Convio + Salesforce = A Promising Common Ground
I’ve been playing around with Convio’s new fundraising management tool built on Salesforce called Common Ground. Bottom line: I’m super impressed! While software rarely ever fully impresses me, Convio did a bunch of things right:
- Very strong donor management baseline for most nonprofits. For the vast majority of nonprofits (especially small- to mid-sized ones), Convio outstrips the functionality most will need.
- Doesn’t break Salesforce mold. Unlike other solutions that attempt to cover over the standard object names and structure of the Salesforce database, Convio stays true to it. This means that it will stay aligned much better with continuing development of the platform, as well as enable flexibility for other applications that use standard object names.
- Reasonable pricing. My biggest fear was that it’s pricing structure would put it outside the reach of most nonprofits, like it’s content management system. However, they came in at $100/seat with a minimum two seat minimum. While outside the reach of the smallest organizations, it seems very fair, especially given the power of the platform that the nonprofit gets.
Add a bunch of great third party tools that are available in the Salesforce ecosystem (Vertical Response for bulk email, Demand Tools for data cleaning, a couple of options for events, ect.), Common Ground adds a really strong puzzle piece that most nonprofits need.
The biggest oversight and a big bummer right now is not having a basic online transaction engine built in so that nonprofits can take online donations and have those feed right into the system. Even using an already available PayPal alternative would be better than nothing.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the company continue to migrate more aspects of its platform over towards Salesforce and leverage the vast amount of development happening in the ecosystem. This positions it well to compete against Blackbaud across a broader market.
- Very strong donor management baseline for most nonprofits. For the vast majority of nonprofits (especially small- to mid-sized ones), Convio outstrips the functionality most will need.
- Doesn’t break Salesforce mold. Unlike other solutions that attempt to cover over the standard object names and structure of the Salesforce database, Convio stays true to it. This means that it will stay aligned much better with continuing development of the platform, as well as enable flexibility for other applications that use standard object names.
- Reasonable pricing. My biggest fear was that it’s pricing structure would put it outside the reach of most nonprofits, like it’s content management system. However, they came in at $100/seat with a minimum two seat minimum. While outside the reach of the smallest organizations, it seems very fair, especially given the power of the platform that the nonprofit gets.
Add a bunch of great third party tools that are available in the Salesforce ecosystem (Vertical Response for bulk email, Demand Tools for data cleaning, a couple of options for events, ect.), Common Ground adds a really strong puzzle piece that most nonprofits need.
The biggest oversight and a big bummer right now is not having a basic online transaction engine built in so that nonprofits can take online donations and have those feed right into the system. Even using an already available PayPal alternative would be better than nothing.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the company continue to migrate more aspects of its platform over towards Salesforce and leverage the vast amount of development happening in the ecosystem. This positions it well to compete against Blackbaud across a broader market.
Subscribe through Feedburner
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home