SXSW is part conf and part carnival.

Yes my blog has been quiet for a couple of weeks, but you may have noticed my twitter feed has not been.  For 11+ days straight it was travel, conferences, crowds, music, food, networking, informative sessions, and many great people met and seen again.   First was the RunWalkRide Conference in Atlanta and then SXSW Interactive here in my hometown of Austin, TX.  Both excellent events, but couldn’t be more different.

First off….RunWalkRide.  220 participants for two days of seriously intense and fun learning and networking for nonprofit professionals who are focused on fundraising run/walk/ride events.  My compliments on their pre-conference seminars goes both Donna Wilkins of Charity Dynamics who presented on integrated marketing and the team of Event360 who discussed creating great fundraising coaches.  Also, as always, the RunWalkRide Top 30 Research, sponsored by Blackbaud, was incredible to see.

The top 30 fundraising events cultivated over 11.6 million participants in 2011 raising over 1.69 BILLION for charity.  Incredible stats and a sign of how much great work is being done out there.   Given out at the conference dinner was the annual Cash, Sweat, Tears Award.  It went to Sam Fox who raised over $350,000 dollars for Parkinson’s Research while running the entire Pacific Coast Trail in just 41 days.  An amazing story.  Definitely worth reading.

If you are a nonprofit professional in charge of events like this I highly encourage you to check out their website and think about attending the conference next year.

Secondly…SXSW.  Over 18,000 attendees descending on central Austin to learn, party, network, sell, and promote.  One way to describe this festival is to consider part serious conference and part street carnival.  I had the pleasure, via my work with GoodThreads, to support Beaconfire Consulting with their lounge in the convention center which is the hub place to be to connect with your nonprofit-connected brethren.  If I had to find one theme among the nonprofit-focused sessions of this conference this year it would be video.  There were six sessions over three days that dealt with how to utilize video in connecting with and promoting to your constituents your cause.   The tools and support out there today to bring this work easily to life for your organization are plentiful and ready to use.  I was quite impressed.

My special thanks to Eve Simon, Michael Cervino, and Jeff Herron of Beaconfire for their incredible hospitality in allowing us to be a part of the Beacon Lounge at SXSW.  An incredible experience.

Next up is the Association of Fundraising Professionals Conference March 31st – April 3rd in Vancouver.  I hope to see you there!

A good friend of mine says that it’s “always hard to be a jerk to someone face-to-face.”  He’s so right.  It’s amazing what passes for communication from some quarters today and it’s a cliche anymore to say that people write online what they would never say in person.

This article was not written from a sales process perspective, but it very well could have been.  She states “nothing beats the power of a truly personal, face-to-face connection.”  She’s absolutely right.  For all of our technology for voice and video communications we all still respond better to meeting someone in person.   I liken it to how people today will go to Best Buy to try out a product (a face-to-face meeting), but will then purchase it on Amazon.  Even if we’re utilizing a technology-based method of purchasing it’s the hands-on experience that helped us decide which product to buy.

In today’s software world much is sold over the phone and simple economics makes traveling long distance to sell many of our products in face-to-face meetings difficult.  However, there are ways to meet in person that you can take advantage of to help your eventual purchasing processes.

Here are my 3 quick means to manage face-to-face vendor relationships in an online world:

• Conferences and trade shows – Don’t run past the vendor booths. Stop and talk. Get to know the products out there and the people in the booth early and often. It will benefit you greatly when you later begin to need to start a purchasing process
• Go local – Many companies may not have a sales person in your city, but they might have a customer or two in your city or perhaps a service delivery person.  Ask for local names that you could meet and chat up in person about their company, products, and services.
• Utilize your network – If you have a trusted friend in a city where they do have a sales person see if you can have that person join in person with the sales person on the other end of your audio or video conference from their offices.  They can be your ‘spy’ so to speak to give you their thoughts on the vendors office culture, the trust-factor felt with the vendor sales person, and so forth

Check out the link from the article on here and go meet someone in real life today!

Also, I hope to meet you in person as well!  It’s conference season again and I’ll be at the following over the next few weeks:

• RunWalkRide Conference in Atlanta – March 6-7th
• SXSW in Austin. Come by the Beacon Lounge – Mar 9-12th
• Assoc of Fundraising Professionals Intl Conf in Vancouver – Mar 30-Apr 3rd

Contact me from any of these links on my contact page.  Hope to see you soon!

For the low price of $9.99 you can now quickly download the book to your Kindle Reader or Kindle App.  I’ve loved reading books on my Kindle over the years and also enjoy the fact that this is an opportunity to be green in my publishing efforts.

Let me know if having the book available in this manner is helpful to you and your organization.  Also working on an iBooks version as well that should be ready later in the early Spring.

This month I’m introducing you to Women Inspiring Women.  I met the founder Leslie Sturgeon through work I did for Constant Contact.   The following is a case study on how she achieved return on mission through her technology investment.   Here are a few facts about this great organization:

The mission of Women Inspiring Women is to bring women together for professional growth, mentoring, and inspiration.

The exercise we embarked upon was to see how her use of Constant Contact provided a return for her mission.  First let’s review what return on mission is and how we understand it.

Return on Mission bridges the gap between the competing interests of money and mission, board and staff, vendor and nonprofit, and program versus infrastructure expense.  Below is an outline of a standard ROI (return on investment) based on data from Leslie’s work.   The previous registration process is compared with the registration process as it has worked with Constant Contact.

Return on Mission, though shown as a formula, doesn’t necessarily need to be a direct calculation and, for many, it won’t be so.  What it always will be is a formula to understand what the calculated ROI equals in impact to the mission.   For Women Inspiring Women, the impact on mission of the ROI savings equaled the below benefits to the mission.  Those benefits are tangible and undeniable benefits to the mission of the organization.

By following this process within your buying process your organization will be able to gain insight pre-purchase to how it will impact your mission.  Then, post-purchase, you’ll be able to measure the success or, hopefully not, failure of your project on your organization.   For Women Inspiring Women it’s very exciting to see how technology has been a catalyst to increase the scope and availability of their mission.

Do you have a ‘Return on Mission’ story?  Drop me a line.  I’d love to hear from you.

Single most profound change is how buyers now control the buying process.

This is an amazing statement for any company to make.  Sure many companies give lip service to listening to the buyer, but then all of their sales training materials talk of how to maintain control in the sales cycle and push the client towards the goals they have for every call, meeting, and presentation in order to close that immediate sale.

What the statement above supports is what has been my view years….that it is up to the buyers to assert themselves in a buying process and not be sold to in a sales process. If you’re dealing with a vendor that supports this statement then you will feel as if you are in a ‘relationship process’ rather than a ‘sales process’ and the differences between the two couldn’t be more stark.

A sales process:

• Tries to convince
• Attempts to control
• Works to maneuver to a closed deal

A relationship process:

• Seeks to understand
• Attempts to build commonality of purpose
• Looks to the long term

What does your vendor do?  What do you as a vendor do?  Either way, the new era buyer control is here.

In the 18+ years since that first job I’ve held positions in direct sales, marketing, partnership work and others.   The success I’ve had is a direct correlation to how well I was able to bring together the interests of the vendor with the interests of a potential customers.   What I’ve noticed in it all is that it takes a special relationship back and forth between vendor and potential customer, that either works or it doesn’t, to determine if a quality sale leading to a long term customer can be reached.

As the first part in this blog’s “Nonprofit Buyer” series I’d like to explore what I call “The Vendor Dance.”  This is my name for the back and forth that happens during a potential sale and being good at it is crucial for your nonprofit to make positive, high impact decisions.

It is different for every transaction you may have in your life.  It could be personal, like haggling at a market, or impersonal, like buying a computer online.   Our arena of sales is a very personal one.   Meetings, demonstrations, tradeshows, webinars, personal phone calls and relationships are all hallmarks of the buying process for a business application whether you are a nonprofit or not.  The Vendor Dance is done every day.  You are probably involved in it right now in ways you aren’t even aware.   So what is it then and how am I involved in it already, you ask?

Let’s think of it as being asked to a high school prom.   Does she like me?  I heard she does.   Sally told Jimmy that Johnny thought she might sort of like me, but doesn’t want to say anything in case I didn’t like her first.   She likes me?  Great!  Would you go to the dance with me?  Yes!  I’ll pick you up at 7 p.m. in my dad’s car.   Translated to a sales process…What software do you think we should buy?   I don’t know.   Let’s call a few vendors?   Do you think we can afford them?  Tell them we’re a nonprofit.  Would you like a demo of our software?  Do you like what you see?   Maybe they want to buy our stuff?   Do you think they want to buy?  What signals did they give you?  Did it seem positive?   What else can we do?   They’ll buy if we do this, this, and this. Really?  We can’t do that.  Only do this.   Their legal team what?   Now the board has to look at it?   You can sign a contract?  Great!  I’ll pick you up at 7 p.m. in my rental car to celebrate.

That same back and forth communication happens over and over again.  Some vendors I have worked for and organizations I have dealt with over the years were definitely better dance partners than others — that’s for sure.   However, it is clear that this is one dance in which many in our sector, vendors and nonprofits alike, do need a few more lessons.

The fact that these lessons may be necessary for our professional nonprofit executives is understandable.   So much focus has been put on the needed areas of board, donor, volunteer management, etc., and for good reason.   This has been a neglected arena compared to the other well-studied and detailed procedures we have in so many other areas of nonprofit management.

I absolutely hate ever seeing a nonprofit make a bad buying decision, whether they were buying from me or not, because the impact of that bad decision is so much greater in my opinion than anything that can ever occur at a corporation.  At a nonprofit it is a hard-earned, donor dollar that is wasted.   That just shouldn’t happen.

In your nonprofit you are used to purchasing applications and other large ticket items in specific ways.  Is how you are doing it today the best way?   My dad used to say that the seven most deadly words were “We’ve never done it that way before.”  Has an awkward vendor dance you’ve been in led to a decision some aren’t happy about when it’s over?   Were you really able to tell if you got the right thing or did you just get the right thing out of the options you knew about?

• Within the ‘vendor dances’ that you are in or have been in did you do everything you could to:
• define vendors outside of your normal experiences?
• Pull together requirements based upon current and future processes?
• Evaluate products based on current knowledge and future needs?
• Use creative means to gather and demo vendor products?
• Track benefits as well as features?

The sales process for many vendors is not that different from those vendors that sell exclusively to our for-profit brethren.  That is truly unfortunate as our nonprofit sector requires not a typical sales process, but rather a relationship process based on a vendor dance that is a graceful set of moves across the floor.

In future parts of this series we will continue to explore how this vendor dance can be done effectively and to an end that leaves not just a return on investment, but, even better, a positive return on mission.

I woke up to my iPhone ringing and dinging from texts, voicemails, and tweets about Blackbaud purchasing Convio for 300+ million.

I was one of the first three sales reps hired at Convio in mid-2000.  I was fortunate enough to sell several of the cornerstone clients the first quarter out of the gate when none of us were truly sure how nonprofits would take to this new type of offering.  We saw great promise in the internet as a communications and fundraising tool.   Let’s remember that at that time the internet was literally six years old in its commercial usage.

After a two year stint running my own business helping small to medium nonprofits and having had the wonderful pleasure of working with Jay Love and the eTapestry team, I folded that company into Kintera (started about the same time as Convio) at the end of 2003.  In the 4+ years I was there we saw emails go from thousands to millions to billions.   Not everything always went smoothly, but it was newly discovered country 7-12 years ago.  Technologies have since matured greatly and the wild west got some rules and grew up.

Who could have foreseen that 17 billion is now donated online and it being the primary mover of donor interaction for most causes today?  It’s pretty amazing.

Now here we are in 2012 and all three of those companies, Convio, eTapestry, and Kintera are safely tucked into the Blackbaud nest for 300mil, 25mil, and 46mil respectively.

So what does all of this mean for innovation in our sector?  I believe it means three things:

• Consolidation
  • In many cases a large acquisition of competitive companies creates further industry consolidation.  The PC industry had this effect a few years ago as the names of companies who were big just a few years ago are now no longer and the father of the PC, IBM, doesn’t even sell them anymore.
  • We could see other players in our space start to join the arms race to bulk up their portfolios in order to compete for sales.  If Blackbaud comes in offering it all many other vendors won’t want to come in seeming like they are short-handed.  Smaller players can start a bidding war between other bigger players so the larger players can fill out their portfolios.  Many vendors may have new phone numbers in the next couple of years.
• Competition
  • The first question that may come to mind is now that Blackbaud bought Convio what competition is there?  The answer is plenty.  You have to put yourselves in the vendors shoes.  The nonprofit sector is not a monolith of exactly the same types of organizations.  There are many, many different variants of needs in our sector.  While Blackbaud knows they compete very well in some circles they will be the first to tell you they can always do better, aren’t as good at some verticals in our sector as others and are striving to do more.
  • Smaller vendors, and there are many, know that the way to beat a Goliath is to change the game.  They can take several strategies:
    • Go vertical and focus only on higher education and alumni centers or associations for example.  Then strive to out-feature and out-support the big guy in that area.
    • Ride a technology shift is means number two.   The wonders of the web that brought us Convio, eTapestry, and Kintera are brining us a new crop of apps, services, and integrations that are changing how we can deliver our missions.  As I said last week, it’s just the beginning.
• Capital
  • With this capital outlay, financed mainly by debt to the tune of 240 million, other parts of the capital investment market will definitely perk up and take a new look.  When someone is willing to spend 300mil then 20 others will line up to spend 30 million.  People are more comfortable following the big investments than leading them.
  • Blackbaud has done the entire eco-system of nonprofit technology a big favor here.  More good companies who serve our sector will now be able to get the needed financing to expand the work they do.  Watch this year and you’ll see more investments announced and companies acquired from new and old competitors alike.

Blackbaud will surely be apart of all three of the C’s I listed above.  I still maintain my premise from last week that it’s going to be an exciting era of innovation for our sector and now we will get to see how the other players step up to compete in this new landscape.

Competition to make technology that can help you serve your mission better can only be a good thing.  So to those today who thought competition and innovation was dead I say….

Long Live Competition and Innovation!

Innovation is an attribute of companies and individuals that is highly lauded across the spectrum of activities.  Last year, at the passing of Steve Jobs, the obits rightfully pointed to his legacy of technical and artistic achievement as they discussed his life and work.  What always impressed me was his ability to sacrifice a currently successful product and its design for what he knew needed to be the next big thing.  The term “creative destruction” grew popularity due to that kind of forward thinking.  Innovation and creative destruction have been the means to the end of so much of the standard of living the world sees today.

In the world of business today technology is business and business is technology.  Frankly, one can’t exist today without the other.   The dry cleaners down the street even has sophisticated inventory systems.  I can now track my Domino’s Pizza order on my smartphone and your car can drive/think for you based upon the conditions of the road.  It’s pretty amazing.

When I say in the title, ‘Not just for businesses anymore”, I’m being a bit tongue in cheek, but I don’t think I’m over-stating the fact that many business leaders, who consider themselves ‘innovators’, do not consider the nonprofit/NGO sectors as enormous centers of technological innovation.  That thinking couldn’t be more wrong, but it seems that not many know it or see it.   

I’ll repeat that statement a different way…many business leaders out there today, and you know them since they probably sit on your board or committees, don’t believe they see an enormity of technological innovation in our sector.   The reality is, as I see it, that technological innovation is happening every day. The pace of it is even quickening as we speak.

The disconnect between the perceived and actual technological innovation that these business leaders see in our sector is the gap between organizations that use technology as a tactic in order to fundraise, connect, and deliver on their mission and those that use technology as a strategic advantage.

What are the reasons the innovation that is out there isn’t making it into the organizations in a strategic way?

Why aren’t more companies being even more innovative to push the nonprofit market further?

Is it just plain market awareness?  Is it cost?  Is it a cultural change management question at our organizations?  Is it the decision-making processes involved?  Is it lack of vision?  Could it be too much vision and not enough execution?

As with any complex issue the answer is also complex.

However, two points can be distilled out of it all  -

• The Vendor Side - Our sector is a difficult one for a vendor to sell into as it is a fragmented and segmented marketplace which contains executives who, when compared to their for-profit counterparts, are more focused on many other concerns, and rightfully so, other than technology usage.
• The Nonprofit Organization View - The marketplace of vendors selling into the nonprofit space has grown exponentially and become more diffused over the last decade.  The choices, and how to make the right ones for your organization, are infinitely harder and more confusing than ever.

It’s understandable that being an expert in tech solutions may not be priority one for most nonprofit executives and our vendors don’t always do the best job of creating strategic solutions instead of tactical tools.  However, it’s time for us to change that on both sides of the equation and make sure that innovation commands the day to make each side better.

It’s time to recognize that strategic technology usage is a core part to mission delivery.  Focusing on Return on Mission instead of Return on Investment allows us all, vendor and nonprofit alike, to see innovative technology solutions for what they are: enablers of effective mission delivery and social impact.

A growing number of organizations that view technology as a strategic advantage to deliver their mission are becoming the norm, but we have a long way to go.  Go see Invisible Children, CharityWater, Heifer Project International, or American Rescue Committee as examples of organizations that use technology strategically to deliver on their mission.  They aren’t alone as numerous small organizations here in Austin and in your community do the same on their own scale.

As important as it is for vendors, new and old alike, to get the word out the best they can about the value of their products it is also incumbent on the leaders at organizations of all sizes to think about technology in strategic and innovative ways to better enable their missions.   The innovation in our sector is there and ready for the taking.

Let those out there who think we don’t have technological innovation in our sector know that we absolutely do by putting it to use in ways that are innovative and unique for your organization.  Let them know that our nonprofit leaders and vendors are leading the way on new innovation that will help us serve our missions better, be more efficient in our unique business processes, and be better stewards of our donor dollars.

Amusing of course, but thankfully we have so much more to look forward to in 2012 than yet one more predicted armageddon.  How many have their been in the last ten years or so?

This year promises to be the beginning of a watershed in technology for nonprofits.   Integrations and efficiencies begun in the for-profit world are truly finding their footing in our space.  This is the year that we will see social technologies and enterprise-ready solutions make large contributions and be successful for all types and sizes of organizations.

New investments and business models are coming online now that promise to help our sector eliminate many of our old inefficiencies and bad habits making the business of running our missions better servants of the donor dollar.

It’s an exciting time to be around nonprofit sector-focused technology.

What will the future fundraising office look like?  How will the future nonprofit deliver its services?  The future is here now and ready to go for connected technology solutions in our space.  How do we make the right decisions for our organization when technology is getting better, but also more and more complex?  

David Brooks, author of The Social Animal, writes in book “that the vast majority of us have very little understanding of why we make the choices we do, and that we’re influenced instead by peer pressure; impulsive and reactive emotions; …; overconfidence in the present; excessive worry about the future; the evolutionary instinct to avoid pain and move towards pleasure; and precious little capacity to delay gratification.” (http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/07/we-dont-know-what-we-dont-know.html)

A bit of depressing essay on the human spirit, but definitely true when it comes to how so many of us make decisions about technology solutions that can seem so daunting to work through as to what is best for our missions.  Thankfully, later in the book, Brooks calls for a balanced life that contrasts equally “action with introspection, confidence with restraint.”(http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/07/we-dont-know-what-we-dont-know.html)

The part of the downer sentence that catches me, however, is our “overconfidence in the present; excessive worry about the future”.

Let’s explore each of these:

1) Overconfidence in the present -

Many of us work in this field because we believe the present, in some way or another, has a need that must be fixed.  Our missions are written to state what problem here in the present we are attempting to solve.  By our very nature of working in this sector we are people who believe we can make the today better by our work.  We must take that same belief in our ability to solve problems and translate it to the pieces of technology that enable the mission to occur and manage itself to better effect.

2) Excessive worry about the future -

Over and over again I hear organizations worry about their future.  It’s natural.  What isn’t natural is “excessive” worrying.  The excessive piece of the equation is what causes paralysis in the present.  That paralysis and worry is a prime reason for organizations holding off on decisions that could significantly support their organizations ability to perform their mission.  In my sales career I’ve had people in management positions at organizations tell me they wish the decision about a CRM/Accounting System/In-take system/etc be done after they retired because of the dread they had in making that decision.  We have to let go of that fear in 2012 and recognize that the paralysis and worry that create fear are truly detrimental to the missions we serve.

The positive side to those two tough axioms of human nature is that once we recognize these as issues there are really only internal cultural changes to be made and your organization can move on to utilizing a framework for positive decision-making very easily.  I’ve seen it happen many times and this is the year your organization can do it too.

The concept of Return on Mission is one of the building blocks of a solid, mission-based technology decision-making process.  It is the equation that helps your organization understand how each piece of technology can be a solution to support your mission with a return on investment that maximizes social impact.

Yes it’s going to be a year of rapid change with many critical choices needing to be made that will impact your organization in 2012 and beyond.  By utilizing a decision-making process that focuses on Return on Mission, as laid out in my book The Nonprofit Buyer, you can be assured that your organization can live by its new years resolutions.

It’s going to be a great 2012!

Signing a new software contract with a vendor is, in many ways, like getting married. The contract then becomes your prenup which explains what should happen in case things go badly. Hopefully, you’ll never have to go back to it because if you do your relationship is probably already in bad shape. This webinar will help you with the top 5 tips you should be aware of when negotiating your contracts in order to prepare your organization for marriage success or any potential difficulties.

In this webinar, participants will learn

• An understanding of standard contract sections: what is standard and what is generally not
• Real-world examples of contract negotiations that can create goodwill between the parties and those that can create potential issues
• Top 5 tips to know before signing your next software contract

> Register Now!