Newsletter, April 2008
By Karen Graham, Director of Business Development
Nonprofit Neighborhood
Product Enhancements
We have six new features and enhancements to announce this month, including:
New Pledge Search Feature
Our new Pledge Search increases your capability to select donors based on their pledges. Search on pledge dates, amounts, campaigns, or any other pledge data. The new search will be released Friday (4/18) and will be found under your Search Menu, for clients using the Fundraising Module.
New Download Features: Download Pledges and Relationships
The Download tool in the Databank has been expanded to include Pledges and Relationships as linked tables. This gives users more flexibility in exporting pledge data for reminder letters, or creating their own custom reports.
RSS Feed Available for Meetings & Events Calendar
Our online calendar now features an RSS feed. What does this mean? RSS lets you pull content from one or more web sites, into another site, and have it updated in real time...( more )
RSS Feed for Action Alerts
An RSS feed is also available for Action Alerts. Encourage your super-wonky members to subscribe, or embed the feed into other pages...( more )
10 eMail Templates Free in PowerMail
Make your e-news more compelling, by using a carefully designed, customizable email template. We have 10 new templates for users of thedatabank's eMarketing Module. See a gallery of templates... ( more )
Grant Management Package
We have gathered many requests for customized grant tracking, standardized them, and bundled them into a nice little package for grant management within the Databank. It includes...( more )
Tell A Friend Contest Next Week
 Tell a friend about the Databank and you'll be entered to win a gift certificate to Gaiam's online store.
If you're a client of thedatabank, you will receive an email on Monday with details about the contest and how to participate.
New clients
Friends for a Nonviolent World - Friends for a Non-Violent World (FNVW) is a Quaker founded organization of people who share a commitment to advancing nonviolence as an ethic and strategy for achieving justice and peace. FNVW's programs are focused on providing nonviolence training and support to inmates in Minnesota's correctional facilities and assisting in their successful re-entry to the community. FNVW also organizes communities to generate and advance peaceful foreign and nonviolent national security policies, as well as to prevent - and end - our country's wars. FNVW will be using their new Databank to track and coordinate trainings, volunteers and enhance their e-communications.
Friends of Tryon Creek State Park - According to Jeffrey Gray, Communications and Operations Coordinator, " Over the last several years, we have used a database system which was made up of a patchwork of partial solutions mashed together into an unwieldy program which we were never quite sure gave us the data we were even looking for. It was hard to use, hard to maintain and hard to trust. In some cases, staff would just keep their own spreadsheets because it was easier. Once we saw how the Databank operates, it was somewhat like an epiphany. Our Membership and Registration coordinator said, “In a world full of confusion, the Databank makes sense of things.” It is easy to see that it will greatly aid us in delivering our services; be they programs, signing up volunteers for events, and delivering park updates and news to our membership and the public. We are hopeful that we can shift our staff time from entering data to managing data and give us more time to focus our efforts on building membership, fundraising, and fulfilling our mission."
Walk-In Counseling Center - Located in Minneapolis, WICC provides a variety of services which address unmet mental health needs both locally and nationally. These include the providing crisis intervention and short-term counseling to people who do not have access to other services. A large number of volunteer mental health professionals counsel “walk-in” clients during afternoon and evening clinics. WICC's Databank will allow them to consolidate information about volunteers and donors into one place, and create more effective fundraising campaigns to support their services, which are provided free of charge.
Reflecting on a Decade
thedatabank Co-Founder Chris Hanson Remembers Some Highlights from the First Nine Years
 It's been over 10 years since Mark and I first talked about starting thedatabank. Since then there have been any number of memorable moments. Two events that occurred in 2001 illustrate the joys and challenges of running a small business.
In May of 2001, I received a phone call from someone saying they were from the national office of the Sierra Club and wanted to talk to me about building an action alert system for their chapters around the country. Apparently someone from the North Star Sierra Club Chapter here in Minnesota told someone at the national office about the system we had built for the Minnesota Environmental Action Network the year before.
At the time of this call thedatabank had maybe 50 organizations we were working with, almost all here in Minnesota. I quickly returned the call and 3 weeks later we signed a contract (50 pages long) to build and host an advocacy system for Sierra Club Chapters. Receiving that signed agreement was a huge victory for a tiny company in Minnesota.
Based partly on our success with the Sierra Club we decided it would be a good time for us to raise some money and expand thedatabank. We hired our attorney to put together an investment prospectus and set out to court private investors. It took most of the summer to put things together but by the beginning of September we were ready. Our investment prospectus was dated September 15, 2001. Well we all know what happened on 9/11/2001. As a result of that enormous tragedy, coupled with investors still recovering from the dot-com bust the year before, the potential to raise private investment money disappeared.
The good news is that without additional investment, thedatabank had to become profitable or else go away like so many other companies. We did become profitable and have continued to be ever since. And we still work with Sierra Club chapters across the country. We cannot always control events that impact our organizations. What is important is the way we respond to these events.
In over 9 years of business, thedatabank has shown to be able to respond, even thrive in times of adversity. I really believe this is because of the good people who work here and the incredible organizations we work for.
Peace – Chris Hanson
Meet the Staff
.jpg) Sean Gardner, Senior Software Engineer
At thedatabank since: 2006
What he likes best about his job: As a computer programmer you are an enabler. You enable other people to build a better vaccum cleaner, interact in virtual communities, process an insurance claim more efficiently, make a deadlier bomb, communicate via email, etc. At the databank, the software enables our clients to more effectively promote positive social change. I like what I'm helping to enable at thedatabank.
What he does in his spare time: Reading & music, lake walks, biking
Famous person he would like to have lunch with: Audrey Hepburn. Sean gave a thoughtful explanation of why he chose her, a bit too long to reprint here, but summarized by these words - exemplary beauty, exemplary humanitarian, exemplary soul.
Tip du Jour
Using thedatabank's Meetings & Events Module for Volunteer Scheduling
Many of our clients use their Databank-driven calendar to post volunteer activities, then ask volunteers to RSVP online for specific events.
For example, say you are doing a phone-a-thon. Create a Meeting for each shift, indicating the maximum number of volunteers for each shift so that people are directed to other shifts as some become full. In addition to posting the sign-up on your web site, search for a list of people who have already signed up to be volunteers, then email them (using PowerMail ) with a link to the signup form. Use the built-in Meeting tools to send reminders and mark attendance. You can even assign credits for volunteer activities.
Karen's Blog
Web Based Software: Friend or Foe?
When thedatabank introduced web-based database software to the nonprofit sector in 1998, many people were skeptical. Even today, when web-based software (also known as Software As A Service) has become very popular, people still have to be diligent in selecting a provider. Here are some of the questions I get:
Is it secure? All data transmitted over the internet is encrypted using 128-bit SSL technology. It's protected by a password and maintained in a state-of-the-art data center, mirrored on multiple drives, and backed up on tape every day.
Will thedatabank sell, trade, or use my data in any way? You retain ownership of the data - we will never sell or exchange it. We have occasionally asked clients' permission to study their data in order to benchmark response rates, for example.
Can I do my own backup? Yes, you may download your entire database at any time, at no charge.
What if the company goes out of business? This is a wise question, since unlike thedatabank, many of our competitors are deeply in debt and are not yet profitable companies. We have chosen a sustainable, mission-driven business model which means we're likely to stick around. But if anything were to happen to thedatabank, our clients would be able to export their data and transfer it to another system. Pending credit card contributions would not be lost, since payment processing is provided through a third party.
Is there ever any system outage or down time? There is occasional scheduled maintenance, typically in the middle of the night on a Saturday. Unscheduled down time has historically been very low (less than 0.1%) and rare (occurring a few days out of a year).
What are the advantages of web-based software? The Databank, like many web-based applications, accessed from any internet connection using any kind of browser or platform (Mac, PC, etc). There is nothing to download, and updates and enhancements are delivered continuously and automatically. Pricing is typically a low setup fee and a monthly subscription, meaning you don't have to come up with a large payment up front. The total cost of ownership is often lower than traditional software, because you don't have to invest in special hardware and infrastructure, and you don't have to keep buying new versions of the software.
What are the disadvantages? I'd say the biggest disadvantage is also an advantage: you can access it from anywhere. For example, you can log in from home when you're out sick, from an internet cafe when you're on vacation...I'll let you in on a little secret. I wrote most of this article in my pajamas!
Karen
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