Paul Hagen's blog

In a day and age when most technology providers - small and large - offer 30-day free trials of their software, it seems incredibly odd for a membership management provider, Association Anywhere, which recently asked a nonprofit to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Stating that the company did "business in a very defined and focused space," the vendor actually turned the business away when we refused to sign the agreement.

I can appreciate a vendor wanting to keep its intellectual property safe and ensuring that there is a legitimate client looking at it's software, but this kind of legal clamping down on openness struck me as an affront to the nonprofit sector. Given the tight budgets in the nonprofit sector, I expect vendors (especially those which are strong) to encourage discussion about their products amongst peers. Is Association Anywhere really going to sue a nonprofit for sharing its experience with the software with colleagues or the community?

While procrastinating I came across an article about cell phone projectors coming down the pike. It links to a review by the NY Times of one these devices already being sold. It struck an inner geek chord, and I thought, "cool". Amazon shows them selling for $200-300, though the reviews leave a bit to be desired. Mobility is a beautiful thing.

Companies like JetBlue, Starbucks, and Apple don’t sell just a product or service; they sell an experience. So, what does this have to do with nonprofits? I would argue that some nonprofits do a pretty good job of packaging “experience” with what they do. Heifer, Save the Children, and Kiva do a pretty decent job of connecting donors directly to recipients, using online tools for donors to view pictures and stories of the people they are directly supporting. I would also argue in this communications-hyped world, your nonprofits’ actions speak louder than words.

How well is your nonprofit doing at creating a superior constituent experience? According to market research firm Forrester Research, there are three areas to look at:

1)Obsess about constituent needs. While your organization may have its own needs and wants (e.g. raising money, filling events, selling subscriptions, and serving individuals), constituent-centric organizations identify different target segments and spend time getting to know the wants and needs of those constituents well.
2)Reinforce the brand with every interaction, not just marketing. Every interaction that a constituent has with a staff person, web site, or voice response speaks volumes about your organization’s brand. Marketing messages struggle overcome a bad experiences. Review and fix processes that don’t reinforce the essence of your organization.
3)Treat customer experience as a competence everyone needs to have. Interact with any staff -- checkers, stockers, customer service – at companies like Trader Joes or Whole Foods and you will find super friendly help; it’s not just management or communications. Management at companies like Jet Blue spend as much or more time reminding staff of the desired customer experience as they do communicating that externally.

What’s the bottom line of creating great constituent experiences? Of the 112 companies and 5000 consumers that it researched, Forrester found that firms with the best experiences resulted in 15% more consumers purchasing additional products or services over those with the worst rated experiences. Furthermore, customer reluctance to switch to competitors was 18% higher for those with the best experiences compared to the worst. Translating to nonprofits, this means more people donating, attending addition events, and more services consumed, as well as fewer constituents opting to send their money and spend their time with alternative nonprofits.

As I've been considering my own New Years Resolutions, I started thinking about what one client was thinking about for 2009. I was asked to put together my thoughts for a data maintenance ‘ritual’ for their new Salesforce system to ensure that they keep their data clean. Fantastic!! It's no new news that working out and eating healthy help you function in life better; similarly, it's old news that clean data helps your organization operate more effectively. Nevertheless, the beginning of the year serves as a new reminder to get in shape. I thought I'd share my quick list culled from various sources here. Would love any other suggestions.

Daily/Weekly

• Back-up database. Set up an automated backup to be generated that can be download weekly.
  
• Duplicate check. Check “Demand Tools” reports regularly to check for duplicates and other redundant data.
  
• Scan for junk leads. Doing regular scans for junk Lead records that are filled with gibberish values from sources like online forms.
  
• Check For & Tackle Incomplete Records. While most CRMs can validate or require certain data fields, it’s not always easy to ensure a value for every field at the time when a record is generated. For example, if staff import a list of event attendees with only name, title and phone numbers, it has very little value if it needs to be used in an email or direct mail campaign. While appending missing data is may require a lot of manual effort which will feel time consuming, it is a necessary evil to ensure that you have ‘actionable’ data.
  
• Returned mail. Update contact records when mail is returned. [Determine policy…what happens? Alert to owner? Purge? Phone call?]
  

Weekly/Monthly

• Run executive reports weekly/monthly. Use key organizational reports to spot poor data (as well as poor performance). Data that doesn’t match expectations are either an indicator of poor data management or poor performance by the individual.
  
• Scan communications lists. Review lists (reports) that School Volunteers will use for communications (email, invitation lists, etc.). Is there missing data? Is data in the right format?
  
• Run exceptions reports monthly. Run reports run monthly to find records with incorrect picklist values.
  

Quarterly

• Post email cleaning. Use tools in VerticalResponse to identify Returned Mail or Bounced emails so that bad lead records can be updated/purged.
  
• Delete or archive old data. Organizations merge, get acquired or shut down, contacts change addresses, change jobs, move within an organization …CRM data does expire. This is an area which is not easily automated and requires investment of time and energy. The more regularly you check for expired data, the healthier your data will be. According to one source, a database unchecked for an entire year can see as much as 30% expired data.
  
• Data enrichment. Regularly ask what additional data in each record would help staff do more and have better insight. Adding political campaign contributions? Adding annual revenues of Community Based Organizations or Foundations?
  

I’m sure many of you felt the excitement that yesterday’s election results generated. The spontaneous celebrations that erupted in the streets were amazing! Truly a new day in America when people rejoice in the streets following an election rather than just a sports event.

As both Obama and many commentators have noted, however, now the real work of nation-rebuilding starts. With that, it struck me that now was a ‘kairos’ (opportune moment in time) opportunity for the big volunteer organizations to recruit volunteers. Obama’s organization did an amazing job mobilizing people and there’s a lot of good will out there. With his hands full with any number of messes (financial, Iraq/Afghanistan, etc.), Obama’s going to need the same kind of help on the ground that got him to office to fix the nation .

Similar to the ‘million man march’, I’d like to see the major volunteer organizations launch a drive to get 1 million new volunteers by inauguration day in January (or by the end of his first 100 days). All those energized by putting Obama into office, now focus the energy on re-constructing a great nation. Consider channeling that energy into Volunteer Match, Points of Light, San Francisco School Volunteers, Breakthrough Collaborative, Idealist.org or one of the hundreds of other worthwhile organizations.

I realize this is a technology blog, so let me take a moment and tie this to my last post about looking for process makeovers. ‘Kairos’ moments like now don’t come around often. The opportunity to take advantage of a huge amount of good will has little to do with having the latest social networking or web 2.0 tools, but rather how well your organization is equipped to train, support, and parse work out to volunteers. It’s a process. Volunteer management systems can certainly help manage large volumes of volunteers. However, without the orientation and support processes solid – and work parsed into bite-sized chunks for volunteers – volunteer management systems will help only marginally.