CIO Tips And How To Implement Them

I recently contributed some tips for a CIO magazine article on project management. There are some great tips in the article from a number of experienced IT executives. You can find the article here.

Below are some additional tips that might help you out on your next IT project and what your job is when implementing them!

Create a weekly cadence and accountability meeting

Setup a short and mandatory weekly meeting where each team member takes a minute or two to tell the team what they did last week, their plans for this next week, and any roadblocks they have that the team can help with. This creates urgency for each individual on the team around making progress every week.

Your Job:  Setup the meeting and attend. Use the information to quickly pinpoint performance or problem areas to follow up on later. Let people feel uncomfortable if they are not making progress.

Use a focused core team

Team members lose a lot of inertia when they constantly have to switch context between projects. If you want the best performance possible, reassign other tasks and ask the team member to focus only on this project. You’ll find you need fewer team members, and results will come more quickly.

Your Job: Truly reassign the tasks and prevent new ones from being assigned to the resources during the project. Empower team members to say no and direct the requestor to you for prioritization if needed.

Keep score

It’s proven that people play sports more competitively when you keep score, translate this to business and harness that spirit. Create a “players” scoreboard where team members can see if the team is winning or losing at a quick glance.

Your Job: Figure out a meaningful leading measure that predicts project success. Measure the team and individuals weekly and post the results publically for the entire organization to see.

Use your own eyes and ears

Set time aside to speak directly with individual contributors on the team. Your project manager and management team provide only one view. If you want a 360 degree view of what is happening on the project, talk to all the players regularly.

Your Job: Set time aside for this on your schedule and make it a high priority. Get out in your organization, physically or virtually, and engage team members in casual dialog. You will be surprised about what you learn over time, and so will they.

Grant Howe

VP of Research and Development

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Think Big And Be Inspired

Last week I attended the South by Southwest Interactive Festival here in Austin, Texas. I highly encourage you to attend this festival if you like to surround yourself with intelligent people who want to change the world.  One of my favorite sessions was a core conversation called “Think Bigger. No, Even Bigger Than That”.  Not only did I learn to Think Big & Be Inspired, I brought back some lessons for you.

1. Take a risk

During SXSW, you have the opportunity to run into a lot of characters.  No, I am not talking Mickey Mouse, I am talking about people who have made millions of dollars by being 100% original and true to whom they are and what they love. A great example is Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and his partner Shawn Fanning who both absolutely love music.  In 1999, the duo took a huge risk and stood up to the music industry by creating Napster, the file sharing computer program that allowed people all over the world to share their music library with absolutely anyone across the world.   These two really just wanted to share music with one another and ended up opening the internet up to what it is today, a resource that is open, free, and easy for everyone worldwide.  This duo stood up to one of the largest industry’s in the world, the music industry and started a revolution.  How about that for thinking big! What risk are you taking today?

Think Big and Be Inspired:  What risk are you taking to fulfill your organizations mission?  If you said “nothing” – STOP. What risk COULD you take to fulfill your organizations mission?

2. Design matters

“Design” seems like such an artsy term doesn’t it?   When I think about design I think about fashion design or graphic design.  Design matters for nonprofits and it starts with making sure you have a deep understanding of your organization and your mission, why it is you do what you do.   Once you have this understanding ingrained into you and everyone in the organization, it is important to bring that into the design of everything you do.  When people walk into the door of your office, or go to your website, they should know who you are and what you believe in. What SXSW taught me is that design is everywhere,  and it is something that is personal and affordable to all people and all organizations. A great demonstration of great design is Charity: water.  This organization has a clean design on their webpage (just like water) their mission statement is front and center on the home page. Their swag available for purchase is even fashionable looking, which is appropriate since they are targeting a younger audience to donate and contribute to the organization.

Check out this article on design from Philanthropy.com”Why Nonprofits Can’t Ignore Great Design“.

Think Big and Be Inspired: What is the true mission of your organization? What is something you and/or your organization could do to improve the design of the experience that people have with you?

3. Know your story and know how to tell it

The major theme for me throughout SXSW was storytelling.  Yes, I am talking about the ancient tradition of telling stories in person and in writing.  In the modern world, there are organizations everywhere that all do the same thing, and what people are craving is a good genuine story. It is important that you dig deep and peel the layers back to discover your organization’s real story and beliefs. You cannot tell the story of that you think people want to hear, stop following the rules and be yourself. If you are passionate about telling your story, it is easier to find people who see the passion and want to help you.  These are the people who will fight to the death. Make sure that when you tell your story to people you make it easy to understand for people who may have never heard of you.  Everything you do should be dripping with your mission.

Think Big and Be Inspired: What would your story be if you thought no one was listening?

How can you think bigger?  Stay tuned for a great exercise on how you can bring your team together to Think Big and Be Inspired.

I will leave you with a Ted Talk from Dan Pallotta about thinking big, “ The Way We Think About Charity Is Dead Wrong“.

Brooke Grimes
Associate Product Marketing Manager

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Sale Of Sage Nonprofit Solutions

The agreement to sell Sage Nonprofit Solutions to Accel-KKR has closed and beginning today we will start the next phase of our company.

Our employees hard work and dedication to you and to the fulfillment of our mission of: Providing leading solutions and service to our customers while advancing their missions, has brought us to this point.

I still clearly remember making the decision 5 years ago to move to Austin, after spending a few months as the interim GM and experiencing how wonderful our employees and customers are. I have never looked back or doubted the choice for a second, it has been very much the opposite, often wondering how I got so lucky to have such a great opportunity doing something that I love.

This is a very special company, I look forward to continuing to work with you as we grow together, and ultimately seeing the larger positive impact we can all achieve.

We are still working on our new name and look forward to sharing with you soon, so stay tuned. Thank you for coming along on this journey with us.

Kind regards,

Krista Endsley
CEO

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Post-Conference Blues And 5 Ideas On How To Beat Them

Industry conferences are great and yet, they are not. They’re great because you get the chance to get out of the office, get inspired, learn something new and network. They’re not, because you get a fire hose of ideas, you get little sleep, you drink too much coffee and your email box fills up while you’re gone.

When you are at the conference, you feel like, “Yes! This is the year I’m going to go back to the office and make some CHANGE!” Everything seems doable when you’re out of the office. You take notes and gather business cards. Your swag bag is bulging from koozies, t-shirts and cheap pens that don’t work.

Then, you get back to the office and the post-conference blues hit you somewhere in between catching up on email, running down your task list and settling back into your routine. Getting inspired and excited is easy compared to making change and this challenge gives me the post-conference blues every time.

Not this year! I spent five days at the SXSW Interactive festival and challenged myself to bring back at least one great idea that I can apply to my work. This is exactly the advice I try to give my customers when presenting new ideas to them.  Start where you are and try to change one thing – just one thing.

SXSW Interactive this year had a handful of themes that kept coming up and business innovation and transformation was one of them. Here are my top five takeaways from the sessions I attended. Please pick just one thing and try it out at your own organization.

1. “Create a first impression that’s positive, intriguing and clear.”  Your website is most likely the first experience a prospect will have with your organization and you want to make sure you nail that first impression. Keep your site well organized from a user perspective, make it easy for the prospect to find your donation page and tell a story to engage them. Watch our FREE webcast on 13 Things Your Nonprofit Website Needs in 2013 for more ideas.
2. “Leverage your assets.” You will have much more success in bringing change to your organization if you leverage your existing assets: people, resources, and process.  Prove small successes rather than defining the change as me vs. you or old vs. new.
3. “Apply the 3 year old prosecution rule.” Three year olds question everything. This is a great exercise when looking at your programs, process and campaigns. If things in your organization aren’t quite working, ask “Why?” Keep asking “why” until you get a good, solid answer. You may find out that you’re doing something you should stop or that you should be doing more of something that’s working well.
4. “Give your staff permission to use their passion for the good of the company and the team.” Organizations are made up of people who have great passion for their mission. Tap into that passion and use it not only to engage with your employees on a deeper level but let them find outlets to use that passion for your organization such as social media, outreach programs and networking.
5. “What looks like resistance is actually lack of clarity.” When organizations are trying to change, you always have people that are resistant to that change. Instead of pushing them through it, step back and think if the new direction has been clearly communicated or if the goal is well understood. Sometimes a simple conversation can turn a detractor into a cheerleader.

 Jamy Squillace
Product Manager
Sage Nonprofit

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Design Principles For Everyone

As a software designer, I am always eager to attend the SXSW Interactive Festival, an inspiring (and slightly geeky) conference with talks on a wide variety of technical areas. My favorite session this year was by far “Android’s Principles for Designing the Future”. Honestly, I expected a pretty technical discussion of standards for working within the constraints of small mobile screens and how to get around typical issues. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by a lively conversation on the Google way of thinking as they design for mobile projects. Even better, their way of thinking really applies to any project or focus area, and is not specific to design, software, or mobile devices. Yes, even your organization whether a government agency or nonprofit can incorporate these helpful Google principles.

Basically, they have defined 3 main pillars (think vision) that they follow when designing something new. For each of these pillars, they have defined a set of principles that will let them achieve that pillar. For example:

1. Enchant Me
a. Delight me in surprising ways
b. Let me make it mine

2. Simplify My Life
a. Keep it brief
b. Pictures are faster than words

3. Make Me Amazing
a. Sprinkle encouragement
b. Make important things fast

Whenever a new design is started the team decides which pillar or pillars to focus on. As they evaluate the design, they use the principles associated with each pillar to determine how well the design meets their needs. While these examples are very design-focused and specific to Google, think about how this same idea could be used for your organization.

Many times a mission can be fairly nebulous and hard to define. But, if you break it down into a group of pillars, then support each pillar with a set of principles you are able to evaluate new ideas and plans against your mission in a more quantifiable way using positive and negative experiences.

The key to success with people is making sure your positive experiences outweigh the negative. But, the kicker is each negative experience that someone has with your organization requires 3 positive experiences to make up for it. So, if you evaluate your ideas against each principle in a pillar, you can decide how your idea will perform. If it performs well, give yourself one positive point. If doesn’t quite satisfy that principle, give yourself 3 negative points. In the end, you can actually quantify the idea and see if your constituents will walk away with positive energy or negative energy. In a world where we are being asked to measure and quantify everything we do this was a unique and interesting take on how to evaluate our ideas.

Here is a link to the SXSW Session Site:  http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP2736

And here is one to the audio recording:  https://soundcloud.com/#officialsxsw/androids-principles-for.

Gina Rahn
Senior Interaction Designer
Sage Nonprofit

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How Google AdWords Work For Nonprofits

In my previous post, 10,000 Reasons To Use Google Grants, I explained that Google Grants for nonprofits is basically a Google Adwords account with one major difference, grantees receive $10,000 per month in free online advertising. Google Adwords advertisements are those ads that appear at the top of the page in a light yellow box or in the right hand navigation when performing keyword searches on Google.com. You can see examples of Google Adwords outlined in the red boxes in the graphic: Google Adwords 1.

Google Adwords 1

In addition to your advertisements appearing in Google’s search platform, grantees can also place ads in the Google Display Network, a collection of millions of partner websites and Google sites like Gmail, Blogger, and YouTube. Unlike the text ads shown in the search platform, advertisements in the Google Display Network can also be visual banner ads. Whenever you visit websites, you may see Google advertisements marked as “Ads by Google” or “Choice Ads” as shown in the graphic: Google Adwords 2.

Paying AdWords users are subject to a “cost-per-click” fee. This fee goes to Google when a person clicks on the ad. A business or company will then set how much they want to pay per click according to its advertising budget. Google grantees, however, have a maximum limit of $1 per click. Organizations may bid up to the maximum limit of $1 for widely used keywords. Google encourages organizations to measure success in the grant program by monitoring the click-through rate rather than the monthly advertising expenditure. The click-through rate is the number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of times the ad appears.

Once accepted into the Google Grants program, it’s easy to get started using AdWords.  The three main steps are…

1. Create your ads–write copy for your text ads and choose keywords, words or phrases related to your organization or cause.
2. Your ads appear on Google.com–when people search on Google.com using your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results.
3. Attract supporters–interested supporters will click on your ad to donate, volunteer or learn more about your cause.

Perhaps the most time consuming part of the process involves structuring your AdWords account. According to the blog post, “Getting Started With Google Grants” by Nikki Lopez of the Google Grants Team you will need to complete some simple steps.

Structure Your Ads–to make sure you are using AdWords effectively, you will need to set up your AdWords in three levels: Account, Campaigns and Ad Groups.

1. The Account level would represent your organization name or brand, i.e., Helping Hands Animal Center
2. The Campaign level would reflect your website structure, i.e., Adoptions, Volunteers, and Donations.
3. The Ad Groups level reflects the activity or “themes” involved with each Campaign.  For example: Adoptions might include “Adopt Dogs” or “Adopt Cats” while Volunteers might include “Shelter Volunteers” or “Rescue Volunteers”.

Select Keywords–brainstorm your keyword ideas and organize them into themed lists. Each themed list will become an Ad Group. The text ads that you create should specifically match the keywords in that Ad Group. Therefore, when a visitor searches for “animal shelter volunteers” they will receive your ad on volunteering at the Helping Hands Animal Shelter.

Creating Ads–your text ads should be simple, compelling and relevant to what visitors are searching for.

1. Include your keywords in your ad text, especially your title.
2. Include a call-to-action in your ad such as “Sign-up Now” or “Donate Online.” This will help visitors understand exactly what you want them to do.
3. Keep your message clear and specific and highlight the benefit of your cause or service.
4. Make sure that you provide a relevant destination URL for each ad. For example, if you have an ad for online donations, make sure you link visitors to a page on your site that provides them with a donation form.

If you’ve never worked with AdWords before, this may seem a bit overwhelming, but Google provides a number of excellent support resources on getting started in the program and setting up your keyword strategy. Despite the amount of work and research involved in setting up your AdWords campaign, the effort is definitely worth it. If the $10,000 per month in free advertising isn’t enough incentive, just remember that the Google Display Network reaches 83% of unique Internet users around the world including people speaking more than 30 languages in over 100 countries. Even if your organization is targeting a much smaller demographic, it’s safe to say there’s a good chance your ads will find your target audience.

Dan Gonzalez
Web Manager
Sage Nonprofit Solutions

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Our Team’s Tips For SXSW 2013

It’s been eerily calm this week in Austin.  I suspect it’s the calm before the storm that is South by Southwest® a technology, film and music fest that begins tonight, well, tomorrow.   If you’re coming for the first time, I urge you to prepare, go with the flow and think about renting a bike to get around.  To help you navigate our fair fest, I crowdsourced some tips from my teammates who are regulars.

• Get over FOMO.  Yes, cool things are going to be happening and you will not see everything you want to.
• RSVP to as many parties as you can or sign up for an RSVP service, many are offered for free like WillCall .  You never know when a new friend will drag you into somewhere unexpected and you want to be prepared.
• Bring an extension cord to make friends in your sessions.  Don’t be that guy or gal who unplugs someone to power up your own device!
• If you’re not on Twitter, get on Twitter, then follow the conference action via hashtags  #sxsw, #sxswi, #sxgood … there’s a ton of them. Plus, each session will have a dedicated hashtag.
• Going back and forth between the Hyatt and AT&T Conference Center and the Convention Center gets old fast.  Strategically plan your schedule by attending sessions that are close to one another
• Get there early and park in the public parking. It’s close and easy to get in and out of.

And, then there’s the food.  Austin is a great town to eat in.  I think Urbanspoon ratings generally reflect the good spots, but to explore food in Austin I rely on Eater Austin and WOMO, check out these specific tips.

• Avoid the lines inside the Convention Center and grab your coffee at Caffe Medici , 200 Congress in the Austonian.
• Have lunch at a local favorite, Jo’s and try drinks and happy hour at Second Bar + Kitchen.
• There’s always free food available around SXSW, but Austin’s food trucks rock! Try as many as you can.  Plus, this year Paul Qui is doing a food truck park nearby for SXSW – SouthBites. Check out our favorite food trucks on Pinterest here.

Good luck, have fun and enjoy our city.

Patricia Tynan
Social Media & Community
Sage Nonprofit

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Lapsed Donors: How To Get Them Back

Last week, we released our first donor loyalty study.  Thank you to everyone who participated!

One of the most shocking revelations was that only 29% of nonprofits have a lapsed donor program.  That mistake presents a huge opportunity for other nonprofits.

If you do not want another organization to come in and take your lapsed donors, here are a few ideas for recapturing your donors.

It is important that the efforts expended on your lapsed donor program result in revenue.  Make sure you have a clear goal for the program and identify exactly how much is needed to create a positive ROI for the program.  If your program isn’t producing revenue then invest your time in something else.

Identify who to target.  Past donors that are true givers (above $20 or more than one gift), strong volunteers, or well-known supporters are great targets.  Don’t leave anyone out of your email ask, but make sure you select the most likely candidates for recapture for any direct mail programs.

Communicate your message with your lapsed donors clearly and specifically.  Share with them:

• what you have been doing.
• the impact of your programs on the community.
• the results of your programs.
• what is going to happen if your organization goes away.

DON’T call lapsed donors LAPSED or ask them to come back…DO give them a reason to come back!!!

After assessing who to contact and what you will say, you need to determine how you plan to communicate with lapsed donors.   Set up a monthly program that includes email, direct mail, and phone calls.  You never know what the trigger for giving again will be or when it will come.  In the early stages of a donor recapture program, it is critical that you test.

Test which variable has the strongest response, test the message that you are sending, and test the frequency of the messages themselves.  Make adjustments often and continue to evaluate the program.

When you successfully recapture a donor, be sure to send a hand-written thank-you note.  I also recommend that following the first gift.  Also send a very short survey asking how you can improve.  It might reveal why he/she left in the first place.  It will allow you to improve for others and avoid the same mistakes of the past.

 

Take-away:  Recapturing a donor is time-consuming and difficult.  Invest in a strong program that makes your recapture program less critical, but keep in mind that saving a donor is less expensive than recruiting a new one.

Good luck with your lapsed donor program!

Bridget L. Brandt
Director of Marketing
Sage North America

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