Free For Non-Profits

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.

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.

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.