Efficient and Effective: Managing Membership

When I arrived at NPower Indiana a little over a year ago, I wanted to learn as much about our business as possible. Like most newbies, I went through files, documents and our server-based customer management system in great detail. Without question, having access to that information was very helpful, but there was so much information in so many different places.

I knew we could be doing better -- especially in the area of membership management. So that's where we started.

Like any good technology project, we started by defining our requirements and looking at options for the right tool for us. Fairly quickly, a web-based service called salesforce.com rose to the top - it is reliable, flexible and very inexpensive to most nonprofit organizations (the first 10 licenses are free!)

Our initial implementation took a little over 2 months, but that was mainly because I was squeezing in the customization work while keeping both hands firmly on the wheel as the new CEO. In that short time, we opened up a huge window of opportunity for our membership management going forward.

Through our new system we now can track information (and apply it) much better than ever before. Let me share one example: We now track all of the benefits that are received by our members. So when a client receives discounted consulting services, attends a free training, or receives donated hardware/software, we now document that (and assign a value to it)in our system. When renewal time comes (we have renewals throughout the year), we're able to show members that their investment in NPower membership has generated far more value than the annual membership dues. And that's what membership management is all about!

RSS Brown Bag Today

We had fun this afternoon at the NPower Indiana Brown Bag -- today we talked about RSS and how nonprofits can use the technology. Thanks to everyone who attended. I owe the class a few to-do items, so here they are:

1) How do you publish feeds via your own website?

Here is a good overview from our friends at TechSoup - the comments that follow the post may be helpful, too:

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page5820.cfm

2) What are some good blogs covering nonprofits and technology?
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but here is a good starting point (the URLs are the feeds, so you can add to your reader easliy)

Getting Attention
http://feeds.feedburner.com/gettingattention

Today in TechSoup
http://feeds.techsoup.org/TechSoup-Today

Beth's Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/bethblog

Spare Change
http://feeds.feedburner.com/social-marketing/WazZ

NetSquared Community
http://www.netsquared.org/blog/feed

NTEN
http://nten.org/rss.xml

Chronicle on Philanthropy (Less of  a Tech Focus, but interesting)
http://philanthropy.com/news/rss/?section\x3dphilanthropytoday

I'm back!

I have been a pretty inactive blogger for the past few months. There have been so many things going on at NPower Indiana that I haven't taken the time to announce and discuss via the blog. But now it's time to start updating more regularly. We have a lot to share, and we're looking forward to getting more discussion happening via this blog.

Great Customer Feedback

As many of you know, we have recently undergone a major conversion of our systems here at NPower Indiana (hence the dropoff in blogging!)

The process is going very well, but there are always opportunities for improvement. After our first round of billing via the new system, I received a call from a member saying, “everything looks OK, but how about saving a few trees?”

She thought we were being wasteful with paper.

Now, given all the things I was focused on in this new system conversion, paper conservation was admittedly not at the top of my list of priorities. Making sure we continue to record our time and bill our customers accurately was overwhelmingly more important to me. But now, with that part taken care of, the suggestion can be examined. And since I fundamentally agree that we shouldn’t be wasteful, I decided to dive in last night.

To begin, I looked at the copies of the invoices from last month and counted the number of pages printed: 53 invoices and an average of 3 pages per invoice – that’s 159 sheets of paper.

I decided that we might be able to adjust our billing templates, which consisted of me:

* Adjusting the spacing, margins and page orientation

* Adding a new category of information to the invoice (another member request)

But during that process, something terrific happened.

I realized that one of our more time-consuming steps could be eliminated while reducing the amount of paper being used. That’s a double-win in my book. So after doing all the analysis, the suggestion saved us (and the environment) just over a ream of paper a year – that may not seem like a lot, but it’s good for the environment and good for our finances. And as an added bonus, we’ve saved about a half-an-hour each month in our billing process.

And who couldn’t use an extra half-an-hour these days?

Keep those suggestions coming! Who knows what we’ll discover next.

Welcoming New Members!

It’s time again to welcome some new NPower Indiana members! We are excited to begin supporting the technology needs of the following organizations

S.P.O.R.T.S (Southeastern Program of Recreational Team Sports)
S.P.O.R.T.S. (Southeastern Program of Recreational Team Sports) is a private, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing youth in the Hamilton Southeastern community with the opportunity to participate in recreational and competitive team sports that promote character development, leadership and physical fitness.

Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne
The Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne is the organization that builds funds for today and tomorrow through partnerships with donors, nonprofits and the community. Providing resources. For good, For ever.

Introducing Ben McLaughlan

I'm pleased to introduce a new member of the NPower consulting team. Ben McLaughlan
joined us this week as a Technology Intern. Ben comes to us as an undergraduate student
majoring in Computer Information Technology.

Welcome Ben!

Welcoming new members

I'm a little late in writing this post, but I want to welcome the new NPower members from the past quarter. They are:

Trustee Leadership Development, Inc.
Trustee Leadership Development is a member supported organization dedicated to advancing boards and leaders of not-for-profit and community based organizations. Through their programs and services, they help you uphold your responsibility to the constituencies you serve by increasing your ability to lead with confidence and trust.

Latino Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence
Mission: To promote awareness and work toward the elimination of domestic and sexual violence and contributing conditions affecting Latino communities across Indiana.

Family Strengthening Coalition
The Family Strengthening Coalition is a community champion for family strengthening, supporting our community in a broad range of strategies to help you keep your family strong, capable, and connected.

P.H. Sullivan Foundation/SullivanMunce Cultural Center
The mission of the SullivanMunce Cultural Center is to enrich community life through the preservation, education and appreciation of history and art.

Tech Tip: Analyzing Your Web Traffic

So, you've just spent some time and money producing a new website for your nonprofit organization. Do you ever wonder things like:

• Who's visiting the site?


• How many people visit the site on a daily/weekly/monthly basis?


• What are the most popular pages of the site?


• How are people finding our site online?

These are just a few of the questions that a good web analytics program can answer. And you don't have to blow the budget just to have one put in place.

In the past, most analytics programs were installed on the web server that hosted the web site. But now, there are easier, less-invasive ways of getting the information you want about your site's traffic.

A few examples of these new services are Google Analytics (free) and Visistat (free trial / $19.95 per month). So, instead of installing a bulky program on a server, these web-based services only require that you add a tiny snippet of text to each of your web pages -- something that would take about 20 minutes for a 10-20 page website.

My personal preference is Visistat, but you can't beat Google's pricing. The good news is that it's free either way to get started, and you can make the best decision based on your own needs.

One word of caution: Once you have access to this data, it can be a little addictive!

Welcome Paul Giese

NPower Indiana is pleased to welcome the latest member of our team. Paul Giese joins us as our Director of External Relations.

Paul's experience as a corporate marketer and entrepreneur makes him a natural fit for this role which combines development, member relations and marketing duties.

Welcome Paul!

Tech Tip: Meeting Wizard

Have you ever found yourself trying to pull together a meeting or conference call with a group of really busy people? It can be challenging. Whether it's scheduling committee meetings with my Board of Directors or convening with colleagues at other NPower affiliates, it can be tough to find meeting times where everyone can participate.

Having found myself faced with this challenge more and more frequently, I decided to research some tools that might be able to take some of the pain away.

Enter Meeting Wizard. I tested a number of other sites, but found this one to be the most user-friendly. All you have to do is sign up for a free account, and you can begin coordinating meetings online. You supply several date/time combinations and enter in the email addresses of the desired meeting participants. They receive an email that drives them back to the Meeting Wizard site where they can indicate their availability for the supplied dates/times.

Once everyone provides their availability, Meeting Wizard notifies you of the best possible time for your meeting. Once you have the best date/time, you can also use the site to notify the participants via email that a date/time has been set.

There are a number of features I have not yet explored, but so far this have been a very helpful tool for me. Let me know if it works for you!