Non-Profits: Technology is The Biggest Donation You Aren’t Leveraging

Any non-profit COO or CTO will tell you that finding the technology that appropriately addresses their needs is tough to come by. The existing platforms with the non-profit in mind often cost upwards of $25,000 to engage. There are several problems with this situation. First, it is impossible to know that a CRM/donor database/360° fundraising platform will meet your needs long-term. Second, these platforms will lock you in for a year at least, and the much-needed updates will never come. Lastly, these platforms are insular systems without API or any means of connecting them to other solutions. (San Francisco, feel free to help us out here.)

I’m lucky to work in a non-profit vertical that spans from the tiny side-project to the multi-million dollar behemoth fundraising machine. In a space where we’re all working towards the same goal, it’s interesting how organizations leverage technology to carry out their mission.

Over the past six years at Stupid Cancer, we have stopped and started with so many different platforms my staff now cringes any time I tell them I’ve found something new. It’s true that I’ve probably worn out my welcome by having them help me test new things, but old habits die hard. When it was just Matthew and myself, we had to compensate for the lack of staff. It was the wild west of free trial exploration, and I learned a lot from it.

As we’ve grown over the past few years and hired staff to help us, my instinct remains to take a tech-forward approach.

I am also a big believer in putting automated systems in place where appropriate and removing the human element. There is no reason to try to do things better than computers. I see it way too often in this community of limited resources. It will only reduce your capacity for upward growth.

We recently did an internal exercise where we measured how much time each staff member spent on their respective duties. While they mostly landed as we thought they would, there were some instances where outside forces were pulling us away from getting out jobs done. In any company — especially a growing one – this is bound to happen. Ultimately, we took a look at the results and have begun to figure out how to mitigate these distractions by adding articles to our Zendesk FAQ, for example.

In this world of highly scrutinized non-profit budgets, there is so much time and money that can be saved by utilizing low-cost platforms like Zapier or IFTTT (Which doesn’t cost anything at all). I actually find most SaaS-based companies are willing to give deep discounts just based on your merit.

Google and Slack are two examples of companies that reward 501(c)(3) organizations with a lifetime subscription to their platform for free. If a platform doesn’t offer free or discounted services, offer to create compelling content for them that will be mutually beneficial.

We recently received a lovely donation from a platform we had used in the past that was in transition. The temporary separation was a mutual agreement, as they changed their core product offering. When the dust settled on their end, we jumped right in line to sign up.

As the maturation of Stupid Cancer continues from a tiny startup non-profit to million dollar organization, I remain vigilant in making sure we stay nimble and unburdened by the unnecessary.

Migrating from Volusion to Bigcommerce

The Beginning

In March 2012, I stepped into the ecommerce world and launched a Volusion store for my non-profit, Stupid Cancer. I understood the basic functions of ecommerce, and felt like I could figure the rest out as I went. My expectations were pretty accurate, and found that navigating the unknown was a lot of fun. I picked Volusion because a colleague of mine had found success with their platform, and like any other digital software vertical, there were so many options. The sales started, issues that popped up along the way were remedied, and before I knew it, I had a successful online store.

Remember when you learned how to drive? That sense of confidence that followed? Before you knew it, you wanted to go faster.

Enter Bigcommerce: I received a solicitation to take a tour of their product by a Bigcommerce sales rep. I found myself building a carbon copy of my store on their platform within the first hour, and noticed the little things that were different than what I had been used to. I found myself building out shipping rates by weight, and entering those pesky sales tax rates by county. (Thanks a lot for that, by the way, New York State. #sarcasm)

I have to insert here that Volusion did get me off the ground with a very generous 80% discount. So, while Bigcommerce was unable to offer the same discount, I felt like I was getting much more in personal back and forth e-mails with their team, along with some on-boarding conference calls.

So here I am, with the holidays approaching rapidly and a steady flow of orders coming in, planning to abandon ship with Volusion and start on a new course.

I had everything pretty much built out on BC when it came time to flip the DNS. I say pretty much, because you’re never really ready when it comes time to go live.

Going Live

To my surprise, my new store was online about two hours later, and the orders resumed. A critical step here is to put your old store into maintenance mode, and have your provider restore it back to its original(demo) URL. Luckily, I was headed to a conference for the days following, so I had some downtime to watch the fallout, which ended up being related to the following:

301 Redirects

This is arguably the most important thing you will need to do. With a new ecommerce platform comes a new URL structure. For example, http://store.com/productname could end up being http://store.com/product-name. Anyone who searches for your product and clicks on your old URL will get a big old “Page Not Found.” Bigcommerce makes it easy to point potential customers in the right direction.

Shipping Rates

You probably set these up once and then left them alone, right? With Bigcommerce, I had an issue where I capped off my shipping rates at 2 pounds, without a price for anything heavier. This resulted in customers not being able to proceed with checkout. Make sure you test everything thoroughly, and let customers get in touch with you easily. (Install a “Contact Us” tab.)

Payment Processor

I was operating under the assumption that I had a relationship outside of Volusion with Authorize.net.  I plugged in my payment gateway info into my new store, and subsequently learned that it would be a breach of contract if I moved forward with that setup. I investigated my options, and found that PayPal Pro is a very nice solution if you're already accepting PayPal payments in your web store. It's a seamless application, and you get the great service that PayPal provides. (It's important to note that you can use a new Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce. You cannot use your Volusion Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce.)

Moving Forward

Once I had everything pretty much straightened out, I focused on getting my product offering back up to 100%. A new store offered the opportunity to audit my product images, descriptions, etc.

Having been live on Bigcommerce for a few weeks now, I am much happier with the mobile version of my store, and am seeing a lot of mobile checkouts. I was also happy to see that a lot of my favorite tools integrate just as well, if not better, with Bigcommerce. Check them out on the Bigcommerce App Store.

Making Sense of Business Metrics via Dashboards

If you're in an operations role at your company, chances are you're bombarded with business metrics information all day long. If you're like me, you probably keep multiple tabs open, or have bookmarks that go directly to various report pages. Pie charts, bar graphs, spark lines, gauges, meters, maps, and tables fill your day as you try to make sense of it all.

In a recent strategic planning meeting, my good friend Roni Zeiger referred me to a company called Klipfolio. This wasn't my first time looking at dashboard services, but definitely the first time it made sense. I had previously sat through a demo of Domo at eTail West. While there isn't anything inherently wrong with Domo, for $20 per month per user, Klipfolio is at the price point my NPO budget can afford.

So...where to start, right? In order to get started with building my dashboard, I first had to understand what I wanted to track. Suddenly, the possibilities were endless. I made a mental list:

• Social presence. Facebook insights are relatively easy to connect, and instantly rewarding. Below, you'll see I've created a chart that tracks 3 dimensions of insights: impressions, new likes, and engaged users. This mimics the standard view on Facebook. But hey, you don't have to go there anymore.

• More social presence. I quickly found out that the best part about social media API is that it's rich data and it's reliable. I have several panes on my dashboard that give me two dimensions of any given social platform. For example: Facebook followers and people talking about us; Twitter followers and number of tweets; Mailing list subscribers and open rate.

• Distribution. We have a growing eCommerce store, as well as a literature supply chain that goes out to cancer centers around the country. It's great to visualize which states and countries they're going to, and in what frequency.

• Event attendance. Exactly the same as distribution, but flipped, and with human beings.

• Cash flow. Donations, sponsorships, store revenue. You can do all sorts of fun things from creating thermometer like gauges with goals, as well as pie charts to see how your different campaigns stack up along side each other.

After two months of tinkering, that's where I've landed, but it's not exactly the end of the story. There are a few other aspects of creating your dashboard.

• Audience. Who are you showing this to? In my case, I can drag and drop different panes easily. If you plan on using your dashboard as a tool during a sales pitch, you will definitely need to modify and cater it to each specific meeting. I have also contemplated creating a "read only" version. Luckily, with Klipfolio, you can choose to share different panes with other users. This is great if you have people under you who might need to see only bits and pieces of information rather than everything under the hood.

• Data sources. API, XML, CSV, or JSON? (Who came up with these crazy acronyms, anyway?) In terms of data sources, API is ideal. As I mentioned, social API is up the majority of the time. I do have a pesky data source that is in and out. I really never know if my charts and graphs will populate. XML reports are static, but easy to work with. CSV files are also static, but a bit more customizable for specific reporting purposes. The data source will determine how efficient your dashboard is vs. how much manual updating it will require. Always shoot for API/JSON first.

If you're using a dashboard service or thinking about using one, I'd love to hear what you plan on tracking in the comments below.

Nonprofiteer of the Year 2013

In June, I found out I was a finalist for the Young Non-Profit Professionals Network of New York City's Nonprofiteer of the Year 2013 award.  I was stoked to be nominated for my first professional award. As soon as I found out, I had several colleagues forward me the newsletter YNPN-NYC had sent out, along with the 4 other finalists.  Quite an impressive list of people:

John Hellman (@JuanEstebanNYC) Director of Advocacy, Latino Commission on AIDS

John Moreno (@JohncitoMoreno) Founder, Latino Youth for Higher Education Program

Tara Pokras (@tpokras) Program Assistant, Project Sunshine

Mon Yuck Yu Chief of Staff, Academy of Medical & Public Health Services

The event was held in at the Center for Social Innovation on June 27th.  It was a nice intimate gathering of like-minded individuals.  The winner was named towards the end of the event after the 5 of us offered up some career advice.  I was honored to have been selected and thankful to everyone who nominated me!

Zendesk, a Non-Profit's Dream.

I’ll generalize a bit: most nonprofits just aren’t set up to experiment with their tech stack. That’s not a knock—it’s just the reality. They’re busy doing the work, and let’s face it, most aren’t super nerdy.

As I write this from a JetBlue gate at San Diego International Airport, I find myself daydreaming about... closing tickets. The kind that get triaged to my team and me through our helpdesk. It's second nature now. Any time I check my iPhone, I might see a Zendesk notification waiting for me.

Wait—what’s Zendesk?

Back in 2012, when our team doubled from two to four, I pitched Zendesk as our helpdesk solution. It's simple: an inquiry comes in, a ticket is created, we get notified, we respond, and eventually, we resolve it. It also doubles as a powerful FAQ platform—customizable and user-friendly—with the added bonus of blog-style conversations at the bottom of each article.

But can’t we just stick with a shared Gmail account?

Sure, you can. We did. In fact, we had multiple shared inboxes and aliases, all leading into a messy Gmail catchall. If that sounds familiar, you’re not doing it wrong—but you could be doing it better. Zendesk brings structure, clarity, and scalability to your inbound chaos.

And if your setup is even more duct-taped than that... well, you might already know you need help.

So, why Zendesk?

Here’s what I was hoping for when we signed up:

• A single inbox to rule them all. I wanted a central place for inquiries that wasn’t my personal or work email.

• Smarter routing. No more time-wasting email threads—just reassign a ticket to the right person with a click.

• Better service. We run an online store and get plenty of “Where’s my order?!” messages. Zendesk helps us respond faster and with fewer dropped balls.

• A real, dynamic FAQ. Finally, a place to post policies and reduce repetitive questions.

And here’s what we’ve learned:

• It’s worth the investment. Zendesk isn’t free, but it pays off.

• You still have to drive. It’s not a magic wand. You’ll need to create macros, set rules, and stay on top of it.

• Know your users. Some people won’t love getting a ticket number. Legacy folks might be confused. Communicate the shift clearly.

• Don’t overuse it. We once tried scheduling a meeting via Zendesk. Ten messages later... we switched to email. Know when to step outside the system.

• Use the feedback. Zendesk can automatically send follow-up surveys after tickets are closed. Critical feedback helps us improve fast.

• Crowdsource your FAQs. Don’t write them in a vacuum. What seems obvious to you might be confusing to others.

• Make your FAQ pages fun. They don’t have to look like a dusty helpdesk relic.

• Track performance. Zendesk gives great data—who’s crushing it, who’s not, and how fast your team responds.

Bottom line: Zendesk isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s been a game-changer for us. Like anything else in your tech stack, you get out what you put in.