GiftWorks 2008 is Here! March 19, 2008 By Mary Pat Donnellon

On behalf of the entire Mission Research team, I am extremely proud to announce the arrival of GiftWorks 2008!

With GiftWorks 2008 we are taking GiftWorks to the next level. We have listened to the recommendations made by our thousands of customers, hundreds of consultant partners, and many, many nonprofit sector experts, and have used this feedback to create the next generation of GiftWorks.

Below you will find more details about GiftWorks 2008.  Our entire team continues to be motivated by our commitment to the nonprofit sector and are proud to provide an outstanding fundraising software solution that nonprofits of all sizes can both use and afford.

Please keep your feedback and interest coming!  We are always happy to hear from you.

-Mary Pat Donnellon

GiftWorks 2008 Standard was released on March 17, 2008 for new customers and will be available as an upgrade for existing customers on April 14, 2008.  In addition to all of the great features included in GiftWorks today, GiftWorks 2008 Standard includes:

• More useful and insightful built-in reports.  Enhancements include: More robust campaign and giving level reports; the ability to organize reports by fiscal year; and expanded customization opportunities.
• Internationalization:  Organizations can choose their desired date format, currency and address/phone formatting.
• Enhanced task management:  Nonprofit leaders can manage tasks assigned to team members; tasks can be sorted and organized to better manage critical development activities.
• Improved tools for mailings, including numerous options for customizing labels and envelopes, greater capacity and control for large mailings, and more donor and donation fields available for insertion into letter templates.
• Flexible and robust donor management that includes improved household management, expanded relationship tracking, donor pictures on records, and more.
• More powerful Smartlists:  Retrieve and analyze critical donor and donation data with more criteria options, including the ability to compare donor giving history totals in customizable time periods.
• Expanded customization opportunities throughout the software, including a multitude of pertinent and helpful reports and widgets users can display on GiftWorks screens.

GiftWorks 2008 Premium will be released in May, 2008 and will include everything in GiftWorks 2008 Standard as well as:

• Role-based security protection allowing nonprofits to define roles for users and the level of GiftWorks access permitted for each role.
• More than 50 custom fields that can be defined to as an organization requires, providing increased flexibility for grant management, prospect tracking, and more.
• Bar-coding and bulk mail requirement compatibility, providing nonprofits the opportunity to save on mailings costs.
• Seasonal address management.  Donor mailing addresses will be automatically updated based on user-defined data ranges.

   

Salesforce.com, Convio Security Breaches November 8, 2007 By

The Nonprofit Times reports:

"Salesforce.com is the second software vendor to nonprofits this week to announce a data breach. The firm alerted its clients of phishing attempts and the security breach. The most recent phishing attempts included malware, software that secretly installs viruses or key loggers."

Convio is the other company--the link reports on both companies' security breaches. No company can guarantee absolute security, but with GiftWorks Fundraising Software, you control your security through the security of your own network. Online applications have some inherent vulnerabilities, particularly because the larger companies are visible targets for hackers.

If you feel your network security isn't great, consider getting a firewall--here's a resource-- and consider this article. Securing your network is not terribly hard and definitely affordable--please make sure you do it!

Seven Years of Nonprofit Software August 13, 2007 By

Tonight I'm in New York, where 7 years ago I started building the prototype for GiftWorks fundraising software. The state of nonprofit software at the time wasn't that great; interfaces were clunky, prices were very high, and the majority of nonprofits used Excel or Access to track donors and donations.

Things haven't changed too much, except that GiftWorks is a cure for common clunkiness, and it isn't expensive, but most nonprofits still use Access and Excel, and most nonprofit software is expensive and clunky. We're still committed to the small nonprofit, and committed to affordable, easy to use software. On occasion, we hear from prospective customers that they can't believe we're so affordable--too good to be true. But it is true, and it works for both our customers and our company.

We've also stuck to our values--employee ownership (20% in stock options), socially responsible practices, 20% of the company donated to a foundation in a donor-advised fund, and affordable software that anyone can use and everyone can afford.

Tomorrow I have a few meetings in Manhattan. Usually I swing by my old neighborhood in NOHO, but this time I'm sticking to the meetings, then heading for the train home. New York reminds me of how far we've come, and I get those feelings this city gives so willingly--hope, aspiration, unlimited potential. That's how I feel, still, about Mission Research. Our mission is to support your mission.

Blackbaud Acquires eTapestry August 6, 2007 By

The Nonprofit Times reported a few minutes agao that Blackbaud is buying eTapestry for something like $25 million. I imagine Jay Love will get the majority of that, and wish him well and encourage him to do something constructive with it. But I fear for his customers.

If Blackbaud is consistent, it will kill off the eTapestry service and force its customers to convert to Raiser's Edge, as they did with Campagne's GiftMaker Pro.

My question is this: why are these companies selling out? eTapestry only had revenue of $7 million per year. Blackbaud doesn't have a compelling hosted solution, and I imagine Salesforce.com is eating into their market, despite the reliability problems they've had.

What's a nonprofit to do? Try GiftWorks, for one. And it looks as though Donorperfect is hanging in there, along with a few other competitors. If you're currently an eTap customer, please check us out, and download a free trial of GiftWorks today. You'll be pretty impressed with how usable it is, and how powerful it can be for your fundraising and mailing.

And if you stick with eTapestry and are forced over to Raiser's Edge, well, good luck. We wish you well with your new adventure, but please keep in mind that the average charge from Blackbaud is $40,000, according to their CEO.

Website Down February 20, 2007 By

..

So our website has been down for a bit--I apologize to anyone who has been trying to access the help site. Our provider's servers have gone down. Thankfully GiftWorks is a desktop application and is immune to those sort of outages. Our website, sadly, is not, nor are web-based applications.

We use some web-based applications, but nothing mission-critical anymore. Shockingly, our provider just won a reliability award. Web.com used to be called Interland, and they have been making a lot of changes. This is not the kind of change we like, but in general they've been pretty good. We hope it's back up soon.

In the meantime, post here if you need help or have suggestions!

Microsoft VISTA for Nonprofits: Our Take February 7, 2007 By

In 1994 I started a computer business where we built and sold PCs, taught classes, and serviced computers. Most were running Windows 3.1.

It was hell.

Windows 3.1 was unstable, and 3.11 was only slightly better. I longingly looked forward to the day when I didn't have to edit system files to squeeze performance out of wheezing PCs with low amounts of RAM and low ability to effectively use more even it it were affordable.

Things are different these days. Windows XP--after all of the updates are applied--is stable. I'm still running it on all my systems, and have no plans to upgrade to Vista. Security is supposed to be a big feature, but security software is almost free (TrendMicro has a free tool for viurus scans), and I don't look at Microsoft as the company to provide its own security, given their track record.

They've also never won me back as a loyal customer after their censorship of Chinese citizens, acting in concert with the Chinese communist/totalitarian government to deny freedom of speech and other hints of democracy to the Chinese.  So I'm not inclined to pay for much of anything from Microsoft these days anyway.

But from a purely technical perspective, for you to be happy with Vista, you can look forward to replacing or upgrading some or all of your computers, a substantial learning curve expense (they've changed some of the metaphors and menuing, which are not consistent across applications), and whatever software upgrades you'll need, which might cost a few bucks.

GiftWorks runs on Vista and you don't have to pay for it to run on it. We did the work this past Fall and if you had GiftWorks before November, you got an automatic update from us with no charge. To me--a guy who buys the latest and greatest of just about everything, usually before anyone I know--XP is stable enough, performs well enough, and doesn't require additional investment.

And the new Office has some cool features, but you'll need to buy another Dummies book to learn some of them, and the navigation is new and not much of an advance. The "ribbon" toolbar adds a minor amount of persistent context, but it's not usage-based context, and it's just as busy and over-feature-ridden as the most recent Office. The new menu titles are kind of like $20,000 Pyramid: "pictures, tables, cover pages, date and time, smartart...Things you can insert!" I don't think "insert" when I think of creating a cover page, which means I have to click on every menu title to find it.

One thing I do like about the new Office is the amount and quality of shapes for adding graphical elements to documents. But shapes alone are not worth the upgrade. If you really want to play with shapes, take a look at SmartDraw, or check out what Corel has over at Corel.com. Both offer inexpensive graphics programs for charting and other shape-intensive stuff.

So XP for me for the time being. And you might ask "what about Mac or Linux?" Great question. We're thinking about it, but it's not likely to happen in the next 12 months. Dave did a fantastic job at ChiliSoft porting that software over to LInux, but GiftWorks is very much a Windows application. We're talking with Apple about a port, but unless we take on new investment or get help from Apple, it's unlikely we'll be there soon. But we're definitely exploring it. What do you think?

UPDATE: VISTA RESOURCES
TechSoup VISTA FAQ
PC World Review
TechSoup Discussion of VISTA
PC Magazine Vista Center

SalesWorks Gets Great Reviews February 5, 2007 By

Last year we started using GiftWorks internally to track customers and sales after dropping our online provider. We turned it into SalesWorks, and have been refiniing it for the past year. We've had a lot of friends at small businesses ask about building something for them, and when they saw the power of GiftWorks used in a business they were supportive of the idea of extending it to small businesses.

Last week we launched SalesWorks Beta 1 at the DEMO conference (where the Palm Pilot was launched). It tracks sales, contacts, mailings, etc, and is built on the technology platform of GiftWorks. We really like it, and I think the small business world will like it too. PC Magazine really likes it!

So what does this mean for GiftWorks and its progress? Well, overall it's a very good thing. We had spare dev cycles to work on SalesWorks while we're waiting for Chris to finish his work on the Reports SDK and the GiftWorks 2007 specification. Once that's done (includes household changes, fixes, batch operations, more reports, etc), we'll start building that. In the meantime, we're getting SalesWorks out the door over in dev, and Chris is tearing out his hair writing GiftWorks specs, reading through thousands and thousands of suggestions from customers.

We're also working on some low-cost versions of GiftWorks for certain organizations, because even at our relatively low cost it's out of reach for many nonprofits. This week someone from the United Way is visiting to work on Online Donations with us, and we're partnering with a few other providers too and will announce it soon. Chris is mapping out our email integration and our events management. So yes, we're increasing our investment in GiftWorks even as we add SalesWorks to the lineup.

So please tell your friends in the business world about SalesWorks--we appreciate your help. In the meantime, check out the Reports SDK over at Dev Hero, our new site for developers who want to contribute to you and the rest of the GiftWorks community by building new report add-ins to GiftWorks. 

Price Plan Mea Culpa January 30, 2007 By

Earlier this month we changed our pricing to a subscription plan, and, well, it didn't go over so well. The response wasn't terrible, but we learned something: some nonprofits would rather pay everything up front and have the choice of paying for upgrades later, rather than paying annually. We reverted to our regular pricing after a few weeks while we study it more and get your input.

If you're a customer currently, nothing changed. If you're looking at GiftWorks now, you might have heard we were a traditional software company with a one-time purchase and paid upgrades down the line. What we were trying to accomplish was this: simplify the maintenance and upgrades, keep costs down for customers, and simplify our development and marketing processes.

I'm sorry for the bad communication and the false start--it was my fault, frankly. I think in general we've done a pretty good job of communicating, being open, admitting the occasional mistake, taking care of customers well. As we grow the company and evolve, we're going to continue trying new things to improve the customers experience. Your feedback has always been such a great guide for our work, and we'll keep listening.

But this time, we didn't ask enough questions. We're asking now, and we'll listen. GiftWorks is still the most affordable, easiest to use fundraising software, and we plan on continuing to improve it for your benefit. And if we change anything, we'll ask first, let you know ahead of time, and always give you a choice. Of all the joys of growing and running Mission Research, your feedback and passion have been the greatest.

Thank you for your understanding, and feel free to contact me directly anytime with your concerns and feedback--email is charlie@ .

GiftWorks Update 5 November 12, 2006 By

What’s new in GiftWorks 2006 Update 5?

GiftWorks 2006 Update 5 adds support for some major new operating systems and software updates from Microsoft, including support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0. The new system requirements (with the updates in italics) are:

Bug Fixes

+ Right click and delete donors quickly could cause errors

+ Repeated imports of households would cause database errors

+ Export from pages would fail if directory path no longer exists or lack of required permissions.

+ Database Backup and Restore would fail if folder path no longer exists or lack of required permissions.

+ Time not calculating or displaying properly for certain pages

+ Donor giving history graph not accurate

+ GiftWorks uninstall could cause error when opening Outlook

Modifications

+ Support for Internet Explorer 7.0

+ Support for Windows XP 64-bit Edition

+ Support for windows Server 2003

+ Improved error handling for Addins

+ QuickBooks posting changes

-          For donations and pledge payments, the transactions will be posted as one journal entry per donation/payment.  Each journal entry will consolidate the transactions, posting one line per asset account and one line per fund for each income account.  The payment method details (check number or cash) will be posted in the Entry Number field.

-          For all journal entries, the fund name will be posted to the Memo field for income accounts.

+ Changes to Import Guide

Raiser's Edge "Squeezing" More Profits Out of Customers November 1, 2006 By

Blackbaud, which makes Raiser's Edge, just posted its earnings, proudly announcing an increase in profit of 16%, and that their average sale is now $40,000.

"Charleston-based software maker Blackbaud Inc. announced a 30 percent increase in third-quarter profit Monday, as it closed larger sales and continued to squeeze big gains out of the product that it has built its business on.

Blackbaud's earnings for the three-months ended Sept. 30 increased to $9.9 million from $7.6 million. Revenue for the quarter jumped to $49.9 million, a 16 percent increase."

(from the Charleston Post & Courier).

We're a different kind of company. While their CEO is pushing for bigger sales and more and more revenue per customer, we are giving all nonprofits great software at an affordable $299 per license. We're a socially responsible business dedicated to the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit.

And comparing GiftWorks to Raiser's Edge is like apples and oranges anyway; we're affordable, easy to use and appropriate for most organizations, while Raiser's Edge is expensive, hard to use, and designed for large enterprises that can afford $40,000 on fundraising software.

So if you are an apple, make sure you're buying software designed for apples. If you're an orange, then you have a large enough bank account where you don't need to worry about a $40,000 charge for software. But just make sure you aren't getting the squeeze put on you when you're closing your deal with Blackbaud--their revenues should be based on superior software and service, not on unnecessary extras that you may never use.

Any comments from the Raiser's Edge crowd? Click comments below--thanks!

nptech | fundraising | software | giftworks | blackbaud