The best part about attending client events, well there are several really, but they include things like:
Attending a client event – It’s a chance to say thank you to our client! With over 300+ that we host it gets harder and harder to say thank you as I don’t know many of you personally. A while back we added up a count of users logging in different Tendenci sites just in our data centers (we have three). Just the totals of course with no identifying data, and it was over 1.2 million souls. It makes me proud and also nervous when we tweak the Tendenci user interface!
Attending a client event – I listen and YOU tell us how to improve what is both yours and our product! Yes, Tendenci is fully open source and you can download it from github at https://github.com/tendenci. So there may not be a direct financial benefit. Yet that is truly OK as Tendenci is clearly not just about the money. And a lot of y’all do host with us. We appreciate both the developers who use and tell us how to improve and the clients we host and manage everything for them.
Speaking of feedback – be sure to tell us how to improve the software on our new community discussion forum at http://community.tendenci.com. We talk to a lot of developers on github so the forum is more for…. you know… humans who use the software day to day. What are your needs? What would you like to see in Tendenci?
I’ll do another blog post about the Tendenci community forums soon. (This also means that we now have forums integrated with Tendenci. We found another great Django based open source project named Misago which works great with Tendenci given we also use Django. Next is the single-sign-on server process….
Every year, the American Marketing Association (AMA) gives out the coveted Marketer of the Year Award to companies in 26 different categories. Ranging from the Performing Arts or Healthcare to Restaurants or Sports.
For more than 125 years, the Y has served the community through health and wellness programs for children and families.
The Y’s mission to “put Judeo-Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all” is carried out through summer camps, community benefit programs and health initiatives.
Congrats on the AMA Houston Marketer of the Year Award for 2013!
Since its creation in 2001, T-Rex has been a leading company in engineering and fabrication for the energy industry both in Houston and around the globe.
They offer equipment and services for offshore drilling for oil and gas and are a leader in EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) for the energy industry.
The Children’s Museum of Houston has been a fixture of Houston since 1980.
With more than 14 exhibits, Children’s Museum of Houston has dedicated itself to “transforming communities through innovative, child-centered learning” and currently sees more than 850,000 people annually through its doors.
Twestival = Sharing Online Community Love Offline!
Twestival was born in 2008 out of a desire for people who are connected online on Twitter to connect offline for a good cause. It has since grown from that first meetup in London to a worldwide presence where local Twestivals happen in communities across the globe. Twestival organizers have raised over $1.83 million in total to support 307 charities! Wow.
Twestival Houston: Supporting a Great Local Cause!
Each year, Twestival Houston is organized by local volunteers. The Twestival team puts the vote up to Twitter to choose a local charity to support. This year’s nonprofit recipient was the Ronald McDonald House of Houston – who also happens to be a Tendenci client (their new site is in development, look for more coming soon!).
The event was full of local beer (courtesy of Buffalo Bayou Brewery), local food, live music, and lots of opportunities to support RMH Houston with donations and raffle prizes!
HUGE THANKS to Mandy Graessle (aka @favouritethings) and all the volunteers for all their hard work on putting this event together!!
Here are a few of our pictures from the event:
Tendenci Team Carla Fiorito and Caitlin Kaluza with RMH Houston Marketing Coordinator Catie Tuley!
Messages to the Kids and Families of RMH Houston
Our team got in on the raffle – ticket sales went to RMH Houston as well!
Live music + local beer from Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company at Twestival Houston 2013
Coming to Tendenci Websites in 2013: Event Management and Registration Features You’ll Love for Your Festivals, Galas, and Fundraising Events!
2013’s going to be a Big Year, and Tendenci’s working on new updates to your online calendar and event registration module because we want to make sure this is your biggest year yet!
On the 12th Day of Christmas, Tendenci’s Gift to You: Twelve New Updates to the Events Calendar Module!
Here’s 12 new featuresand updates we’re making this year to the Tendenci Events Calendar module to help you manage online registrations for your association programs and fundraising Gala’s.
** We’ve got even more event module updates planned for Tendenci’s 2013 Roadmap, and this list is just to give you a taste of the delicious treats we’ll be adding to Tendenci in 2013!
You’ll Love Creating New Events With These New Features
1) Import and Export Events
Soon You Can Import Multiple Events with a CSV Template!
We’re super excited about this feature because it will make it faster for you to create multiple events simply by importing all of the text and dates in a spreadsheet, instead of having to create and type in all of this information manually for each event.
2) Default Custom Event Registration Forms
Now you have the choice of using the default event registration form, or our improved custom event registration forms. We listened to your feedback this year and the new custom registration forms now have predefined fields that integrate with the website’s database and user records for reporting and simplify the time it takes you to create and customize a new registration form.
We’ve simplified custom event registration forms for you!
If you want to use a custom registration form now, you already will find a default form with the standard contact information handy to add or remove to your form simply by checking a box. You can also customize which fields on the custom form also display on the event roster. Now you can ask what t-shirt size or special meal requests your guests have without the time involved with creating a brand new form.
3) Schedule Automatic Email Reminders to Attendees
Upload Images and Format Event Reminders to Match Your Association’s Brand
When you create new events, you’ll find a new option that enables you to send email reminders to your attendees that you create and schedule. Tendenci will automatically send the reminder for you, so you don’t have to remember to remind your registrants!
4, 5, & 6) Three New Ways to Promote, Search and Display Your Events
4) More Search Options
We’re adding more searchable field filters to the events module so your members can find the events most relevant to each of them. You’ll be able to search your events by date, event type, membership and user group permissions, and more!
5) New Priority Event Feature
You’ll soon find a new Priority checkbox on your new event forms. When you check this, Tendenci will keep your events on top of your events search list, and add a Star icon to your month view calendar. Now you can highlight your main events each month to help your members decide which events to attend.
Tendenci Makes Your Top Events Our Priority Too!
Here’s some fun ideas on how you can use the new Priority Event feature:
National Associations can feature a different Chapter’s programs and events each month to increase engagement from your different local chapter members!
Use the Priority events to promote membership engagement and offer prizes for those who attend every featured event this year!
Increase Corporate Sponsorship and Corporate Membership dollars by offering to add your supporting partners’ events to your calendar with the Priority feature setting for higher level packages.
6) Group-based Permission Settings for Displaying Events
This feature will enable you to designate certain events as “belonging” to certain user groups or membership types and allow you to do some really fun things with how events are displayed on your website. For example, one of your study groups could have their monthly study meetup on your event calendar and you’d assign the event to their study group.
Then, you could create a sidebar or box that would only display upcoming events from your event calendar that are assigned to that study group on the study group’s main information page. Members of the study group could visit the study group page and also see upcoming events specific to the group and you only have to add the event once to your calendar to share it in multiple places on your site!
Better Registration Experience for Your Users!
You want your website to be fun for your users and members in addition to your staff, and we’re making big changes across our website to provide better user experiences for your online community members. Here’s some of the ways we’re making registration for events simpler for attendees.
7) Fewer Steps to Register and Pay for an Event
We’re streamlining our registration form so that event registrants can go through as few clicks as possible when purchasing tickets and RSVP’ing for your association events. For most events, your users will be able to add multiple event attendees, select member versus non-member pricing, and view their total all from one registration page.
Adding new registrants is as easy as clicking a button – literally! Just click “Add Another Registrant” and a new section for the registration form will appear below the first registrant. Click to add as many registrants as you need and then submit just once to register and pay for everyone.
We’re Streamlining Event Registration Process for Your Attendees!
8) Your Users Can Find and Manage Their Events for You!
With the new “My Upcoming Events” option, your members and regular event registrants can now search for events they’ve signed up for, update any of their registration information, cancel events, and add the event to their calendar using the Event ICS option from one place.
Your members can find and manage their event registration information!
Bonus for You and Your Staff: this empowers your members to manage their own event registrations, view outstanding balances, and make payments on your website. This means your event manager doesn’t have to handle as many of these admin tasks and she can focus on all of the important tasks!
9) Updated Email Template for Event Registration Confirmations
We’ve made a few small updates to the default system email template that your website sends to registrants and confirms their registration along with their receipt for paid events.
The new email template includes an image and uses more of the formatting from your events’ description fields to give your event confirmation emails a look and feel that more closely matches your website’s Event Page. We’ve also made some updates to the helpful links section of the email to ensure your event registrants can find all the information about your event details as well as manage their outstanding balances and registration information.
We’re Updating the Look and Feel of Event Confirmation Email Templates!
10) Your Event Roster Now Tracks Attendance
Your event roster has a new “Attend” checkbox where you can mark who attended an event from the roster on your website. If you don’t have internet and a web browser at your event, then you can also print the roster with the Attend checkbox. After the event, take your printout and update the roster on your website with who attended so you can better track and measure attendance for your events.
Tendenci Event Roster to Manage Registrants
This is a huge benefit for large events where you have a team of volunteers handling check-ins. They can all be logged into your website and click to check off the people who they’ve confirmed at the event simultaneously! The next day, you can log into your site and see at a glance who attended and didn’t. You can even view what time they were checked in.
11) Search and Manage Event Registrants Individually
The Event Roster is more intended for you to use to manage all of your event registrants in a batch, and when you need to find a specific registration to cancel or edit – you’ll be seeing some updates here also. We’re adding more information about the registrants to the view, and we’re integrating the event registrant’s contact information and site activity with their user profile on your website.
Manage Individual Event Registrations in Tendenci!
12) Improved Batch Management for Events
On the 10th Day of Christmas, we shared our updates coming to your site’s Admin Backend. You’ll love the updates we’re making that enable batch filtering, editing, and deleting event types, custom event registration forms, and discount codes from the Admin Backend.
Here’s a preview of a new feature that will let you reassign event types:
Keep Your Events Calendar Up-to-Date with Your Association’s Many Changes!
You can quickly change all of the events of one type to another type. Most associations experience lots of changes as they grow and we see features like this helping you keep your website fresh and reflecting the latest changes without demanding lots of time from you and your staff.
Sign-Up for Tendenci 2013 Updates
Keep an eye out on the Tendenci Events Calendar because in 2013, we’re adding new training and workshops for our Advanced Tendenci users. We’ll also start posting scheduled maintenance and software updates, speaking events, and major announcements to help keep you in the loop with what we’re doing at Tendenci.
We are constantly exploring new ways to keep you in the loop with what we’re changing here at Tendenci. Let us know how you like to find out what’s going on here at Tendenci!
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website! Visit our Twelve Days of Christmas Main Page to find new gifts for each day from now until January 5th!
We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
Coming in 2013: We’re updating several features in the administration dashboard to give you easier control over your site’s advanced management tools.
When we rewrote Tendenci in Python and Django in order to release an open source version, we also updated the Administration Management Dashboard that we commonly will refer to as your “Admin Backend”. The Admin Backend is intended for Tendenci Super-Users to manage the more advanced site and user functions, as well as give our open source users quick access to developer and theme documentation and tools.
ON THE TENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS… TENDENCI’S GIFT TO YOU: Awesome Updates to Your Admin Backend!
Until now, most users have probably never seen this part of your site, and because we’re going to be adding tons of pretty awesome new features to your Admin Backend this year – I thought I’d offer y’all a tour.
If you have any questions or comments after the tour, please post in our comments section below or email me.
Your Administration Dashboard aka “The Admin Backend”
You can easily navigate to your site’s Admin backend two ways:
By adding /admin to the end of your site URL in the browser address bar
Navigating using your Blue Top Bar Admin Nav Menu through the dropdown menu under “Quick Links”
** You’ll need to have Super-User level access to the Tendenci website in order to access the Admin Backend regions.
Sneek Preview of Upcoming Awesome Admin Backend Updates
Here’s a screenshot the site Administration Dashboard Homepage that you’ll see when you first log into the admin backed. You’ll see the full list of modules under Site Administration installed on your site. If you install any plugins, such as the staff or videos plugins, you’ll find those listed here as well.
Your Admin Backend Dashboard Gives You Access to Advanced Site Features.
The Admin Backend dashboard also shows you your “Recent Actions” where you can see recent items you’ve added (marked with a green plus icon), and edited, (marked with a pencil icon). The actions are linked to the content enabling you to quickly access the most recent content you’ve been working on.
New Batch Management Tools
If you click through to one of the modules, for example the Files module, you’ll find the batch organization tools to make it faster for you to update, add, delete, and manage your site’s content and users. The batch organization tools give you the ability to effect multiple files at once.
Here’s a preview of some of the new batch management features we’re adding:
Click to filter and view Contributors and Owners of Files, Pages, Articles and Other Site Content
Filter content and files by the creator of the item on your site with a single click. The updated Filters let you see which users have added content as well as filter by active or inactive files.
Filter and View Content based on the User who Added the Content
You might use this if you’re trying to find the original content for something that a former Staff member or Volunteer had created. You can even combine the filter by owner with the active filter option to see all content that’s currently active or inactive.
Inline Batch Editing for Titles, Tags, and other Fields
With the new inline editing option, you can quickly edit certain fields like we’re showing here for the stories module. Without having to click and wait for the full edit page to load – you can update tags, titles, categories and other fields just by clicking in the field, typing your changes and pressing enter or clicking out of the box.
Inline Editing Options for Stories in the Admin BackendJust hover over the Reorder icon and then click and hold your left mouse button to change the ordering.
Use the drag and drop re-ordering feature to rearrange the order of content inside your admin backend. This is really great for content such as stories, photos, and video galleries where you may want the content to display to users in a different order than you originally uploaded the content in.
For example, when we initially uploaded a series of Membership videos to the website, the videos were displaying out of the series’ order on the video gallery page. By going to the Admin Backend “Videos” dashboard, we were able to drag and drop the videos into the right order, and display the Membership Module 9 Video Series in order from start to finish:
Simply Drap and Drop to Display Your Videos in Order!
Advanced Sorting Options
The new sorting options will enable you to quickly sort a module’s files using one or more of the header Fields. You can select which header fields to include in the sort and rank them in order for sorting.
For example, let’s say that you’re reviewing content on your website to make sure everything’s up-to-date for the new year. Using the advanced sorting options, you can search your Articles by the last date they were updated so that the most recently updated articles showed up first or last. You can also select to filter out inactive and pending articles by clicking the “active” filter. This way, you can easily start sorting content by starting with content that you know is publicly visible.
Click to Sort and Filter Content in the Admin Backend
As you update content, the “Last Updated” date will change, automatically creating a way for you to keep track of your content that’s been recently edited and see at a glance what content is out of date.
Advanced Site Documentation from Docutils
We also integrated Tendenci with Docutils, an open source document management tool. New Tendenci sites automatically will include advanced documentation and resources for those of you working on Tendenci as a developer or designer and you’ll access these tools from your Admin Backend dashboard.
Find Advanced Documentation and Resources in Your Tendenci Admin Backend
Our developers have packaged up helpful code snippets, in-depth information about Models and Views, and more!
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website! Visit our Twelve Days of Christmas Main Page to find new gifts for each day from now until January 5th!
We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
We’re Welcoming in the New Year with a Fabulous New Tendenci Theme!
In celebration of both the 8th day of Christmas and the New Year, we’ve got a very special gift for you from all of us at Tendenci – the first Tendenci Community Theme specifically built for Associations.
You’ll be able to find TwentyThirteen available to download beginning in late January, 2013.
SignUp below to be the first to find out when the new theme is available:
We’ll be adding the theme to Tendenci’s Open Source Github Theme folder and you’ll be able to download the theme for free and Tendenci Community hosted sites can request TwentyThirteen for Jumpstart Packages and we’ll personalize the theme to match your association’s Brand.
And Now…
We’re Pleased to Introduce TwentyThirteen
TwentyThirteen includes all of the features your association website needs right from the beginning to start accepting donations, building your contacts list, and manage member programs and events plus so much more!
TwentyThirteen HomePage Features
Associations and nonprofits have a unique set of requirements for websites that corporations don’t face. Here’s some of the different ways that we’ve tailored TwentyThirteen for Associations so that you can have a professional looking website and easy online community management tools that work.
TwentyThirteen “Above the Fold”
Above the Fold
The section above the fold on a website is typically referred to as the area on your web browser that you see when you first load a website page, before you scroll down. On average, about 80% of website visitors will click through to an inside page before they scroll down the homepage. This means your most important content should be top and center of your homepage.
Here’s what’s front and center on TwentyThirteen’s homepage:
Your Association’s Logo and Tagline – Your website needs to communicate to your visitors who you are and what you do immediately and that’s why your Association’s logo and tagline are prominently featured in the Header of every page, including your homepage template.
Large Rotating Banner – Visually share your association’s stories to increase engagement with site visitors with TwentyThirteen’s large homepage banner. Update your featured homepage content automatically with the stories module’s start and expiration options and your association’s latest news. Learn more about Tendenci’s stories module.
TwentyThirteen Navigation Menu
Call to Action and Social Media Buttons – We’ve added call to action buttons to donate and join your association as well as social media profile buttons that you can quickly personalize to your own account links. Your website will be able to immediately start building your online community through donations, members, and new social media fans.
Flexible and Customizable Main Navigation Menu – TwentyThirteen’s main navigation comes “pre-loaded” with the top modules used by association websites including membership information, job board, donations form, contact form and more.
Below the Fold
TwentyThirteen “Below the Fold”Hover to Edit Content
Here’s What’s Below the Fold:
Featured Content Boxes that are fast to update with information about your association or nonprofit including your staff, volunteers, programs and job openings, and practically anything you need to share on your website.
Homepage Sidebar that dynamically pull in content from other modules on your site: upcoming events, the latest news, and Sponsor spotlights and features them in your homepage and internal page sidebar templates.
Secondary Image Slider displays additional rotating content on your homepage below the fold.
TwentyThirteen Secondary Homepage Slider
Inside Peek at the TwentyThirteen Events Calendar
TwentyThirteen Month Event Calendar View
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website! Visit our Twelve Days of Christmas Main Page to find new gifts for each day from now until January 5th! We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
Coming in 2013: A new Jumpstart Package with an affordable set-up fee to help set-up and personalize your Tendenci association website in a snap!
ON THE FOURTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS… TENDENCI’S GIFT TO YOU: An affordable way to Jumpstart Your Association’s Online Community!
Beginning in early 2013, we’ll begin offering our new Tendenci Community Jumpstart Package to give new and growing associations an entry-level website built on our open source platform.
The Jumpstart Package helps get your association website set-up fast and gives you an open source platform full of all the tools you need to build an online Community! Best of all, each Jumpstart includes your very own Tendenci expert to handle the technical pieces provide you and your team training with Tendenci best practices.
Tendenci Gives Your Association Website a Push Forward!
The Jumpstart is intended to help small and mid-sized associations get a professional looking, engaging website that can help manage donations, memberships, and events in about 30 days.
What’s Included?
The Jumpstart package includes a Tendenci site architect from our team who will be your team’s guide throughout the process.
Each Jumpstart Package Comes with Our Help to:
Set up of one of our Tendenci Community Theme Templates for your website
Customize the colors of your template to match your nonprofit’s branding
Resize and upload your logo
Resize and upload up to 3 homepage rotator stories images
Configuration your site’s theme settings and global site settings
Navigation Menu Set-up
Creation of up to 3 User Groups that you can easily import your users into from a CSV file
Creation of a Donations form and Custom Contact form
Support for Integrating Your Merchant account with your website so you can take payments through the site
Training specific to your website for you and your staff
What’s the Cost?
Initially, we’re going to be offering the Jumpstart Package for $2500.00** plus your monthly Tendenci Community hosting and application management fees. You’ll also get the first 30 days of hosting Free** when you pay for your Jumpstart Package.
We’re trying to offer this package as low as possible to provide associations with an affordable choice in open source community management tools. One of the best things about Tendenci is how scalable the software is so that as your association grows, your website will grow with you!
** This is a special, introductory offer and the pricing is subject to change at any given time. Ethically, we need to make sure you know that we sometimes need to raise our prices as costs and economic factors change.
Get Notified When the Jumpstart Package is Available
If you’re interested on receiving an email when we officially begin accepting new Jumpstart clients, signup below and we’ll include a special offer in the email for those of you who decide Tendenci is right for getting your association website the jumpstart it’s needing this year.
Sign-Up and We’ll Notify You When We Launch our Jumpstart Package:
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website!
We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
Coming in 2013: More International Language Options for Your Website Visitors!
ON THE THIRD DAY OF CHRISTMAS… TENDENCI’S GIFT TO YOU: Internationalization for Your Association Website!
Internationalization for your website means you can offer content and online functionality in multiple languages and locales to your website visitors.
3 Reasons Website Internationalization Matters for Associations
Members of your Org’s chapters in other countries will be able to visit and participate with your main website and make it easier for your staff to grow your global community.
Donation forms will translate into the language of your donors, giving your organization global online fundraising tools
Small nonprofits and associations in economically disadvantaged countries can reach Wealthier Foreign Donors and Corporate Sponsors using your website to translate your cause into their language.
International Language Factoid: There are over 2100 different languages spoken in Africa according to Wikipedia!
Tendenci Updates to Automatically Translate Your Website Content
Ian McKinnell/Getty Images
Associations and Nonprofit Organizations that want to reach an International audience need a website that is multilingual, and this year, we’re adding even more international language translation support to your Tendenci open source websites!
Our programming team has been updating the foreign language tools in Tendenci’s software and improving how your website integrates with the language translation function provided by web browsers. Tendenci website content can be translated into each language based on the preferred language designated by your users inside their web browsers, helping you deliver your message in virtually any country so members and donors clearly understand.
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website!
We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
Dear clients – know that we love you and are proud to serve you. And I need your help. We have to make a few billing changes.
In 2013, we are making a few billing automation changes and adding fees for clients that pay late or require more paperwork so everyone else doesn’t have to pay more to cover that tiny subset. In short:
If you know what the amount is going to be, like Tendenci Software Fees, or a monthly retainer, we need it set up recurring and automatic like your cell phone, water bill, car payment, etc… This is standard stuff for all of us.
If it is something you would want to review, like variable charges for graphics, you will need to login to a portal and review your invoices for payment. We recommend putting a reminder on your calendar to simply check the portal once a month just in case Intuit’s monthly reminder emails don’t make it through.
For the tiny fraction of clients who slow pay, to be fair to our other clients, we are implementing processing and late fees.
We are software developers, marketing consultants, designers, strategists, photographers and many other things. What we are not is accountants. We want to focus on improving your software and service. These minor changes make life more efficient for everyone. And it is the ethical thing to do as only the ones who pay late will see any late fees.
How much do I appreciate y’all? A LOT! Without you there is no Schipul Company and no Tendenci software to support the non-profit (and sometimes for profit) communities. And I’m so proud of the team and grateful to our clients that we were able to publish Tendenci 5.0 fully open-source. Obviously I was inspired by Matt and Dries’ business models at their talk at SchipulCon 2011. They both have great open source products and well run companies with fully automated billing. Schipul and Tendenci need to catch up and do the same thing to continue supporting our now open source product.
The email below is going out to our billing contacts today. It’s the stuff our lawyers make us say to tell you about official changes in our billing and contracts. We want you happy. If you would like to contact me directly my email is eschipul at the domain name “schipul.com”
Sincerely,
Ed Schipul, CEO
LAWYERLY STUFF BELOW
Important Changes Coming to Schipul’s Billing Process in 2013
We’re Going Paperless!
In order to spend more time serving our clients – and less time on paperwork for us and for you – we are upgrading our current accounting system. In 2013, we are moving away from paper invoices and implementing automated billing procedures for all clients. This change will ensure that your account remains current by eliminating the unpredictability of the postal service in delivering mailed invoices and checks in a timely manner. We will be working hard over the next few weeks to get all of our clients converted to the new system.
Monthly software charges will be the first to convert to the new system. Instead of receiving a paper invoice each month, your credit card will be automatically charged for the standard amount of your retainer and software fees. An emailed receipt will be generated each time a payment is made to your account for your records.
Variable Support Charges
At this time, support charges outside of your retainer and software fees will still be invoiced monthly based on usage. You will receive an email with links to review your invoice and make an online payment.
ACH Debit Option
If your organization does not have a valid credit card, you have the option of setting up your monthly payment via ACH automatic debit.
Charges for December and January
Your November invoice covers the standard monthly charges for December. Please pay this invoice as usual to cover your December software charges. When you implement the automatic billing feature, your initial payment will cover your January invoice.
Processing and Late Fees
Starting in 2013, a 10% processing fee will be added to invoices that are not set up for automatic recurring payment. In addition, invoices over 30 days past due will be charged a late fee of 5%.
Getting Set Up with Automatic Billing
Our goal is to have all of our clients set up in the new system by January 1. Contact our accounting team today at accounting@tendenci.com or call us at (281) 497-6567 x 523 to get set up.
Please Read Everything
We recognize changes can be confusing. Please be sure you have read all of the information regarding the new billing procedures carefully. We are here to answer any questions you may have regarding your account. Please contact us at (281) 497-6567 with any questions and to get set up on the new system. We hope this change simplifies your life too!
In part one of this 2-part series, I talked about the problems with many nonprofit websites that are driving potential donors away. In the second post, I’m going to give you 5 changes you can make to your website to increase your online donor conversions.
5 Minor Changes You Can Do Today
1) Strengthen your Call to Action
The last thing you want is for a visitor to come to your website looking for a way to get involved and not being able to find the information. Your site needs a clear call to action that asks visitors to become members, donate, or register for an event.
Make it as simple as possible for your visitors to convert into supporters on your website. Identify the actions your site visitors take on most often and least often. Then, log out of your site and go through each of those actions from a visitor’s perspective.
As you go through the sign-up process, ask yourself, “How easy is it and how long does it take you to complete a transaction?”, to help you figure out how you could make the process better
Test both the most and least popular actions and then compare the experiences. Sometimes, this activity reveals ways that some actions are complicated and time consuming for visitors and that’s driving potential donors away.
3) Move Your Email Newsletter Sign-up Above the Fold
“Above the Fold” is a term for the portion of a web page that you have to scroll down to view. Think of “the fold” as ending about where you might fold down your laptop screen.
According to another study by Jakob Nielsen, content below the fold is only viewed by about 20% of your total site’s visitors. This means that any content you place below the fold is only going to be seen by 1/5th of your visitors. Important items you want to have above the fold include: your email newsletter sign-up form, a clear call to action, a strong headline and links to find out more about your organization.
4) Give Donors What They Want
The Children’s Museum of Houston Gives Visitors 1-Click Access to Information.
Donors want to know more about your nonprofit before they donate. They also prefer to go online to research information about your organization themselves before making a decision to support your mission
Donors want information that communicates what your organization does, how you spend donations and who you have helped.
If you also have memberships, then you want to also consider that new members want to know about member benefits, costs, and find out about programs and events you have for your members.
Learn more about creating engaging content for your website in the presentation Writing for the Web by Katrina Esco, Account Executive on Schipul’s Creative Services team.
5) Use Digital Media to Create Compelling Stories
You know you should use storytelling to share your NonProfit’s Mission and Vision to attract new donors. Crafting great stories can be a challenge. Take photos and videos from your events, of your volunteers and staff, and of the people you’ve helped.
For example let’s look at the homepage for Camp For All, a camp program for kids with a variety of different health problems:
The Camp has a photo of a kid swimming on their homepage and just look at how happy this kid is. This photo shows new visitors that Camp For All is making a difference in children’s lives and that’s far more powerful than if Camp For All had used text to say the same thing.
Coming to Tendenci Websites in 2013: Event Management and Registration Features You’ll Love for Your Festivals, Galas, and Fundraising Events!
Coming in 2013: A new Jumpstart Package with an affordable set-up fee to help set-up and personalize your Tendenci association website in a snap!
Coming in 2013: More International Language Options for Your Website Visitors!
