I’d love to see more folks taking advantage of our APIs. So, while driving home last night I thought to myself that it would be cool to start up a little open source API community where together we can post and modify samples in an open source format. So in just a few minutes today at lunch I was able to easily set up a Blackbaud community on Microsoft’s CodePlex.

I also uploaded a sample that demonstrates how to write a simple plugin using the Raiser’s Edge 7.81 and Visual Basic .NET 2005.
You can view the project page here.
(Note this sample will only work with RE 7.81 or later, since 7.81 ships with the required .NET 2.0 support files)

Did you know that Plugins do not require an API license to create? That’s right, grab this sample, play with it, make your own plugins and contribute them to the project/community! The only restriction I am making is I am putting all code under a Creative Commons License.

I’ll be up front with you, I probably won’t have much time to field direct questions on any code I post. Also, this isn’t officially suported Blackbaud product. That said, if you are looking for a place to learn more about using our extensive APIs and plugins, I hope this community will serve as a launch pad. I’ll upload more stuff when I get free time and inspiration. What I’d most like to see is what you come up with.

Now go buy that .NET book and start coding! Be sure to let me know if you’d like to contribute code or projects, I’ll add you to the open source team. Make something really cool and we may ask you to join the Blackbaud Product Development team

Shaun

The 2007 running of the Daytona 500 brought with it a lot of advertising and promtions from the multitude of NASCAR corporate sponsors. Amid the flurry of comercials were promotional ads for The NASCAR Foundation’s annual NASCAR Day fundraising event.

NASCAR Day is now in its fourth year as the major public-facing fundraising initiative of the The NASCAR Foundation. In exchange for a $5 donation, participants receive a commemorative NASCAR Day lapel pin. The majority of the donations come from the many corporate partners and sponors affiliated with NASCAR and its participating motorsports teams.

This is the second year in a row that the organization has partnered with Blackbaud Interactive to develop an online micro-site to promote the event. Last year’s NASCAR Day was the largest and most succesful to date with over 3,000 companies across the country participating to help sell over 100,000 pins worldwide.

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I was intrigued by this recent article about SAP and others incorporating collaboration features like wikis, forums, blogs and widgets into their products to help encourage communication among users. One of our main goals with products on the Infinity platform is to get beyond the idea of these apps being a ‘data storage’ tool and really focus on the ways in which the products facilitate and improve business processes. We’re already well on our way to meeting this goal through features like customizable, easy-to-use business transactions (such as sending receipts or posting to GL), and better integration of reporting data into these functions.

But a huge part of facilitating processes involves communication among people and departments. I’m wondering what we can do to better allow users to communicate with each other through our products? And where would this type of functionality be most useful? We’ve already taken steps in this direction in specific areas - Major Giving cultivation, for example, where we’re looking to improve the ability of fundraisers and their managers to communicate progress and status on their prospects. But I think this is an area we can explore further and really take advantage of some of the newer tools available to us.

It seems like there are some key characteristics of situations where in-product collaboration would be most useful:

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Yesterday, I received an email from Woody Clark, a trust representative from 501(c) Agencies Trust. He has written a short paper on how nonprofits can reduce their unemployment insurance costs, and thought the nonprofit community should know about it. Saving money…who wouldn’t want to do that?

It’s a quick read, so I’ll type no more:

In your State, as in all States, a Nonprofit has two options for Unemployment Insurance while a For Profit Corporation only has one. Typically, a Nonprofit and For Profit pay for unemployment claims through State Unemployment Insurance tax (SUI). But unlike their counterparts, Nonprofits have an alternative choice – to become a reimbursing employer. This means that it can pay the state only for claims paid out to former employees.

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Everest Y&R came up with a great viral campaign for Support, a non governmental organization registered as a charitable trust in Mumbai, India. Their campaign to bring awareness to homeless children was a huge success in coffee shops around India, and got good coverage throughout the world media.

By simply slipping these cutout children into existing table tents, their message was delivered to a captive audience with minimal impact on the community - exactly the way guerrilla campaigns should go down.

The text reads:

Over two lakh children live in places you can never imagine. Help the Children. Donate.

I think it’s important to show that guerrilla marketing efforts should still be implemented when the situation calls for it, despite what happened in Boston two weeks ago. Campaigns like these resonate strongly with an audience who is increasingly turned off by TV, print, and email advertisements.

via Ads of the World

It’s February 1st - have you updated your Web site’s copyright date yet?

If you haven’t, you’re not alone. Forgetting to update is commonplace, and I see it all the time. Data was needed, so yesterday I checked out the top 100 nonprofits. What I found was shocking.

I expected a few would have forgotten, but not 34%. I even saw a few that still were listed as 2005 - wow! But don’t feel bad - the top 100 for-profits didn’t fair much better, with 18% forgetting to update.

Are you still reading? Have you checked your site yet?

There are many ways to handle your Web site’s copyright info, some of which require no updating at all. I took a look how nonprofits and for-profits were displaying copyright info, and was able to identify five buckets to drop each method into:

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Below are links to the top 100 nonprofits. I created this list of links from The Nonprofit Times annual list.

http://www.ymca.net/
http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/
http://www.redcross.org/
http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/
http://www.goodwill.org/
http://www.ujc.org/
http://www.mskcc.org/
http://www.bgca.org/
http://www.americares.org/
http://www.habitat.org/
http://www.cancer.org/
http://www.nature.org/
http://www.worldvision.org/
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
http://www.giftsinkind.org/
http://www.feedthechildren.org/
http://www.voa.org/
http://www.scouting.org/
http://www.easterseals.com
http://www.foodforthepoor.org
http://www.girlscouts.org/
http://www.crs.org/
http://www.shrinershq.org/
http://www.care.org/
http://www.americanheart.org/
http://www.dana-farber.org/
http://www.secondharvest.org/
http://www.ywca.org
http://www.si.edu/
http://www.pbs.org/
http://www.stjude.org/
http://www.cityofhope.org/
http://www.unicefusa.org/
http://www.childrenshospitalla.org/
http://www.ccci.org/
http://www.ucp.org/
http://www.savethechildren.org/
http://www.map.org/
http://www.moma.org/
www.samaritanspurse.org/
http://www.metmuseum.org/
http://www.fhcrc.org/
http://www.aed.org/
http://www.brothersbrother.org/
http://www.mfah.org/
http://www.bbbs.org/
http://www.ob.org/
http://www.nwmedicalteams.org
http://www.cbn.com/
http://www.metoperafamily.org
http://www.jdc.org/
http://www.marchofdimes.com/
http://www.directrelief.org/
http://www.compassion.com/
http://www.nmha.org/
http://www.cmalliance.org/
http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org
http://www.diabetes.org
http://www.nmss.org/
http://www.theirc.org/
http://www.cff.org/
http://www.specialolympics.org
http://www.alz.org/
http://www.cmmb.org/
http://www.ducks.org/
http://www.wcs.org/
http://www.christianchildrensfund.org/
http://www.uncf.org/
http://www.girlsandboystown.org/
http://www.younglife.org/
http://www.iie.org/
http://www.artic.edu/
http://www.tbn.org/
http://www.mda.org/
http://www.amnh.org/
http://www.mercycorps.org/
http://www.girlsinc.org/
http://www.jdrf.org/
http://www.wish.org/
http://www.history.org/
http://www.komen.org/
http://www.crista.org/
http://www.nga.gov/
http://www.cartercenter.org/
http://www.wgbh.org/
http://www.lungusa.org/
http://www.npr.org/
http://www.mfa.org/
http://www.hadassah.org
http://www.tpl.org/
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
http://www.thirteen.org/
http://www.ja.org/
http://www.rotary.org/
http://www.dav.org/
http://www.projecthope.org/
http://www.family.org/
http://www.arthritis.org/