Community IT Innovators. Established 1993. Serving social mission organizations with integrated technology services you can trust.

I’ve recently helped a client implement Blackbaud’s NetCommunity (NC), and this report is my initial assessment of its capabilities.  NetCommunity is Blackbaud’s online tool built to provide a content management system (CMS) with Web 2.0 features that allows clients to not only manage their website and use the full featured broadcast email and analytics tool, but to integrate online transactions and constituent profile updates into Raiser’s Edge.  My client’s main reason for purchasing NC was for the integration, which as Raiser’s Edge customers have known has previously been a challenge.

Summary of Project

My client is implementing NetCommunity through Blackbaud’s Grow program, a limited-scope offering of the full product intended for organizations with simple websites with limited number of pages.  Since we were not going to be doing a full implementation of NC, but mainly using the form building capabilities of NC to integrate with our WordPress website, we purchased the Grow offering.  The costs for Grow include a year of hosting, implementation consulting & training, and emarketing consulting, and a certain level of email volume.  First year costs including hardware can range from $25 – $35,000, as opposed to a full blown implementation of NC which can cost 2 to 3 times as much depending on the complexity of your website.

If you don’t use Blackbaud’s hosting services, you will need to purchase and install a server on your local network and configure the appropriate firewall security.  As far as limited-scope engagements go, the project management and consulting provided were sufficient, albeit a little too scripted – we had to break the mold a bit since we were not implementing the CMS as usual.  Support was generally responsive, although as is common with all implementation consulting, sometimes there was a 2-4 day delay on responses if the consultants were onsite with other clients.

Benefits

So far my client has been satisfied with the new level of integration between their website and Raiser’s Edge.  It’s very nice to be able to transfer online donations straight into the database after a fairly simple process of review and confirmation.  There will be no laborious process of getting the gifts into RE, or the tedious reconciliation process at the end of the month.  Blackbaud has created a plug-in for RE that serves as a bridge, and allows the fundraiser to confirm whether a gift is coming from a new donor or a constituent already in the database.  RE evaluates for duplicates using criteria that can be adjusted slightly and allows users to search the database as well.  If a constituent creates an online profile, RE will automatically link future gifts to their record, and the donor will be able to see their giving history.

My client is looking forward to having event registrations that also transfer into RE, eliminating a lot of duplicate effort that is currently the status quo.  They already greatly appreciate that the email tool is integrated, which allows us to much more easily manage new subscribers and those that unsubscribe, and thus eliminate the need for separate distribution lists that have to be manually reconciled.  It is great to pull the recipient list straight from RE, based on criteria that can include donation, volunteer, event, or profile demographics.

In summary, they are enjoying the benefits of integration. This is one example of why the whole industry has moved toward integration, whether offered through open source, APIs, or web services.

Challenges

NetCommunity’s CMS features are decent and sufficient to manage a website – e.g., styles are CSS-controlled – but they do not yet stand up to a more full featured, best-of-breed CMS.  It does not have advanced file and site management, almost no image editing, or advanced survey building.  It has some flexibility in form-building, but not enough, especially if you are used to open source products.

Like all vendors, Blackbaud is working on upgrading the features of its products.  I hope they make the registration forms more flexible by allowing the re-ordering of parts and editing of sections, and that they also make registration for free events flow more naturally by removing the language and feel of billing. They need to fix the events page WYSIWYG editor so that it is full sized. The event registration does not have maximum capacity limits or wait lists, and the volunteer management does not have a schedule that allows volunteers to sign up for available opportunities.

We have also experienced some technical issues with Internet Explorer and iframes linked to their donation forms. Performance is also a bit slow.  As might be expected, I would like to see a reduction in costs as well, as implementing, hosting, and licensing of NC is not cheap – affordability has never been Blackbaud’s main selling point.

One of the features I would most like them to add is page versioning and support for draft mode.  One cannot take a current live page, start making changes in draft mode, save intermittently, and then publish the new version when fully ready.  While one can preview a change, as soon as you click Save on any change to any part of a page, it is saved to the live site.  To be truly safe, it requires one to create a copy of the page, and then to create copies of all the parts of the page, and then make changes on those copies, and then when ready to link the new page to the navigation so that it becomes the live page (hopefully it’s not a page that you have a lot of intra-site references and links to). NC also does not come with any built in fundraising reports, so one has to log into RE to see the actual gifts coming through the system, which is not always convenient.

Conclusion

If you get NetCommunity for the basic gift and event integration with Raiser’s Edge and broadcast emailing capabilities, you will likely be happy.  But do not expect a lot of flexibility out-of-the-box, or more advanced features in terms of events, volunteer management, or members-only portal capabilities. If you want complete flexibility and the latest and greatest CMS features, you will likely be disappointed. Blackbaud does offer an API for those that need more flexibility (usually $10,000 or so, but included with NC), and it does allow building of new modules, but as with most customization projects, expect it to require significant hours, expertise, and money. Blackbaud will continue to develop the product, so I don’t doubt it will improve over the coming years based on customer demands and trends in the market.

CITI worked with Child Trends and the Annie E. Casey Foundation on the State Child Welfare Policy Database. This site displays data on child welfare financing, kinship care, and older children in foster care on a state-by-state basis. CITI helped capture much of the information in the database in earlier projects using Adobe Acrobat Forms. CITI’s team on the project was Kafi Waters, Terry Brady, Danielle Feldman, and Duncan McHale, working with design partner Cheryl Springfels.

We’ve also launched a number of content management system (CMS) driven websites:

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, developed by CITI’s Monica-Lisa Mills, Terry Brady, Danielle Feldman, and Phil Jones, again with design partner Cheryl Springfels.

Arlington Community Foundation, by CITI’s Monica-Lisa Mills, Ray Gurganus, and Phil Jones. Design by Payne Ross.

United States International Council on Disabilities by CITI’s Monica-Lisa Mills, Danielle Feldman, Ray Gurganus, and Phil Jones. Design by byrdhaus.

Chevy Chase United Methodist Church Preschool a Wordpress site by CITI’s Monica-Lisa Mills, Danielle Feldman, Phil Jones, and Sean Speer, with design partners Zilyen.

Good work, everybody!

TechSoup and Microsoft will be conducting two free webinars to help nonprofits reduce the environmental impact of their information technology and learn more on effectively using IT to improve their organization’s efficiency.  They’ll cover ways greening your IT can help reduce energy, resources expended, and costs, as well as practical tips for using power management and Microsoft software.

One webinar is geared towards small organizations, with fewer than 10 PCs and fewer than two servers. (10 AM Pacific/1 PM Eastern)

The other is aimed at medium and large organizations with more complex IT infrastructure and dedicated IT support. (11 AM Pacific/2 PM Eastern)

CITI is proud to have helped push some great climate initiatives forward this week. While 1sky and Earth Track are both awesome initiatives, I’ll lead with the one where you can win fabulous prizes –

1sky’s 1climate 1tweet contest is looking for your sweetest tweet on climate change to help fuel the fight for the the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act of 2009. The best tweet will adorn a 1sky t-shirt, and five finalists (including the most retweeted entries) will win prizes.

Look to EarthTrack.net for information on government subsidies for climate changing energy projects. It may seem a little wonky, but the roots of climate change are fertilized with pork. Admitting we have a problem is the first, crucial step towards change. All you have to win at this site is the planet you love.

I am so happy to be partnering with organizations doing this work, and proud of my colleagues here who’ve helped them realize their visions.

If you are an artist interested in learning more about leveraging web technologies such as RSS feeds, Twitter, and traditional web channels, join Senior Developer Phil Jones and the Hamiltonian Artists for an interactive discussion on web and tech challenges relevant to you.

Phil will be speaking Thursday, October 1^st, as part of the Hamiltonian Artist Speaker Series presented by the Hamiltonian Gallery.

The series is “a succession of lectures given by established artists and art professionals to aid in the artistic and entrepreneurial development of our So-Hamiltonian Fellows and other emerging artists… Hamiltonian Artists is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing professional development opportunities for creative artists in their early careers.”

Phil has a passion for the arts and is excited to be sharing his experience in web technology to support the local artists’ community.  The lecture is at 7 PM, at the Hamiltonian Gallery at 1353 U St. NW, Ste. 101 (across the street from the CITI office!). Free and open to the general artist community.  Local blog DCist mentioned the lecture briefly in their weekly round-up of talks around town.

Comparing Open Source Content Management Systems: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Plone. (Free registration required)

CITI helped sponsor the report with a paid ad in the directory section. We implement both Drupal and Wordpress sites.

Four developers from CITI are attending DrupalCon this week in our home town of Washington, DC.  Just like last year when CITI sent two developers to Boston, DrupalCon is again the best place not only for brushing up and learning new skills, but also for catching up with old friends and making new ones.

As always, when we sit through various sessions, we’re not only trying to learn as much as we can about how our fellow Drupalers are using and improving Drupal, we’re also trying to look at things through the lens of the social mission organizations that we serve. Over the next three days, we’ll be posting what we find in this vein and in our own geeky interest.

1. The GeoSpatial Web and Associated Modules

A number of Drupal modules are available in and production, assisted in large part by Development Seed, for creating mapping stacks that don’t have to rely on the standard Google Map.  After Jeff Miccolis of Development Seed explained the various Drupal tech and resources available (mapnik, mapstraciton, gmap, nicemap, cloudmade, http://www.opengeospatial.org, Open data commons, open street map and NASA to name a few), neogeographer Andrew Turner led a fast-paced primer on all the applications for geographic data beyond points on Google map that developers and organizations can leverage.

We’ve done our share of Google maps, but some of the more advanced applications have us champing at the bit to start playing around.

Video should be up soon, but in the meantime presentations by Andrew Turner can be found on his slideshare.

2. The Importance of Search and Drupal Search with ApacheSolr

In a presentation on Drupal Search, Acquia representatives and others talked about search functionality as the main way for people to find content on your website.  Traditional methods like nav menus or site maps are very structured approaches that tend to fail because: a) new content will inevitably end up not fitting neatly into the categories originally created via the IA process (especially w/ web 2.0 where site visitors are supplying much of the content), and b) it’s unrealistic to assume that site visitors would categorize your content in the same way as you would.  Example: if you wanted to buy hand made paper from Amazon.com which of the main nav categories would you look under?  They suggested that a search engine like Apache Solr could be configured so that site visitors run into fewer dead ends. Acquia is also now offering Apache Solr as a hosted service!

To sum it up: search capability should be robust and front and center on the home page, and not tucked away in the top right corner as an after thought.  It’s a better way to help people find the content they want than IA is.

Video

3. Data Collection Through SMS

With the web moving towards user generated data and the pervasiveness of handset, SMS can be an amazing tool for getting information from users.  A few of us sat in on a presentation by Will White on an SMS Framework module integration with Drupal for a proof of concept political polling operation.Will explained the Drupal module and its compatibility with other modules like user groups and user notifications. A few links:

SMS Framework Documentation
Decentralized Data Collection
Parsing Data from SMS Messages

A brief Q & A afterward offered up a plethora of free SMS campaign solutions including use of Twitter as a free SMS campaign platform, as well as Frontline SMS, gnokii, and dotgo.

Video is still being uploaded… we’ll link when it’s up!

4. Great New Features Coming in Drupal 7

In a great talk on new features for users and developers (about the second half) given by Drupal Documentation lead and release manager, Angie Byron (aka webchick), we learned a lot about improvements that will make our lives (and our clients’ lives) much easier with the next release of Drupal 7.

Video

As I mentioned, I’m preparing to lead a class at the Georgetown University Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate program on Managing the Inter-Connected Organization. Right now I’m compiling some resources to share. Here’s my list — which of your most valued resources am I missing?

Organizations:

Nonprofit Technology Network: discussion networks, plenty of webinars, and a huge annual conference, the NTEN NTC, coming up April 26-28 in San Francisco.
http://nten.org/

Idealware: In-depth reviews of tools and technology.
http://www.idealware.org/

TechSoup: Best known for “TechSoup Stock,” discounted software packages for member nonprofits. Plenty of other resources and information, as well.
http://techsoup.org

Pew Internet and American Life Project: Big-picture research on internet usage trends.
http://pewinternet.org/

Blogs:

Frogloop: Care2’s nonprofit online marketing blog
http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/

“Remixing the web for social change”
http://www.netsquared.org/blog

Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/

Deborah Elizabeth Finn – often re-posts her “Ten things (just ten!) that every nonprofit executive needs to know about information technology,” which helped inform this session
http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog

Etc.:

eBenchmarks Study: conducted by M&R Strategic Services and NTEN, compiles data across a wide variety of organizations on open rates, click-throughs, giving, and other online strategy metrics
http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/index.html

Progressive Exchange: an online community that was started in 2004 by M+R Strategic Services’ eCampaigns division as a way to share information among people doing online organizing, advocacy, marketing and fundraising on behalf of the public interest.
http://www.progressiveexchange.org