I just finished reading this post over at MakeUseOf.com and thought I should pass it along. This is a great list of a few great open-source alternatives to Microsoft.
Head over to MakeUseOf.com to read the whole open-source review.
This is the second installment of the technology guide for non-profits. Here’s Part One.
In this part, we will discuss a few items to help you manage your new technology.
4. On your new computer, download Open Office. Two reasons: it’s free and you will barely notice any difference from Microsoft Office. If you are feeling particularly brave, you can try using Google Docs online. They have just deployed a feature that allows you to work offline.
4b. If you don’t want to try your hand with Open Office, you can head over to TechSoup.com. Even if you want to use Open Office, you need to check out TechSoup. TechSoup manages a program that provides full-featured software at incredible prices. Actually, the software is generally free, but you must pay an administrative fee. For example, you can snag a copy of MS Office 2007 for about $20. A word of caution: You can only receive one order of software per year from most vendors. So if you purchase 5 copies of Microsoft Windows on 1 January 2008, you are not eligible for another order until 1 January 2009. Keep this in mind when you decide on quantities. If you expect your organization to grow it may be best to order more licenses than you currently need or to hold off on the purchase until your staff size stabilizes.
5. Make decisions about your communications structure. It is much easier to implement things like Gizmo5, Skype, and FreeConferenceCall.com before anyone establishes a routine with other products. If you decide to use Skype, for example, it might be a good idea to set up all the staff computers with this software, sign up for accounts, and purchase any hardware before your staff grows accustomed to using other services.
6. Google Analytics. Since you already have your website up and running, now is a good time to install the tracking code for Google Analytics. The main reason you want to do this is because it is extremely helpful to know where your visitors are coming from. Google Analytics is very easy to use. Once you sign up for an account, you simply add a new website profile from the home page. Analytics generates code for the site, basically a string of characters, and you copy this into the website. Google provides more detailed instructions, but rest assured, it is a simple matter of pasting the code into your site. It is essential that you do this on all of your pages to get valid information. The easiest way to do this is to install the code in the footer of your site. This will ensure that the code appears on each page.
Now you have a website, email accounts, a new computer, an office suite, a communications plan and a way to track new visitors.
Congratulations!! You’re in business.
As I was looking over this site, I realized that there is quite a bit of information to digest all at once. I have decided to create a short technology guide for non-profits to help everyone make sense of this information. I a going to break this guide into a few different parts. Today, we’ll look at the most essential parts of getting started. The good news is that this shouldn’t take more than an hour of your time.
1. The most important thing you can do as a new start-up is to get a website up and running. I would recommend having a website up before you even file your paperwork with the IRS for tax-exempt status or have a business card printed. You don’t want to find yourself discussing your new idea with a prospective donor and not be able to provide a web address. You can set up a nice website using off the shelf tools available from most major hosts. My personal suggestion for entry level webpages is HostGator.com. I used to have an account with them and was very impressed with their customer service and technical support. HostGator also features automatic installations of many popular software packages, such as WordPress and Joomla.
2. The second most important thing you can do is create a real email address. It is highly unprofessional to hand someone a business card with your @aol.com email address listed as the contact address. The bottom line is that it is so simple to set up an email address once you have a website, there is no excuse for not having a professional address. I mention Google Apps for Your Domain in this post, but if you are not comfortable setting something like this up, there are much easier solutions. Whoever you use to host your website should have very simple instructions for creating a mailbox.
3. Purchase a new computer. If you are working from your home, I would recommend that you separate your personal computing from your new non-profit. If you have an office, it’s kinda a no-brainer that you will need a second computer. If you can’t afford a new Apple, and face it, most of us can’t, my recommendation would be to check out Dell. Specifically, Dell Financial Services. This is the part of the company that sells off-lease computers. I am writing this from a refurbished laptop that weighs about 4 pounds and cost less than $400. When buying a new computers, STAY AWAY FROM WINDOWS VISTA. This “new and improved” operating system is a complete mess. It is horribly slow and does not work with many older printers and scanners. Save yourself the headache and go with Windows XP, preferably XP Professional.
So you now have a new computer, a new email address and a new website. Other than waiting for the computer to be delivered, this entire process should not have taken more than one hour.
So I did a post a while ago about a few email marketing programs that all non-profits should use. I wanted to update you today because I located a great service that is available free to qualified non-profits.
VerticalResponse is a marketing company that does email marketing, direct mail and surveys. They have offered a 15% discount to non-profits for some time, but recently announced that non-profits can now use their services for free. The only limitation on this free account is that you can only send 10, 000 email per month. If you need more than that, you can purchase credits for the aforementioned 15% discount.
I had no more than published the post on Zoho CRM and the non-profit world that I received an email about Salesforce.com and their foundation. Turns out that the founder of the company is passionate about giving back to the world. Salesforce.com is the premier CRM software as a service company. Many, if not most, of the Fortune 500 companies use Salesforce.com to track their sales pipeline, customers, contacts, etc. The bottom line is this is an amazing piece of software. And expensive. The average cost is about $65 per user, per month.
However, Salesforce.com seems dedicated to the non profit world and donates 10 licenses for their Enterprise Level Solution to qualified non-profits. This is a $11, 000 dollar value. They automatically renew the licenses every year, provided the accounts are active and in use.
It gets even better. They have created a specialized template for non-profits that includes many useful features. What makes Salesforce.com so useful is their software is completely customizable.
Once again, as soon as I have an opportunity to work with Salesforce.com, I will pass along any reviews.
Hey everyone,
Just wanted to let you know that I am going to finish testing Zoho in a few days(weeks) and hope to have a few reviews up soon. Zoho is a web-based software suite that has many more features than Google Apps for Your Domain. Google offers email, calendars, docs, spreadsheets, presentations, online notebook and user-customizable sites. Zoho offers all these things and adds a Wiki, a project management program, a customer relationship manager, invoicing, web conferencing, an online database and a personnel recruitment program. With the exception of the web conferencing, all of these products feature some sort of free version.
I am currently using Zoho CRM and it allows three users with storage up to 100MB for free. You can add extra storage space to the free users or you can upgrade to the monthly paid version. I am currently testing CRM as a contact manager for some fundraising that I do. While it is not designed for this exact job, I think it can be adapted for this function. Many of the fields are business related, but if you are running a small non-profit or business, it may be worth dealing with the strange fields in exchange for getting the service for free. A word of caution: While you are able to export individual pieces of information for free, Zoho charges $10 per instance if you want to export all your data. For example, if you want to export your contacts, you can do this for free. But if you want to export all the information you have stored, you will have to pay Zoho.
I subscribe to Fast Company a absolutely great monthly magazine. FC pays special attention to innovation in the business world, but the lessons learned could be easily applied/used in the Non-Profit world.
Anyway, there is a great article this month that discusses the usefulness of email marketing. The numbers are astounding: it takes business, on average, $71 dollars per order to use banner advertising, nearly $27 for paid search, but less than $7 for email. Now, these numbers are a little decieptful, mainly because you have to actually have the email addresses if you want to go that route. Still, the fact that email only costs 10% of banner ads is amazing.
What does this mean for the average non-profit? Well it means if you are not actively building and ruthlessly using your email lists, you’re leaving money on the table. For example, what have you done in response to the stimulus checks? If you don’t have an email blast focused on the stimulus payment, you are behind the curve. It could be something very simple, a simple acknowledgment that the checks are in the mail and that it would be a great time to think about your charitable giving.
The obvious danger here is that you don’t want your emails to become so plentiful that people ignore them. I would recommend doing one newsletter per month and augment that with special appeals and blasts when necessary.
You can opt to spend a little money for a professional email service, such as Constant Contact or iContact, but it is not absolutely necessary. However, both of these companies offer a free trial and are very reasonably priced. I believe that Constant Contact, which I currently use and am very happy with, is only about $15 bucks a month. If you are interested in trying these services, I have included a banner below that will provide a free trial to Constant Contact. I hope to have one for iContact soon.
