

Giveffect (YC W15) Has Built a Shopify-Meets-Salesforce for Non-Profits - Anisa_Mirza
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/10/giveffect-nonprofits/

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dalerus
I run an agency that works exclusively with NGOs (marketing, design,
development). This is an interesting solution, but I am curious about if you
offer an API? The link in the site footer doesn't go anywhere.

The problem I see, is that all-in-one solutions do a lot of things but are
really masters of none. Does the CRM allow integration from the NGOs website
automatically? Does your email marketing support list segmentations? Is PayPal
the only payment option? Most NGOs have long standing contracts with merchant
service accounts.

I like the idea, but I am not sure I could recommend it to our clients based
on the information from your website. Lots of potential for this type of
system.

Right now we usually setup clients on Salesforce, super great discounts for
nonprofits, and lots of out of the box integration already available.

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kevinshinobi
Hey there, I'm one of the technical cofounders of Giveffect. Good questions!

The reason why our clients are choosing the "all-in-one" solution is because
they are fed up with disjointed systems. Why shouldn't their fundraising pages
on the frontend automatically talk to their CRM on the backend? Our solution
is integrated in the "NGO's website automatically" as we are a complete white
labelled solution powering the entire fundraising/crowdfunding/campaign-style
experience on their own website.

The email marketing solution is something we're still building out, and while
still in the early stages we have integrated with some cool patent-pending
technology that provides deep insights and analytics. We can gather data such
as which subscribers have read the email, how many times, duration spent
reading the content, on which device, location opened, whether or not they
clicked through any links, and furthermore converted. All of this feeds back
to our integrated CRM to further segment high value, highly engaged contacts.

Currently we use PayPal as our payment gateway because they were the only ones
to offer a low NGO rate for our clients. Plus they have a long standing trust
with nonprofits and donors, and most NGO's already have a PayPal account with
many using it as their donate button, making it an obvious choice.

~~~
dalerus
Thanks for the response.

I would still be interested to understand the CRM part more. I agree that it
makes sense to have the front-end talk to their CRM, but is it a full fledge
CRM? The fundraising page leads are not the only relationships NGOs need to
track.

We find it fairly easy to automate everything for leads to CRM via Zapier. And
the NGO can scale and add in pieces as needed.

Also, I find that finance/donor relations teams are usually in a different
location/country than the comms teams. All with different budgets and money to
spend on a system. It's a complicated mess. :)

I guess I am curious, from your view, what is the target size of the NGO your
system benefits? It looks like you are giving it away to anyone with less than
250k a year in donations, which is great, those small NGOs need a solution
like this. But is it the $1-3 million a year? $3m+ a year?

I'm not asking these questions to pick apart your offering. I am all for
systems that help NGOs. If this is a fit for our clients, it would be a nice
place to point them to.

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Anisa_Mirza
Above $1MM (our ave clients are generally around the $3-6MM rev range). And
yup, it is a full CRM solution for nfps that focus on fundraising (not just
contact management but also takes into account other relationship mapping such
as org, institutions, unique grouping, leads etc). Additionally, the back-end
includes newsletters, volunteer tracking and placement, skills mapping, fund
allocation (this is a biggie apparently) customized tax-receitps,
event/tickets/perks management, etc. We offer easy export integration for
QuickBooks integration as well. Examples of our clients include United Way
chapters, Big Brothers Big Sisters, SPCA's, etc

~~~
dalerus
Actually one more thing, are there plans for affiliate or parter programs? We
get asked to advise on this stuff all the time.

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sethbannon
What's your agency? I'd love to chat.

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dalerus
Sure, shoot me an email: jesse at glean.net

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dublinben
Any community organizations or non-profits in need of a CRM/Salesforce
solution should check out CiviCRM. It's free as in freedom, and free as in
price. No $200+ monthly fee and 1-3% commission.

~~~
tekelsey
I did my PhD dissertation on open source CMS and related systems, and one of
the questions was sustainability. For those that can sustain the issues with a
system like CiviCRM, it might be appropriate. Alternatively, an enabler like
Greenleaf could help an org
-[http://greenleafadvancement.com](http://greenleafadvancement.com)

Or, a product like Giveffect might be helpful.

~~~
jordanlev
> I did my PhD dissertation on open source CMS

That sounds really cool! I work with CMS's all the time and will be teaching a
class on them -- is your dissertation publicly available, and/or do you have
any interest in sharing or chatting about the topic? (my contact info is in my
profile)

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screature2
I think this is it?

Sustainable multilingual communication: Managing multilingual content using
free and open source content management systems by Kelsey, Todd, Ph.D.,
Illinois Institute of Technology,
[http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/906782853.html?FMT=ABS](http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/906782853.html?FMT=ABS)

~~~
tekelsey
Yeah that's it - thanks - there's also a Google presentation with the high
points at
[http://tinyurl.com/gomultilingual](http://tinyurl.com/gomultilingual)

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tekelsey
Anything that helps non-profits run better so they can focus on their mission
is a good thing. Best wishes.

~~~
Anisa_Mirza
thanks!

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levlandau
This feels like its solving a real problem that the founders understand. Great
work all around. Minor nitpick: I see why "Shopify" was chosen in the tagline
but I think its more confusing than helpful at first glance. After reading up,
one gets it but a tagline should work before reading the article.
Teespring/Kickstarter/Indiegogo seem closer and have the added benefit of
being related to what one might associate with a nonprofit i.e. fundraising.
What do you think?

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kevinshinobi
Thanks for the feedback! I can see how this can be confusing if you browsed
the Giveffect marketplace first.

The reason we chose to use the Shopify analogy is because we power the
nonprofit's frontend fundraising experience, much like an online storefront
does for ecommerce. An example of this is
[http://donate.campwinston.com](http://donate.campwinston.com) which is
powered by Giveffect.

The Giveffect marketplace is the aggregator/hub whereby any client licensing
our software can push their fundraising campaigns for discovery. This is just
an added extension of the solution to provide clients with a venue for
campaign marketing and donor acquisition.

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levlandau
"we power the nonprofit's frontend fundraising experience" This is it right
here...as well as the custom domain

So "Shopify for nonprofit fundraising", while limiting, would have been
completely clear. But "Shopify meets Salesforce"...now that's confusing :)
Trust me I know how hard it is to come up with these so definitely not trying
to be negative. If your customers get "Shopify meets Salesforce" without
further explanation then it's probably just me being slow :)

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Anisa_Mirza
but here's the thing, we also 'power the backend with full admin and CRM
features for online/offline giving" \- hence the salesforce reference (not my
choice comparison btw). So, 'Shopify for nonprofit fundraising' has our
clients immediately reacting, "oh, so there's no data management system?". To
be clear, we NEVER describe GE as either when speaking to a client (we simply
say fundraising,, volunteer and donor management software). So, given this,
I'm curious to ask - how would you tagline us?

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pfooti
I work for a nonprofit, and this looks interesting. However we do already get
Salesforce at a ridiculous discount, as salesforce has a great nonprofit
pricing scheme.

That said, the real price of salesforce is in hiring people to write apex code
or whatever else you need. Or worse, me having to write apex code myself.

~~~
Anisa_Mirza
hey there, would be happy to chat and show you a bit more of our solution. One
thing to clarify: our solution isn't just the back-end CRM, it is also front-
end fundraising (like crowdfunding, ticket sales, marathons, galas etc) as
well as volunteer admin. The part clients love most about our system is that
the CRM is automated - meaning all the donor data is automatically collected
and imported into their CRM powered by us. I started my journey in the
nonprofit space as a Dev Director before starting Giveffect. The inspiration
behind GE was to create turn-key, streamlined software for nonprofits, with a
true understanding of the sector's needs.

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OmarIsmail
Congrats Anisa!

