The Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits: Fundraising, Communications, and Outreach

Nonprofits maintain a complicated relationship with technology. Most know that software can streamline their processes and help fulfill their missions more efficiently and effectively, yet lean staffing and tight budgets mean they’re unable to devote the time necessary keep up with new technologies and find the right tools. How can they keep informed about what’s out there, what it might cost, what features to look for or where to turn to learn more?

From the most basic questions, like how to use software to help manage emailing hundreds of people at once, to the more complex, like understanding the role of social networking and mobile phone text-messaging in fundraising strategy, organizations need a trusted source for answers.

Idealware’s A Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits: Fundraising, Communications and Outreach addresses exactly these issues. Through a friendly, easy-reference format, this concise book will help nonprofits pinpoint the types of software that might be useful for their needs and provide user-friendly summaries to de-mystify the possible options.

Starting in the areas of Fundraising, Communications and Outreach, the Field Guide will provide:

• Information to help nonprofits understand the types of software that can help with particular organizational functions—like communicating with constituents, or reaching new audiences—based on their own level of technological sophistication.
• Friendly and easy-to-reference information on each relevant type of software, including donor management systems, broadcast email software, social networking sites, online surveys and more.
• Practical information for each type of software, including typical pricing levels, features, common vendors and additional resources.

View a mockup of the Field Guide as an example of how this information will look in action. (Please note that neither the text nor the graphic design are final).

Designed as a highly readable book that’s easy to reference, the 40-60 page Field Guide will be created in a format appropriate for both printed distribution and distribution as an online PDF. We are targeting a November 2009 launch for the 2010 Field Guide, and plan updated editions each fall.

Providing the Field Guide to Your Network

Idealware may sell printed copies of the Field Guide through its Web site, but the primary distribution channel will be via licensing partnerships with foundations, affiliate organizations and membership organizations. Working together, we can provide your nonprofit network with this great resource.

By licensing the Field Guide, you will get:

• A distribution- or print-ready version of the 2010 Field Guide, co-branded with your logo and your own introduction page.
• The license to print or distribute as many copies as you like, by any mechanism you like, to your members, affiliates or grantees. We only ask that you not make the Field Guide available to the general public.
• The license to use information in the Field Guide for other materials, or for training.

The core price of licensing the 2010 Field Guide depends on the size of the network to which you will distribute the guide, either in printed or electronic form:

• For fewer than 500 organizations, the license fee is $1,000
• For 501-1,000 organizations, the license fee is $1,400
• For 1,000-2,000 organizations, the license fee is $1,800

We’ll make each yearly update of the Field Guide available to current licensees at a substantially reduced fee. However, if you commit to becoming a Pilot Partner for the Field Guide prior to August 7th, 2009, we’ll provide the non-customized, base 2011 and 2012 editions of the Field Guide, co-branded to your organization, free of charge.

Pilot Partners will receive the benefits of the Field Guide for their network, save some money, and help the project become a reality for the rest of the sector all at the same time.

Customizing the Field Guide for Your Network

Want a version of the Field Guide tailored specifically to your network? For an additional $1,000, we’ll tailor the organizational process summaries to speak directly to your nonprofit’s typical processes, remove any undesired software types and add up to one additional software type. We can also add case studies of organizations from within your network and the types of software they use for fundraising, communication and outreach processes, for $300 per each one-page-long case study.

In addition, we can add new software areas, change the topics covered or do whatever needs to be done to make sure it’s useful and practical for your organizations. If you’re interested in a customized Field Guide, let us know and we’ll provide you with a fixed price.

About Idealware

Idealware, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, provides candid reviews and articles about software of interest to the nonprofit sector. We have both wide and deep expertise in the software available to nonprofits, with articles and reports on more than 50 different areas of software. We combine traditional research techniques (such as interviews and surveys) with software selection methodologies (for instance, detailed ratings of software tools against a rubric) and package our findings into approachable and practical reports.

We have extensive experience providing information to help nonprofits make effective software decisions. For instance:

• Our recent Consumers Guide to Low Cost Donor Management Systems provides detailed information about 33 different donor management systems, packaged into approachable comparisons, scenarios and diagrams. Read the report online at www.idealware.org/donor.
• Our Few Good Tools article series rounds up information about a wide variety of different types of software—more than 20 types and counting. These articles each summarize the experiences of a set of experts working in the field into practical overviews to help nonprofits understand the options available to them.
  

For More Information

Interested? Have more questions? Contact Stella Hernandez at stella@idealware.org or 207-415-7447, or Laura Quinn at laura@idealware.org or 718-208-8172.

See an Example of the Field Guide!

View a mockup of the Field Guide as an example of how this information will look in action (please note that neither the text nor the graphic design are final). View now>