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Looking back at those early days, I'm incredibly humbled by the impact open source has had on my life and in our communities. Now, older and slightly wiser, I'm excited to continue down that same path. Our company's flagship offerings (Non-Profit Soapbox and Soapbox Engage) heavily leverage open source software, giving us the headspace and time to focus on shaping software to best serve our community. At the same time, I continue to find fulfillment in life by using my experience as a backdrop for evangelism of the open source communities that help us deliver services to those who need it most. While this has recently lead to many hours on planes and trains far away from loved ones, I feel nearly compelled (in a good sense) to work alongside the incredible people building the hammers and nails the world needs to craft more effective and equitable software.
Yesterday, our fellow B Corporation member Arabella Advisors, wrote a great blog by Ginger Elsea about Why Foundations Should Care About B Corps. She laid out the fantastic case for why foundations that are looking to increase their investing portfolio's diversity should invest in B Corporations. As she wrote, "As more foundations pursue impact investing—channeling funds to for-profit businesses that also advance a social mission—B Corp certification can serve as a useful starting point in identifying such businesses." We're big proponents of "if you're going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk", so her words definitely ring true to us at PICnet. What about taking this a step further though? What if foundations not only invested in similarly socially-conscious organizations, they also did business with these well-aligned businesses as well? With the parent non-profit organization of B Corporation, B Lab, continuing to certify and play a watchful eye on the B Corporation community, foundations have a partner that can assist them in finding the best companies to provide them needed services and products.
One of the challenges that developers have had during the past few years is easily sharing their code and best practices with other organizations to help create an open source ecosystem around Salesforce. This is often due to barriers to entry that make it a bit difficult to easily export/import code into your Salesforce instance, especially for those of us supporting the Nonprofit Starter Pack. In short, it's not easy to collaborate within the Salesforce developer community as it is in other software communities. With the new Salesforce Tooling API, however, developers in the community can start to build tools for other developers that might make it a lot easier to share code and ideas. The Tooling API allows for access to key building blocks of Force.com development, including Apex classes, triggers, and VisualForce pages. This means that our developer community could effectively create tools that makes it easier to share their code, thereby increasing the flow of best practices within our community. It's enough to make this open source supporter giddy with ideas for the future.
Social communities have exploded over the past few years. In working with our clients in the Support Department as well as promoting my own after-work projects, I know it feels like you have to be everywhere at once. It seems that if you aren't taking advantage of every angle, then you are missing something. But just try to keep up with Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, LinkedIn, Feedburner, the new MySpace and on and on and on... not to mention your own website... it can be exhausting. So get smart about it.
If you're looking to import data into Salesforce for your nonprofit organization, there are a number of training resources you have at your disposal from Salesforce.com and the Salesforce.com Foundation.
After spending a fairly tedious two hours posting nine items to eBay, here is what I have been reminded of when writing content for the web: As many of you know, PICnet is a B Corporation, a socially responsible business with the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. We're grateful to be a part of an amazing group of businesses who are similar-minded. One of those businesses is PICnet-client Back to the Roots (BTTR). Back to the Roots was founded by two UC Berkeley students, Alejandro Velez & Nikhil Arora, who were inspired to make a product from used coffee grounds. What they came up with was a mushroom kit where, in as little as 10 days, you can grow your own mushrooms from your kitchen windowsill! Skeptical? I was too…until we experimented in the DC office and got fabulous results. I even made myself a mushroom and cheese omelet with mushrooms from the kit! One emerging approach we’ve witnessed in the nonprofit space is the manner of Salesforce adoption within organizations. Many organizations are taking a segmented approach to adoption with one department electing to use it and others not. Often the split falls between program and fundraising teams. There are obvious reasons for this. Legacy systems are involved that vary from department to department. The reasons inspiring adoption by one team will not necessarily apply to the other. Change is difficult for one department let alone an entire organization. And Salesforce adoption is often driven by a key champion within the organization affecting a single department first rather than the entire organization.
While the reasons for segmented adoption are clear, here are four compelling reasons why organizations would do well to push further to more comprehensive adoption and break out of their data silos:
Just in case your finger isn't jumping to click the link to complete the survey just yet, here are ten reasons why you should (drum roll, please)... Does your website have social sharing buttons like ShareThis or AddThis but you find yourself wanting something more customized for a given situation? Maybe you want a big button on your donation thank you page that encourages people to share the fact that they just supported your organization. Or one on an event reservation confirmation view to say they're coming to your shindig. If you're using Salesforce to track donations, you can generate plenty of helpful fundraising metrics. These can be done across your organization and per fundraising campaign. We'll focus on five common and critical metrics in this post. |
Way back in 1999, when dinosaurs were roaming the planet, a friend of mine and I started off on a path that I've been lucky enough to keep walking for 14 years. As students of public policy, we were eager to use technology to provide individuals and organizations with empowering tools to advance the cause of building a more open and just society. From the beginning, we knew that open source software would be the necessary DNA running through our work's blood.
There are so many ways to promote your organization online today. Indeed, you may be returning to work with a raft of 2013 resolutions to do just that.
As a Project Manager at PICnet, I often give clients advice on how to optimize their web content for search engines. However, when posting some items to 
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