can we simply email the receipt? I think so.

We assume customers want written help, want guides, and want a manual. We were going to print one, but then felt it was better to not print on at all. Except our customers -- many of them--like a printed manual instead of an on-screen one. So they end up printing the manual out on their own paper, using their own ink and time, and, I believe, likely not in the most sustainable way.

So we're going to print the manual so we can control the environmental impact, and do it in a sustainable way. We'll use some sort of 100% post-consumer recycled, or hemp, or something with low impact.

So I'm headed off to the next session. Enjoy your day!

Volunteers Semantic Review June 22, 2006 By Steve Fafel

For every product release, we go through all changes, fixes, and additions, and basically scrub the software for user interface and semantic problems. This time is no different, and I have to say, I forgot how hard it is. The software should be obvious, easy, clean--it should just work.

It works. But it hasn't been obvious. I don't want our customers to have to refer to help, or some long explanation in a guide, or to have to print out a legend that explains every esoteric developer notion. That sucks, and we want to, well, we suck less. And we do. The software is really quite good. One cool feature? Clicking on a skill and getting a list of volunteers with that skill, and then being able to send that list an email. Pretty smooth.

Developers (ahhghh!) will put in sample text that's close enough to the real thing to sometimes miss it. Something like "Manage Volunteerrs, stuff volunteers do, and other volunteer stuff or something", expecting we'll catch every little thing like that. And we don't, so some of it slips through. What started off as funny, well, it's still kind of funny. As long as you don't have to see it.

So the work is down to this--improving the UI so it's easy and obvious, and making the language easier to work with. I just got a new build form dev--I'll let you know how it goes!

GiftWorks Volunteer Center Delay June 20, 2006 By Steve Fafel

We've been working on GiftWorks Volunteer Center for 4 months. It's a big project, and we're doing it in phases to make sure we can serve most of our customers in a timely manner. But we've blown past our second expected release date, and I apologize for this. Because it's my fault--I can point to the day I caused the delay, and that is disappointing, but we're learning from it and I promise we'll continue to do our best.

We expect to go to beta in the next week, but I've told the team not to rush it; at this point, it needs to be great, not just good.  I shifted resources to handle the rapid growth (including recipients of the $1 million software donation program through TechSoup). But we're working hard on it and will have it out soon (early July).

You might remember we delayed the release of GiftWorks 2006 last August for 4 weeks. That was my call--I felt the software needed more work, and I was right. The delay cost us some sales, but in the end we released a better product and customers were better served by the decision. We followed that up with an update within 6 weeks to refine a few things, and since then we've updated the software 2 additional times as part of our usual quest for great software. I think we set the bar pretty high.

This time, the issue is resources as we grow. We're growing from 7 last summer to 12 this past winter to 17 now and 23 in 6 weeks, at which point we'll be set for a while. In the future, I will be more careful about advance announcements. i hope you understand, and I hope you like the result--the software is pretty cool. Check out Chris Walker's blog to see some of it.

Now back to the drawing board--literally! (feel free to vent under Comments below--I do read them!)

Craig's List NYC: Cool Conference June 12, 2006 By Steve Fafel

We attended the Craig's List Nonprofit Boot Camp in New York on Saturday, and i have to say we really enjoyed it. I spoke in the morning, making the point that nonprofit employees should get the same benefits and healthcare as for-profit employees, and that nonprofits must lead their board members and donors to that conclusion. Only healthy world-changers will be effective world-changers. I've got more to post but have to jump right now...oh, also, we're sponsoring in San Francisco as well, which is on August 19th this summer. Hope to see you there!