Wanna Pixel

CiviCRM, Fundraising and Web Solutions for Nonprofits

powering nonprofits for social good

Case Study: How One Simple Online Form Changed the Way a Human-Services Nonprofit Works

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Your nonprofit uses technology to do more, better. We’re talking about efficiency. We’re talking about capturing your nonprofit’s relationships. We’re talking about your organizational memory.

Spice up your next staff meeting by reflecting as a team on your processes (no kidding!). Think about how you used to do things and how that has changed. Hopefully your current processes have improved the way you live out your nonprofit’s mission.

What We Learned from Workers Defense

Julia Kranzthor, Executive Projects Manager from Workers Defense Project, sat down with Wanna Pixel and provided a window into how their technology has improved their day-to-day work. Workers Defense Project (WDP) is a membership-based organization that empowers low-income workers to achieve fair employment through education, direct services, organizing, and strategic partnerships. The nonprofit is part of a national movement of organizations that seeks to provide low-wage workers with the resources they need to improve their working and living conditions.

How do members join your organization?

We asked her to explain how WDP manages the member application process.

“Members are connected to us through three different departments: our Employment and Legal Services Department, our Adult Education and Training Department, and our Community Organizing Department,” Kranzthor explains. “Everyone was working off different paper forms. Every team was collecting slightly different information and doing different things with that information once they had it.

“This meant that data regarding new members was disorganized and hard to extract. A seemingly minor database issue revealed a larger organizational problem. Our departments were working in silos.”

What did it take to change your member application process?

We wanted to know what it took to get from before to after.

“We pulled key staff from each department and got everyone together to create one form,” Kranzthor says. “This process allowed everyone to see what information they were collecting and how that information was benefiting the organization as a whole.”

How did your organization benefit from the change?

Kranzthor calls the whole process of re-imagining how data is valued at WDP a “love story.”

“Changing just this one thing really improved our efficiency,” she explains, “allowing us to be a lot more effective. While revising the form, all three departments were forced to work together to improve the intake process and identify the necessary information we needed to collect. Because of this, the new form reflects the most up-to-date information needed for member intake.

“This process significantly enhanced our data collecting and analyzing ability. It also created buy-in for our CiviCRM database generally. All told, we improved our organizational culture about the importance of technology.”

Why we love this

This is such a great example of why celebrating and taking notice of the “little” things is so important. It’s also a reminder that the details really do matter, and we only succeed when we work as a team. Rah-rah!

If Kranzthor would have tried to propose a new form on her own, she may have missed the value of certain data being collecting. It also would have forced a process that likely would have decreased buy-in and adoption.

By convening the departments in the same room with the same information, everyone had a voice in the process and ownership of the outcome.

What are other nonprofits doing?

If you like this, check out what other nonprofits Wanna Pixel works with are doing in regard to their technology:

Case Study: What YouthBuild USA Learned from Completing a CiviCRM System Evaluation

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Nonprofits with savvy and passion who utilize current technologies are poised for success. And tools like CiviCRM offer unlimited potential. But to get the most out of technology, nonprofits need proper support that demonstrates how customization can work to effectively meet their needs — allowing their tech environment to finally become the powerful hub it’s expected to be.

YouthBuild USA contracted with us to identify opportunities to modify and improve their CiviCRM platform to meet short-term goals, while also planning for the organization’s long-term vision and needs. As a result of our evaluation, YouthBuild USA will be able to make smarter technology investments that are grounded in their organization’s CRM strategy.

This article highlights Wanna Pixel’s system-evaluation process with YouthBuild USA.

Why Nonprofits Need a CRM Strategy

Running a mid- to large-sized nonprofit organization without a strategic, well-thought-out contact management strategy is like being unexpectedly dropped into the middle of an unfamiliar city without a smartphone. It’s not that you can’t find your way home, but it sure would be easier if you at least had a map.

Developing a solid CRM strategy is the best way to efficiently and effectively move your organization forward. An incredible strategy for one organization may fall flat for another. What worked like a charm two years ago may already be outdated.

Your nonprofit’s CRM strategy will be most effective when it’s grounded in your organization’s culture, program needs, and fund-development efforts. Knowing what you do with contact information and data, as well as when you do it and why, will give your team a clear, reliable operations plan as your organization evolves.

About YouthBuild USA

YouthBuild USA programs speak unabashedly of love, respect, and responsibility. Of courage, integrity, and cooperation. It’s these values that led the New York Times to declare YouthBuild USA “a wellspring of human reclamation.”

YouthBuild USA is a global organization providing low-income young people with construction skills that provide a pathway to employment and leadership opportunities in their communities. YouthBuild USA works with local nonprofits, community colleges, and public agencies to support a network of 260 rural and urban programs in 44 states. YouthBuild USA operates in 21 nations, serving a range of locales, from developing countries, emerging economies, and industrialized nations.

The organization relies on its Drupal / CiviCRM platform for contact management, communications, donor engagement, fund development, and coordinating with and providing resources for YouthBuild USA site staff.

Strategies and Goals of the Assessment

The primary goal of our system evaluation with YouthBuild USA was to objectively analyze and evaluate the organization’s current use and understanding of CiviCRM to determine if the organization should:

  • Make changes to their current CiviCRM system
  • Develop a new CiviCRM system
  • Migrate to a new CRM platform

The evaluation provided us with an understanding of the effectiveness and purpose of custom configurations within the system, while identifying both opportunities and barriers to platform improvements.

Based on these findings, Wanna Pixel prepared a comprehensive report containing detailed recommendations for each of the main CiviCRM modules used by the organization. These recommendations have informed YouthBuild USA’s process as they flesh out their technology strategy and goals.

Overview of Our Process

Staff Interviews: We conducted web-meeting interviews with key YouthBuild USA staff to walk us through their daily use of CiviCRM. This highlighted several important things:

  • What features of CiviCRM, including customizations, are most commonly used
  • How comfortable and familiar staff are with using the platform
  • Where pain points exist, either in the software itself or staff’s use of the platform
  • What external processes or software are being used in conjunction with CiviCRM

System evaluations can be most useful for a nonprofit when they recognize they may not be using the platform to its greatest potential. There can also be a feeling that the system is just “broken” or inadequate for what the organization needs to do.

By conducting multiple in-depth staff interviews our team was able to quickly identify:

  • Training opportunities that would significantly enhance the organization’s use of the platform
  • Out-of-the box CiviCRM functionality and extensions that could be utilized to improve specific workflows
  • System customizations that could be modified or potentially disabled to better meet the organization’s contact management and communication goals
  • Data management practices, such as contact de-duplication and group management, that could be completed on regular intervals

System Review & Testing: After completing the interviews, our team extensively reviewed and tested the platform based on staff use, identifying additional customizations and features that were not in use or known about, as well as customizations that could be modified for improved use.

Since CiviCRM is an open-source platform and used by over 11,000 organizations globally with hundreds of developers supporting the project, there is rapid development on the platform. New features and functionality become available quickly based on user demand and development. This means a staff member’s CRM wishlist could be addressed simply by completing an upgrade of the platform.

Sharing What We Learned

It doesn’t matter what your technology consultant learned or knows if they don’t know how to share it. Based on our learnings from staff interviews and our extensive review and testing of the platform, we prepared a final report covering the CRM evaluation’s purpose, goals, methods, findings, and recommendations.

Identify Priorities and Next Steps

Based on everything we found, our team prioritized seven of the recommendations within the report for immediate consideration. By separating the learning process from taking action and making changes in the system, YouthBuild USA remained in control of the process, better informed and able to make decisions about their budget and their technology platform.

YouthBuild USA’s Feedback in Their Own Words

Leif Nordberg, Senior Director of Digital Information Systems at YouthBuild USA, shared his experience of the evaluation:

“From the beginning, Wanna Pixel articulated a thoughtful process for our work together, particularly around involving different members of our organization who use our systems in very different ways.

“Wanna Pixel’s findings showed an in-depth understanding of not just how nonprofits use CRMs, but how YouthBuild USA uses CiviCRM. They knew the right questions to ask and gave us tailored advice, not just best practices. Wanna Pixel delivered important findings with clear, actionable recommendations that have allowed us to improve the performance of our current CiviCRM and the training offered to our staff while preparing our data for a future migration.”

Get the Most out of Your CiviCRM System

When one of our other clients came to us for support, they reported: “Honestly, I thought CiviCRM was a terrible, terrible platform. We thought that this is not going to work. But, we now know that this was just because of the support we were previously getting.”

CiviCRM can do so much. By knowing what’s possible and having the proper support to customize the system to meet your needs, your technology environment can become the powerful hub you expected from the start. Learn more about CiviCRM’s capabilities:

Ready to evaluate your system? Drop us a line.

Mission: Graduate Shares Five Email Marketing Tips

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Mission: Graduate has a big goal: 60,000 more graduates with college degrees and certificates in central New Mexico by 2020. To achieve this goal, the organization, which is an initiative of the United Way of Central New Mexico, works with over 300 partners to nurture and develop the next generation of skilled workers, engaged citizens, and civic leaders.

Like most nonprofits, Mission: Graduate works hard to keep key milestones and successes top-of-mind for their partners and supporters. Email marketing is key in their efforts.

We’re proud at Wanna Pixel to provide ongoing support for Mission: Graduate. I sat down with Emily Padilla, the organization’s Communication Manager, to learn about the what, when, and why of their email strategy.

First, what is your strategy?

We asked Emily to talk about her strategy with the organization’s e-newsletter and what they’ve learned from previous experiences.

Our strategy is to make sure that what we talk about on our website is not just promoting our work, but saying why we’re doing what we do. We redesigned our website in 2015. Our previous site was really hard to update, so we rarely posted news stories. Our email templates were also not mobile friendly. At that time, we’d shared five or six different stories in our e-newsletter. Writing the stories was hard. They needed to be long enough to tell the story, but not too long, since people wouldn’t read then. Also, if someone didn’t open the email, they’d never know what was going on.

Now, whether someone receives or reads our newsletter, we know they can come to our website or connect on social media and find the same story.

How does content development fit into your email marketing efforts?

Mission: Graduate’s website has multiple sections for news stories and partner shout-outs. Emily shared about frequency and what she looks for with content.

We ideally post something to our news section once a week. In reality, it doesn’t happen that often. Keeping this goal front-of-mind makes sure we’re telling our story whenever we can.

We have a multi-content strategy. On social media we work hard to lift up our partners, using those channels to celebrate the day-to-day things. We post new articles on our website whenever something bigger happens, like we meet one of our milestones or are planning for an upcoming event. Then our newsletter pulls the highlights from these efforts together.

When should I press send?

Rather than stick to a strict calendar, Emily explains why they let the content determine the timing of their emails.

We publish our e-newsletter whenever we’ve got enough content to share. Typically that is around every six weeks. This makes sure we have something of value to share. We always have one anchor story, such as an event or something associated with one of our Strategies. We always use an image and two to three lines of text, explaining what the story is about. Then we link back with a button to our website. We try to keep it as short as possible.

How to do more with your ask than “learn more”

While choosing the right image in emails is key, Emily shares why text is important too.

It’s really easy to always say “Learn More,” but if I can come up with something more creative it always works better, like asking a short question. People click much more often. At the same time, I think there is a fine line between engaging in an honest way and just trying to get people to click.

Metrics that matter (and remove the guesswork)

It’s no surprise that quickly reviewing your email metrics can make your next email better.

It’s really easy to review and see how our email did. We always review what our most popular links and stories were to determine what to share next time. We’ve learned that what engages people most is our visuals. Now, we keep images to a standard size. I can tell that it’s really the images we choose that attract people to the story. I take extra time choosing images for stories I want to make sure nobody misses.

Why we love this

At Wanna Pixel we know it sometimes can be more helpful to learn from the real-world experiences of your nonprofit peers than from technology consultants like us who live and breathe best practices. Mission: Graduate has received great feedback from their partners on their emails, finding them clean and quick and easy to read.

We love Emily’s honesty and spirit of “there’s always another email.” We agree! There’s always another opportunity to try something new and do something better.

Check out this content to do more with your emails:

Why Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group Chose Wanna Pixel for CiviCRM Support

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Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) had a clear expectation of the type of support they needed when they approached Wanna Pixel. Their website/CiviCRM system is critical to their operations as they work to represent the interests and concerns of noncommercial registrants and noncommercial Internet users of generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). Through this representation, nonprofit services and public interest software are given a voice in ICANN.

Wanna Pixel has been working with NCSG to improve the efficiency of their membership application and review process, as well as providing better options for email follow-up.

Just a few months into their new support relationship with our team, we invited NCSG’s 2018 Chair Farzaneh Badiei to share some of her thoughts about their experience so far.

What does support mean to you?

“My perspective on support was to find a company that was responsive and creative,” Badiei says. “In the past, almost every time we talked with technical people we faced this barrier that they do not come up with creative solutions. We would ask them, ‘Can we do this?’ and they would say, ‘No, not with this.’ That was really frustrating.

“Support for us is really more than just resolving issues during a crisis. It’s about being creative and responsive to our needs. We came to you during a really problematic period of time, and you gave us solutions.”

What factors helped make your decision when looking for support?

“For NGOs and groups like us, diversity is really important,” Badiei continues. “To be honest, I was in such a hurry to get our agreement signed that I didn’t look into how diverse you were. I just really liked your approach and how you tried to understand our issues without any type of consultation fee in the very beginning. I really wanted us to work together. When I went to the executive committee to have them approve it, I realized I didn’t have the budget. Then others got involved in the decision making. They didn’t know if Wanna Pixel was diverse. I went on your website and right there ‘diversity is our strength!’ This was huge for our team.

“The fact that you have so many women and are a diverse group of people, especially in technology, is really important. That said a lot.”

Where do you feel like NCSG is on the technology spectrum?

“I really like the flexibility of Wanna Pixel for coming up with solutions and telling us we can do it this way, or we can do it that way. You took the time to understand what we do and what our group is about much more than other companies I’ve worked with. It’s not just about the technical things. You want to have a holistic approach to what we do.

“Honestly, I thought CiviCRM was a terrible terrible platform. We thought that this is not going to work. But, we now know that this was just because of the support we were previously getting. A lot of the things we were asking, like connecting mailing lists or changing a layout, or sending updates to our members automatically . . . we thought that would take a long time to figure out. Now it’s much easier. It’s not only because you are good at the technical things; it’s because you know our bigger strategy.”

How has your team benefited?

“I am accountable to our members and our groups and provide regular updates,” Badiei says. “The fact that you provide monthly reports of what has been done, what has not been done, and what costs more has provided much more transparency into how we work and how we spend our money. When I share these reports with my team, they know that you are doing all these tasks and reporting on it. That really makes me look more accountable and that we’re not just wasting our money.

“You’ve also been really flexible in our relationship. I especially appreciated how flexible your team was during our discovery process, when you realized we had budgeted too much and turned some of that into general development support. That is honest business.”

Satisfied with your CiviCRM support?

Drop us a note to learn more about our CiviCRM support offerings.

How ‘YouTube Giving’ Will Make It Easier for Your Nonprofit to Manage Fundraising Campaigns

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There is no shortage of places or ways for your nonprofit to ask for support. With YouTube Giving, your options are about to get better. Now digital creatives working for US-registered nonprofits can embed a donate button next to videos. That way viewers can take immediate action and support your cause while they are fresh with inspiration. As a creator, all you do is set up the campaign, and YouTube takes care of the logistics and payment processing.

Here’s a screenshot from how St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is using the new YouTube Giving tools.

how St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is using the new YouTube Giving tools

The donation process is easy, using a simple guided two-step process. Select the amount you want to donate . . .

The donation process is easy

 

. . . enter in your payment details, and ta-da! You’re back to browsing videos.

simple donation process using YouTube tool

It’s no wonder companies like YouTube are getting in the fundraising game. The “median” American is active on three different social media platforms (for Americans ages 18-29, that increases to four).

Online giving also continues to increase. The M+R 2018 Benchmark Study reports that online giving increased 23 percent in 2017 after a 15 percent growth in 2016. This was at a time when overall website traffic to nonprofit websites declined by 1.4 percent. The 2017 Global Trends in Giving Report researched by Nonprofit Tech for Good found that 42 percent of online donors worldwide cite social media as a tool that most often inspires them to give. At the time, Facebook was the main player.

YouTube is still beta testing its new suite of tools, with plans to roll out its fundraising tools over the next several months. In the meantime, there’s a lot you can do to cultivate new donors and their commitment to your cause. Read more here:

Lies We Won’t Tell You

Part of our value statement is “we value integrity, honesty, ingenuity, open communication, collaboration, personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, respect for each other, and respect for design.” Here are a few lies we won’t tell you.

WE HAVE A SOLUTION FOR EVERY COMPANY
One of the things I (Nate) dealt with in past jobs is creating an illusion for our customers that we offered a wide variety of solutions which we in reality did not offer. It was a smoke screen we put out there as a company to entice customers who were looking at other well known branded solutions to consider our primary solution.

Some people feel that offering a “wide variety” of solutions makes them look like a more experienced solution provider. In reality it means they are minimally experienced in many areas.

We focus on a few well known, and well researched solutions that we feel best meet our clients needs. That doesn’t mean we aren’t intimately familiar with other solutions or that the solutions we have selected will work best for all organizations. If our solution isn’t the right one for you, we are going to tell you and give you a recommendation of where you will find the best solution for your needs.

YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY IS GREAT
I say this sort of tongue in cheek because you might actually have a great brand and marketing plan. I like making people feel good. I would love nothing more than to tell you that your branding strategy and marketing plan is spot on! However, lying to you about the quality of your brand or marketing plan isn’t going to help anyone long term. Don’t feel bad though. I wouldn’t bring a criticism that I didn’t also have a solution to.

Our talent is taking a data driven approach to analyzing your current branding, technology, and marketing plan and maximizing your efforts to reach your audience and grow your organization!

YOU CAN'T DO THAT
This one is a little interesting. There may be many reasons why you shouldn’t do that or what you are asking for may not be something that we are prepared to do with our team, but we won’t tell you that you can’t do something. We’ll always be ready to explore the best option for what you are looking to achieve and at the very least, point you in the right direction.

Other Stuff

Recent News

Case Study: How One Simple Online Form Changed the Way a Human-Services Nonprofit Works

Case Study: What YouthBuild USA Learned from Completing a CiviCRM System Evaluation

What 10 Studies Say About the Best Time to Send Email And Why It Doesn’t Matter

Top 5 Crowdfunding Platforms Compared

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