Coming in 2013 – More Flexible options for adding dynamic content for your team without needing to know how to write code!
ON THE SECOND DAY OF CHRISTMAS… TENDENCI’S GIFT TO YOU: New Ways to Update Your Website without Code
We’re always looking for better ways to give your association online collaboration tools that your staff and members can use to share news and events. This Christmas, we have a couple of really cool new features to announce
1) New Versioning Feature for Pages and Articles Saves Your Work
View Previous Versions of Your Website Content!
Our new “Versions” feature saves all previous versions of pages and articles so you’ll be able to review content edits and view the older content even after you’ve updated and saved over it. We think this feature has tons of benefits for you, including empowering your site users with access to contribute new content and update old content because you’ll never have to worry if they save over something they shouldn’t have – you can just pull up the previous version!
If you are working on a page with another person, you can both save as you work and Tendenci will save each version and connect it with your user profile, so you can view your work next to your partners.
View Who Last Edited Content and What’s Changed!
2) New Preview Theme Feature Enables You to Edit and Preview Themes inside Your Theme Editor
Edit and Preview New Themes!
The new preview option in your theme editor allows you to edit and view theme templates and layouts without changing your live website’s theme. Site visitors and members can access all your website’s content as usual and will never know you’re in the back of your website changing the design!
Preview Theme Edits Online!
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 tosupport@tendenci.com.
Tomorrow (Tuesday), the Schipul team will be rolling out a new update for the event registration process that will give you more flexibility over how event registration works for your members.
Please note: This change only effects sites running on Tendenci 5 – the newest version of Tendenci
The major changes are:
1) People can register multiple registrants with different price on the same invoice.
2) Event editors can specify whether or not guests info is required. Under the Registration section of the event add/edit pages, there is a checkbox Require Guests Info, check it if you’d like guests’ info (name, email, etc) to be showing on the roster report.
3) Site administrators (super users) can control how people can register for their events by changing the setting “Anonymous Event Registration” http://yoursitedomain.com/settings/module/events/#id_anonymousregistration. There are 3 options for this setting: open, validated and strict. The default value for existing sites is validated.
a) Open – Allows people registering for events to choose any price for themselves and their guests.
b) Validated – Allows people to see all prices when registering, requires a valid site user email address for each price to check that they qualify. They do not have to be logged in, and they can register guests using the guests’ email addresses.
c) Strict – Allows people to see all prices when registering, requires the user to log-in, a valid site user email address for each price to check that they qualify. They can register guests using the guests’ email addresses.
IMPORTANT!If you are a site administrator (super user), please check and update this setting to best meet your business requirements later this week. We will be following up directly with current clients who we know use memberships and calendar events for help with which setting is right with you.
4) Members can enter their member IDs for the member-only price. If you don’t want the Member ID field to show up on the registration form, you can turn it off by changing the setting “Event Registration Requires member ID for member pricing” http://yoursitedomain.com/settings/module/events/#id_requiresmemberid.
5) Admins (super users) can override with different price for different registrants when registering multiple people.
6) Discount code can be applied (if applicable) to each individual registrant instead of one registrant for each registration.
7) Sortable feature is added to the roster report to allow site administrators (super users) to sort registrants by last name, first name and company.
8) On the Roster report, you can now check people in electronically at events by clicking a check box under the column Attend.
The software technology industry is on constantly changing. Our application developers and programmers for the Tendenci CMS platform are always seeking innovative and more advanced ways to make your websites better for you to use.
Change, in our business, is necessary to stay competitive and provide a valuable product that people want to pay for. We realize that when we make changes with Tendenci, we are making changes in your website.
Change is Hard
This week, I had the opportunity to attend an Inc. Magazine Business Building Breakfast featuring keynote speaker Dan Heath, co-author of Switch. Switch is a book about how to make Change easier for yourself and your organization.
Dan describes the two different systems that control what a person does, like a rider on an elephant:
The “Rider” is Rational, Conscious, Deliberative
The “Elephant” is Emotional, Unconscious, Automatic
Using an analogy from The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt, Switch explains that each of us has these two different systems fighting each other inside – and it isn’t a fair fight. The Elephant in us often is more powerful and much bigger than the Rider.
Whereas your Rider-side may tell you that you need to pay attention in your meeting at work, for example, the elephant-side will be telling you to “keep playing angry birds”.
Dan also points out our Elephant-side also has enormous strengths – our passion, curiosity, and that voice inside our heads that sometimes wonders “wouldn’t it be cool if…?”
Dan wrote the book with his brother, Chip Heath, and they share the 3 surprises about change we need to know before we can lead others to embrace Change joyfully. I am looking forward to reading the book and want to just leap ahead a moment and tell you the 3 surprises of Change that Dan told us in his presentation:
1) Direct the Rider
This is where you determine what it is you want to accomplish and break it down into single, actionable items that you can do as part of a series. Instead of telling your team to go out and raise $100,000 in donations, give them one task that they can do to move towards your fundraising goals like call 10 people from the donor list everyday this week and ask them to donate.
2) Motivate the Elephant
The Elephant in us can be strong-willed and you need to motivate your Elephant towards adopting the change as well. A classic mistake I know I make all the time is thinking that giving people more information will motivate them to change. Dan explained this is not the case and that what motivates people to change, truly, is to See something that makes you Feel something and only then are you motivated to Change. People make changes based on emotions, not reason.
3) Shape the Path
The third part is where you look for ways to make it easier to Change. Give more specific directions, consider the environment and ask yourself and your staff what you can do better to make the path to Change easier. It’s also important to accept that people will fail when they first try something new and we should think more like parents when our child is learning to walk and encourage them to pick themselves up after each stumble.
How Can We Make Change Easier for You?
As I mentioned at the beginning, Tendenci is software and we are always updating it, making changes to the code and your user interface. We want to find out your ideas and suggestions on how we can make managing your website easier for you and your organization’s staff, volunteers, and members.
Our ultimate goal is to make innovative website software that’s really fun to use. Tell us how you’d like to see us change Tendenci.
Change is Fun
We are Updating Tendenci’s Brand Image
The Tendenci blog has been updated with our new colors. If you’ve been by Tendenci.org then you’ll have seen the new logo and we have been sprinkling other content with the new look as we’ve been moving forward – for example Tendenci Admin Navigation menu bars turned blue a couple of weeks ago.
Most of these are cosmetic changes to our own website and marketing material and really won’t affect your Tendenci websites and day-to-day workflows.
Some of the changes, like when we changed the Admin Nav menu from maroon to blue, will affect your website. We hope you like the changes and for the most part, we make them based on our clients’ feedback and requests.
You Can Help Make Changes
We are planning on redesigning Tendenci’s Dashboard to provide more useful functionality and access to help files and reporting tools. This is something we’ve planned since early in the development of Tendenci version 5.0.
We are looking for your feedback on how we can make your Tendenci dashboard more useful. Tell us what you’d like to see in your site Dashboard and help us make some changes!
Some Recent Changes to Tendenci
Here are just a few of the changes we’ve made to all Tendenci websites in the past month. You can view all of our weekly updates in Tendenci’s Software Updates articles.
Tendenci weekly software updates will now go out on Tuesdays, instead of Thursdays.
Anonymous site visitors can now apply for corporate memberships without requiring account registration first.
Individual Membership Exports now include Financials on Membership Dues Paid, Balance Owed, and the Invoice ID number.
We’ve made several updates to the memberships module based on your feedback.
Site-wide searches now display active content on your website before expired content.
Really Big Changes We’ve Got Planned This Year
We have big ideas and we’re making big changes to make your experience setting up and using your website better. Here are a few really exciting changes you can expect to see coming to your Tendenci website throughout the year:
We’re going to change how Tendenci manages permissions settings at a People/User- level to make it easier for Site Admins to control and set-up access to site content and settings for your staff, members, and site users.
We’ll be adding new theme options for Tendenci websites to give you additional options to change the design and colors of your website.
We’ll be releasing more plugins that you’ll be able to opt to install on your site like we just did with the Videos plugin.
We’ll be adding additional documentation for Developers, Designers, and Interactive Agencies to support and grow our brand new open source community.
Tell us what you think! Share your comments below or contact us with your questions.
We’ve all heard the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”, and this couldn’t be more applicable when we are talking about your nonprofit organization’s website.
Visual storytelling is key to engaging your donors, members, and community online. Last week, I wrote about how to use online video to tell your organization’s story. This week I want to talk about how to use Photographs and Tendenci’s Photo Album module to share your organization’s stories and events and engage with your online audience more effectively.
Photographs Say the Most Awesome Things!
Photos help you share your organization’s stories, people and mission. Your photos also make your website more visually appealing to new visitors. Here are some great ways to use a photograph to say something awesome about your nonprofit and examples of how some of our nonprofit clients are using their Tendenci Photo Album module.
Photos Convey the Human Perspective of Your Mission
Flip through the photos on the Houston Art Car Parade website where they show off their incredible art cars and, more importantly, how the organization introduces you to the people behind the automotive works of art.
Photos Introduce and Promote the People at Your Organization
Your staff, volunteers and Board members do so much and you can show your appreciation using photo albums to showcase their hard work and efforts. You’ll not only make your biggest supporters feel appreciated – you’ll also increase your online donations since studies show that potential Donors are more inclined to give if they can see what your nonprofit’s team is doing relevant to spending donations that effectively advance your mission.
See how the Children’s Assessment Center showcases their volunteers for their Christmas Toy Drive using Photo Albums.
Photos from Your Past Events Increase Registration for Your Upcoming Events
When you post photos from past event that show your members, sponsors, supporters, donors, and staff having a great time – you are showing new site visitors what they have been missing. This will increase attendance at future events.
Check out ThinkLA’s Event Photos as an example of promoting future event registration using past event photos!
Photos Show-Off Your Capabilities
Photos can be used to show what your organization is capable of and what your facilities are like to build trust and increase the chances that a new visitor will become a fan, participant, and donor. For example, Camp For All’s photo tourof their camp facilities shows parents and their children what they can expect during one of their camp programs and this increases both camp registrations plus support from donors.
Photos Bring More Press
The Media needs great visuals for their stories and they love free photos. Create a page on your website and link to your photo albums that are most news-worthy and about your organization’s mission. Tendenci photo albums even include easy copy and paste html code for each photo you upload to an album that allows you to embed the photos in other places on your website. Share the code with your press releases and make it easy for journalists to pick your story and photo.
Miller Outdoor Theatre has a great example of how to make a photo landing page for the Press.
Flip Through Tendenci’s Photo Albums
Come learn about all the features included with Tendenci’s Photos Module in this Video Tour!
Video Training for Tendenci Photos
We also have a 2 Part Video Training Series on how to upload photos to your Tendenci website and edit them to create great looking photo albums on your nonprofit’s website:
I wanted to leave you with one last reason photo albums rock out your website and that’s search engine optimization. Make sure when you are adding your photos that you use the title, description, and tag fields to boost your rankings and attract new visitors. Learn more about optimizing your photos and other content on your Tendenci website in this great article at The SEM Blog on Optimizing Your Tendenci Website for SEO.
Got Questions and Comments?
Share your comments below or contact us with your questions.
We’ve been busy little Web Bees the past week and you’ll find a bunch of new features and updates to your Tendenci websites. To highlight a few of our recent updates:
updated custom forms with the ability to simply drag and drop to rearrange your fields
added additional permissions settings to job boards, directories, and memberships
opened up our plugin app manager to give Site Admins the ability to manage and add new plugins. (The first plugin we’ve released for free is our Videos Plugin – Here’s How to Install it!)
Last week we surprised our Tendenci Enterprise and Tendenci Community site admins with new Admin Nav Menu colors. Why? We are working to make it easier for our clients to know what version of the software you are using and your feedback was that the blue was a better color for your websites than the previous red color.
What Does it Mean?
If your Top Bar Admin Nav Menu is a solid dark blue and looks like this:
… then you are on the Tendenci Enterprise version of our software. Tendenci Enterprise websites have a custom theme and your software updates and hosting services are managed entirely by Schipul – The Web Marketing Company.
If you have a light blue admin bar that looks like this:
… then you are on the Tendenci Community version of our software. Tendenci Community websites are virtually identical to Tendenci Enterprise in their software codebase. The primary difference is that Tendenci Community websites use a template theme instead of a custom theme. Your software updates and hosting services are managed entirely by us.
If you do not have a top bar Admin menu at all, and when you login you see a dashboard that looks like this:
… then you are on our previous version of Tendenci (Tendenci 4.0). We released the newest version of Tendenci (Tendenci 5.0) about 18 months ago and we recommend you begin planning to migrate your Tendenci 4.0 website as soon as possible. We’ve talked about this before in other blog posts and we 100% understand that costs and other factors make the migration a challenge for some of our clients.
To help you with your decision of when to migrate and how to budget for it, we’re offering a free report with personalized details about the costs and timeline involved with migration for your website and organization. We’ll also include free recommendations on ways you can improve your web marketing now with your current website.
Great question! We are always looking at ways to add new features, more functionality, and improve the user accessibility of our Tendenci CMS. Here are just a few of the awesome updates our programming team has planned this summer to make Tendenci work better for you:
Easier application process for your site visitors applying to become Corporate Members
Updates to Custom Forms to make this module even more versatile
Increased Functionality for Tendenci Community to auto-complete site settings during creation based on sign-up information
More ways to manage and organize online invoices and payments made through your Tendenci website payment gateway
More Print and Export to PDF options for content on the site like Pages and Membership applications
Want Something Not on the List?
Our products are customer-driven and we keep a priority queue for development based entirely on the features and modules with the most client requests. Send us your feature suggestions and help us make Tendenci the perfect CMS platform for your organization’s website!
Questions and Comments?
We love to hear from you so please leave your comments below or contact us with your questions!
For our Tendenci 4 clients: I encourage you to complete our Is It Time to Migrate? form if you are wondering whether or not you can afford to upgrade your website or should start setting aside the budget for a new website soon.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been creating and uploading new training videos to demonstrate how to use the newest version of our open source CMS software. You can find these videos on our website in the Tendenci Video Gallery.
Tendenci’s Videos Plugin Creates An Organized Video Gallery Page
The video gallery uses one of our newer plugins and allows us to embed online videos from YouTube, Vimeo and other video sharing platforms directly onto our website. The plugin also gives us tools like tagging, a WYSIWYG editor for the description, and customizable categories for organizing videos.
Tendenci Plugins
The ability to add and customize plugins is a feature we implemented with Tendenci 5.0, our newest version of our nonprofit CMS. Over time, we will be releasing additional plugins and we are in the middle of implementing a program for outside developers to share and sell Tendenci plugins.
We have built several custom plugins for our clients and now, starting with the Videos plugin, we are going to share them with all of our Tendenci users.
Get the Videos Plugin Now – For Free!
Later this year, new Tendenci sites will automatically include our Videos plugin when they are created. We want to thank our current clients by offering you the plugin via a manual installation now so you don’t have to wait for it.
Head to the Tendenci website to find all the details and get the videos plugin installed on your website plus help files on using the Videos plugin.
Please Note:Only Tendenci version 5.0 sites support and can use the plugin architecture. If your website is on a prior version, then you can refer to this help file that explains how to embed single videos inside of your site’s pages.
Create Compelling Stories Using Online Video
Storytelling involves communicating your organization’s personal stories to your audience to increase engagement. For nonprofits, your audience consists of your donors, Board members, volunteers, and a way to reach out to find new potential members. For profit organizations use storytelling to generate leads, create partnerships, and build their Brand.
For most marketers, including myself, storytelling can be a challenge – you are trying to be interesting and talk about yourself at the same time. Storytelling was a trending session topic at NTEN’s 2012 NonProfit Technology Conference in San Francisco last month, and I wanted to share some of the advice and tools I learned about specifically to using online videos as a medium for crafting better stories.
Getting Started with Video Storytelling
Danny Alpert and Michael Hoffman, with See3 Communications, gave a fantastic presentation on Sight, Sound, and Motion: Video Storytelling and Using Video for Advanced Messaging. In the session, Danny and Michael offered 10 key things to focus on as you create your strategy for video storytelling campaigns and there is a great wrap-up of the session available on Socialbrite’s website for you to check-out plus the videos See3 used in their session as examples.
See3’s session gives great step-by-step advice on how to plan and write the script and produce a video that shares your nonprofit’s stories effectively. The session was also geared towards organizations that already were producing video content and were looking for ways to take their video campaigns further in the next year.
I find that most nonprofits and organizations are only just beginning to look at using online video in their marketing and often have just one or two people and a low budget to produce the videos. You may have very little experience writing scripts, producing and editing video and using YouTube and this can make video storytelling a daunting task.
I thought I would share my recommendations for getting started with video storytelling and then you’ll be producing awesome online videos you’ll be able to upload and share on your website with the Tendenci Videos plugin.
1)Videos take more time to make than you’d think. A 5 minute video can easily take 60 minutes to edit and finalize. Keep this in mind as you write your script and keep your first videos shorter in length to make them more manageable.
2)You’ll want good camera equipment, and that doesn’t have to cost as much as you’d think. I recommend checking out CNet’s Digital Camcorder Guide for reviews on affordable camcorders and make sure you get one that films in high definition. You’ll also need a good microphone and I recommend a tripod. Surprisingly, HD video quality from iPhones and Droid smartphones are rapidly becoming excellent options for online video recording too.
3)Try out different video editing software before you buy. You’ll be spending more time at your computer editing your videos than you will writing your scripts and recording your videos combined. There are some great free and inexpensive software options but I don’t recommend you make your decision based on the lowest price. Make sure the software you select is easy for you to use and does what you need it to do.
I have heard good things about Windows Movie Maker (PC) and iMovie (Mac) and both are free video editing applications.
4)Watch examples of other online videos. Take notes on what you really like and what you don’t like, and use these examples as guides when you begin writing your video scripts. However, don’t try to force your own story into someone else’s video script. Find your own style and voice that represents your organization to effectively share your story.
5)Focus on making just one video. The first one is the hardest. Once you’ve written, recorded, edited, uploaded, and shared the video in a tweet – you can relax and see what happens. You will learn and get better with each video you make and creating the content is the most important step for successfully integrating videos into your marketing strategy.
Additional Resources on Crafting Videos and Great Storytelling Tips
There is so much more to say on the topic of online videos and I’d love to hear your questions and comments on what you wish you knew how to do to create more awesome online videos. Share your comments below or contact us with your questions.
Yes, I’m excited about Tendenci going open source. But first – THANK YOU to the giants who walked before us to make this possible.
As a programmer, granted I haven’t been in the code much the last 5 years doing the whole “running the company thing”, but I haven’t forgotten how important it is to give credit where credit is due. We just pushed Tendenci 5.0 live on github yesterday. As far as I know, Tendenci is the only “open source CMS system built specifically for nonprofits” and I could add “written on the Django framework and Python.”
That is what makes open source so cool. As David Geilhufe told me today when we bumped into each other at NTEN, “welcome to the open source community. it took you a while but you got here.” David’s right.
Tendenci 5 was a complete rewrite and took over 3 years to complete. I have said thanks to our programmers numerous times. But what giants’ shoulders did we stand on? Quite a few. Tendenci would not have been possible without the original committers on Django. So a RESPECTFUL tip of the hat to these trail blazers. #respect #thankyou
Adrian Holovaty
Simon Willison
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
Wilson Miner
And the list of brilliant committers goes on. Because it is a community. These people enabled us to give. I respect that.
To put it all together, Tendenci is a full web application. It is written on a framework called Django which is “the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.” Django is written in a programming language called Python. Python was created by the amazing Guido van Rossum. I have never met Guido. But I know his brain is absolutely amazing and that our current business model would not be possible without Guido. Thank you Mr. Rossum. And thank you for everyone who contributes to the Python project.
We have a lot to learn still. And we are studying and learning as fast as we can. Any help is appreciated. But first and foremost, thank you to all of the programmers who walked before us and made our current path possible. ~Ed
Today, we released the Tendenci CMS open source (view the Tendenci GitHub Repository here). Tendenci CMS, or Content Management System, is the software that powers your website. We value you, and all our clients, tremendously and want to make sure we reach out to answer some questions you may have about this announcement and how it affects you.
What Does “Open Source” Mean?
Open Source means that the Tendenci code will be available from Schipul for anyone to download and install on a server to create a Tendenci website. The code is free, but it does require a specific hosting environment and programming knowledge to deploy a site. Open Source also means that other developers outside of our programming team can contribute to the code – build plugins, make changes to the interface, etc. The Tendenci “committers” (lead programmers) will remain gatekeepers of the core code, and incorporate the work of these outside developers as we see the benefit to clients.
What Does Open Source Tendenci Mean for Current Tendenci Clients?
In the short term, you probably won’t notice a difference. Your hosting won’t change, your cost won’t change, and your site won’t appear or operate differently.
Long term – The goal in going open source is to develop a larger ecosystem of developers who can update, add on to, and create websites with Tendenci (outside of the Schipul team). For you, this means more features available in Tendenci that aren’t currently, and the ability to customize your site to your specific needs. This also means that if you decide to, you can host your website internally or have another developer host or make updates to your website without Schipul’s involvement. We will do our best to keep our pricing competitive and maintain excellent customer service to continue providing the most value to those hosting with us.
What About Tendenci 4.0 Websites?
If your dashboard looks like the screenshot to the right, your website is currently powered by Tendenci 4.0 – the previous version of the Tendenci software, written in the programming language .ASP.
Since 2009 we have been rewriting Tendenci – Tendenci 5.0 – in the programming language Python, a more advanced programming language that gives us greater flexibility.
All Tendenci 4.0 clients have the same set of modules and features. In the past if a client requested a custom feature, we had to either find a way to roll it out to all client sites, or say no. Several features (for instance a searchable database of Attorneys) are not applicable to all clients, but exist on every Tendenci 4.0 site. The latest version of Tendenci works in a different way. Tendenci 5.0 has a Core that include pages, forms, users, events, etc. that apply to virtually all clients. From there we install additional features that are custom to each client using Plugins. For instance, a client may want a Staff module, Video Gallery, or Locations Module depending on the organization’s needs. Things like workflow, interface, and design can be custom to your organization.
Tendenci 5 is the version of Tendenci that we will be taking Open Source.
I Have a Tendenci 4 Site. Should I Upgrade to Tendenci 5?
Web technology changes frequently. We recommend clients consider revamping their website about every 5 years – so you are utilizing the latest technology and your website reflects your brand in the most current light. That being said, upgrading a website is a process and represents a cost, so for some organizations we understand that budget constraints mean a website redesign may not be at the top of your priority list. We aren’t going to stop supporting Tendenci 4, yet long term all of our clients will need to upgrade to keep up with the latest technology. We hope that the additional features of Tendenci 5 & the lower hosting cost as a result of new efficiencies is compelling to upgrade.
The caveat here is that while Tendenci 5 is far advanced beyond Tendenci 4.0 in many ways, there are specific features that are not yet available in Tendenci 5. For a list of Modules that have changed in the new version, visit this help file.
If you are interested in learning more about upgrading to Tendenci 5, please contact our Business Development team at 281.497.6567 ext 700
How Can I Learn More About Tendenci Open Source?
The details of Tendenci Open Source CMS are available at tendenci.org.
Also follow us online to keep up to date with the latest Tendenci Open Source details:
Could Your NonProfit Organization Use a Little Extra Dough?
Ok – that is a trick question because of course you’d love to earn more this year for your nonprofit or association! I’m going to share a secret and give you some simple steps to follow to make this year your nonprofit’s best financial year yet.
What’s the Secret?
Step 1 to increasing your online revenue is to integrate your website with an online payment gateway. You’ll want to apply for a CNP Merchant Account, (CNP stands for card not present), which will allow you to accept online credit card payments from your site visitors, donors and members easily.
Credit cards are fast and secure, making them the preferred payment method for your site visitors’ online purchases. If you don’t have a merchant account and are accepting online payments, then you are probably using a 3rd party like PayPal or Eventbrite to direct your site visitors to when they are making a purchase.
These 3rd party providers are great options for smaller organizations or the one time event, but for nonprofits with membership dues and renewals, regular event registrations, job posting fees, and other online payments coming in – you really will want to consider comparing payment gateway options and accept payments through your own website. In most cases, a Merchant Account will end up being cheaper than using a service like PayPal or Eventbrite in the long run.
Applying for a Merchant Account is actually pretty simple to do, and is the first step towards increasing your nonprofit’s online revenue. By integrating payment processing with your website, you also will have more control over the purchasing experience that your site visitors and members have. This will let you customize and personalize your website better so your site visitors will love coming back to your site.
Here’s some more information about the different merchant account providers that Tendenci integrates with and I recommend. There are links to the different pricing plans, FAQs and getting started guides for each of the different companies to help you make the best decision for your nonprofit.
What’s the Next Step?
You’ll want to determine what your organization has to offer of value to your community to better understand your current and potential sources of additional revenue.
Take out a piece of paper and a pen, or open up a Word or Google document and just start listing out all the things you are either charging for, or are doing for free that people ask for more of. Add things to your list that you’re not currently doing and getting requests to do too. Brainstorm with your staff and volunteers and let them add their ideas to your list. You may be surprised by how long your list grows. Non-profits often overlook their value and the opportunities they offer that they can charge fees to provide.
It is a common myth that the majority of a nonprofit’s revenue comes from donations and contributions.
Non-Profits Earn Revenue from Fees for Goods and Services
Don’t just take my word for it. Take a look at this chart below that displays revenues earned across different Tendenci modules for the past 3 years. Tendenci’s software integrates each of the different core modules with your merchant account payment gateway to accept online payments through your website. We compiled data from the last 3 years for the total revenues earned by nonprofit organizations’ Tendenci websites segmented by the different modules including event registrations, memberships, job directory listings, product sales (cart catalog), donations, training courses, and more.
These graphs display revenues earned as a percentage of the total in years 2009, 2010, and 2011:
Graph Depicts the Percentages of Revenue Earned from Tendenci Modules
The results of comparing this data tells us that the fees nonprofits earn online from event tickets and membership dues far exceeds fees earned from donations year after year.
If you want to earn more revenue online this year, host more and better events, focus on bringing in new members and increasing membership renewals, offer training courses and consider adding an online store if you have a gift shop. Offer more services and products for sale and focus less on asking for donations.
Looks Easy on Paper – How Do You Create and Manage These New Services?
If you are feeling a little overwhelmed right now – you are not alone. Start small, take your list that you made and put stars next to three items on the list that you think your organization has the budget and staff to accomplish this year. Start with those three and measure the results of their revenue generation this year as you implement them. Be sure to save your list, keep adding items to it, and return to the list when you’ve accomplished all three of your starred items. Pick three more things from the list and try those.
I also recommend you utilize technology to help you collect payments, manage your events and members, and report results of your activities so you can make better decisions on what worked, what didn’t work, and what you can improve upon and do more of next year. I also highly recommend you checkout TechSoup’s website, where you’ll find great reviews and special pricing for software exclusively for nonprofits as well as a Learning Center and a Community Forum where you can find help using unfamiliar technology.
Find creative and innovative ways to add value to your organization’s offerings. To help you get started, I’ve prepared a great presentation and online webinar to give you some creative ways to use your nonprofit website to earn more this year. You’ll find new ideas to use your website to promote your services, manage registrations, membership applications, job postings, training courses, and more plus collect payments and automatically generate invoices and receipts.
You can register online today for this free webinar hosted this Thursday, March 29th 2012 and if you missed it, check our Training Calendar for the next upcoming free class.
Find a copy of the presentation on Tendenci’s Slideshare plus additional presentations that show nonprofits how to create more effective online marketing campaigns.
We also have a free 30 day trial where you can start setting up a Tendenci website and try out some of these revenue generating ideas yourself. Tendenci enables you to create custom pricing for things like membership dues, jobs board postings, event registrations, and donations so that your nonprofit is able to generate the funds needed to grow without having to feel overwhelmed. If your current website isn’t doing enough for your nonprofit, come give Tendenci a try.
Check out these resources to help you create and set-up a Tendenci Community website:
Tendenci Training Videos – short videos that walk you through setting up the different modules included with your Tendenci website.
7-Step Guide with Help Files and Videos to take you through the first week of setting up a Tendenci website.
We also add new content weekly to our YouTube and Slideshare pages, so follow Tendenci and get notified when we add new webinar presentations, video and help files, and more resources to help your nonprofit shine on the web!
Come Find Tendenci at These Events!
We would love to meet up with you in person to answer your questions about Tendenci and get to know you and what you are doing to make the world a better place. Let us know if you’ll be at one of these upcoming events and want to hang out with us!
For a long while, we’ve been posting Tendenci’s software version updates here on the blog. We decided to move those updates onto our Tendenci website moving forward. You’ll still find the updates we’ve already posted on the blog here forever and always, and head to Tendenci Software Updates to find the new updates starting with this past week.
From the Tendenci Homepage, just scroll down to the footer and you’ll find the new link to our weekly version update announcements:
We’ll still share some of the highlights of our weekly software updates here on the blog with you – for example, this week we have made some great updates to Tendenci that make it easier for you to manage your corporate members and set permissions controls!
Corporate Membership Updates
The corporate representative page now displays a list of all members associated with that corporation.
The creator and owner of a Corporate Membership can add additional representatives under this Corporate Membership.
The creator and owner of a Corporate Membership can also assign new memberships.
Added permission control settings to ensure that Anonymous users cannot be assigned to a corporate membership.
Better Permissions Control Viewing
I’m really excited about this update!
We widened and updated Tendenci’s Group and Profile Permissions Control View to resolve the issue with some permission settings being truncated and unclear.
Import Your Members from Your Old Site to Tendenci Faster
We made some improvements to our member import with clearer error messages, better file and application mapping, and now membership fields are no longer case-sensitive in the import CSV file. You can also separate membership fields with spaces, underscores, or dashes without interfering with the import.
Coming in 2013 – More Flexible options for adding dynamic content for your team without needing to know how to write code!
