5 ms·

Giveffect (YC W15) Has Built a Shopify-Meets-Salesforce for Non-Profits

58 points by Anisa_Mirza 12y ago

dublinben 12y ago
Any community organizations or non-profits in need of a CRM/Salesforce solution should check out CiviCRM. It's free as in freedom, and free as in price. No $200+ monthly fee and 1-3% commission.
- tekelsey 12y ago
  I did my PhD dissertation on open source CMS and related systems, and one of the questions was sustainability. For those that can sustain the issues with a system like CiviCRM, it might be appropriate. Alternatively, an enabler like Greenleaf could help an org -http://greenleafadvancement.com http://greenleafadvancement.com Or, a product like Giveffect might be helpful.
  - jordanlev 12y ago
    > I did my PhD dissertation on open source CMS That sounds really cool! I work with CMS's all the time and will be teaching a class on them -- is your dissertation publicly available, and/or do you have any interest in sharing or chatting about the topic? (my contact info is in my profile)
    - screature2 12y ago
      I think this is it? Sustainable multilingual communication: Managing multilingual content using free and open source content management systems by Kelsey, Todd, Ph.D., Illinois Institute of Technology, http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/906782853.html?FMT=ABS http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/906782853.html?FMT=ABS
      - tekelsey 12y ago
        Yeah that's it - thanks - there's also a Google presentation with the high points at http://tinyurl.com/gomultilingual http://tinyurl.com/gomultilingual
    - tekelsey 12y ago
      hello, feel free to reach out on linkedin - http://linkedin.com/in/tekelsey http://linkedin.com/in/tekelsey - I also wrote books on drupal and wordpress - students might enjoy dissertation though. glad to skype into a class.
  - Anisa_Mirza 12y ago
    coincidentally, our most disgruntled clients come from civiCRM. That's actually how we at Giveffect even learnt of CiviCRM (through their former nonprofit clients eager to jump on ship with our software because of product and customer support issues). ps: I'm the founder and ceo of Giveffect. Happy to answer any questions about our product.
- MWil 12y ago
  Hadn't heard of CiviCRM before. I work at a Legal Aid office and I really hate our CMS system, which I know is a bit of a different beast. Things we'd need in a CMS are 1) security 2) document management and 3) knowledge base.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Also, check out Odoo; open source CRM, CMS (with a graphical website builder and ecommerce support), HR, ERP, and more, all integrated. https://www.odoo.com/ https://www.odoo.com/ (Disclaimer: I work for a partner company; we've put Odoo on some of the largest companies in our country)
  - eltondegeneres 12y ago
    I'm not very familiar with Odoo, but I think what sets CiviCRM apart is that it only targets nonprofits/community groups. Nonprofits have different uses for CRMs, like accepting donations and managing membership, and don't work with leads that much.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Odoo can manage memberships [1]. There are also community modules for managing donations (such as [2]), though they may not fit all use cases. By the way, both Alpinter and the WWF use Odoo: https://www.odoo.com/blog/customer-reviews-6/post/how-alpinter-provides-humanitarian-help-with-odoo-213 https://www.odoo.com/blog/customer-reviews-6/post/how-alpint... https://www.odoo.com/blog/customer-reviews-6/post/how-many-eucalyptus-trees-wwf-helped-to-grow-with-odoo-188 https://www.odoo.com/blog/customer-reviews-6/post/how-many-e... [1] https://apps.openerp.com/apps/modules/8.0/membership/ https://apps.openerp.com/apps/modules/8.0/membership/ [2] https://apps.openerp.com/apps/modules/8.0/donation_recurring/ https://apps.openerp.com/apps/modules/8.0/donation_recurring...
- jim_greco 12y ago
  A lot of software is free. Hopefully though your overriding decision for the best software to use for the job is based on the value you get out of it and not the absolute lowest cost.
tekelsey 12y ago
Anything that helps non-profits run better so they can focus on their mission is a good thing. Best wishes.
- Anisa_Mirza 12y ago
  thanks!
pfooti 12y ago
I work for a nonprofit, and this looks interesting. However we do already get Salesforce at a ridiculous discount, as salesforce has a great nonprofit pricing scheme. That said, the real price of salesforce is in hiring people to write apex code or whatever else you need. Or worse, me having to write apex code myself.
- Anisa_Mirza 12y ago
  hey there, would be happy to chat and show you a bit more of our solution. One thing to clarify: our solution isn't just the back-end CRM, it is also front-end fundraising (like crowdfunding, ticket sales, marathons, galas etc) as well as volunteer admin. The part clients love most about our system is that the CRM is automated - meaning all the donor data is automatically collected and imported into their CRM powered by us. I started my journey in the nonprofit space as a Dev Director before starting Giveffect. The inspiration behind GE was to create turn-key, streamlined software for nonprofits, with a true understanding of the sector's needs.
OmarIsmail 12y ago
Congrats Anisa!
dalerus 12y ago
I run an agency that works exclusively with NGOs (marketing, design, development). This is an interesting solution, but I am curious about if you offer an API? The link in the site footer doesn't go anywhere. The problem I see, is that all-in-one solutions do a lot of things but are really masters of none. Does the CRM allow integration from the NGOs website automatically? Does your email marketing support list segmentations? Is PayPal the only payment option? Most NGOs have long standing contracts with merchant service accounts. I like the idea, but I am not sure I could recommend it to our clients based on the information from your website. Lots of potential for this type of system. Right now we usually setup clients on Salesforce, super great discounts for nonprofits, and lots of out of the box integration already available.
- allanshin 12y ago
  We've designed and built the system from the ground up, specifically to meet the nonprofit's needs. It's different from giving them a generic CRM and having them retrofit their data into something that may or may not track the fields that they're interested in. With the various fundraising campaigns, funds, events, donations, receipts, volunteering, etc, we're obsessed with making sure that the user experience is easy and intuitive to make sense of it all. Our reports and graphs go a long way in this regard.
- kevinshinobi 12y ago
  Hey there, I'm one of the technical cofounders of Giveffect. Good questions! The reason why our clients are choosing the "all-in-one" solution is because they are fed up with disjointed systems. Why shouldn't their fundraising pages on the frontend automatically talk to their CRM on the backend? Our solution is integrated in the "NGO's website automatically" as we are a complete white labelled solution powering the entire fundraising/crowdfunding/campaign-style experience on their own website. The email marketing solution is something we're still building out, and while still in the early stages we have integrated with some cool patent-pending technology that provides deep insights and analytics. We can gather data such as which subscribers have read the email, how many times, duration spent reading the content, on which device, location opened, whether or not they clicked through any links, and furthermore converted. All of this feeds back to our integrated CRM to further segment high value, highly engaged contacts. Currently we use PayPal as our payment gateway because they were the only ones to offer a low NGO rate for our clients. Plus they have a long standing trust with nonprofits and donors, and most NGO's already have a PayPal account with many using it as their donate button, making it an obvious choice.
levlandau 12y ago
This feels like its solving a real problem that the founders understand. Great work all around. Minor nitpick: I see why "Shopify" was chosen in the tagline but I think its more confusing than helpful at first glance. After reading up, one gets it but a tagline should work before reading the article. Teespring/Kickstarter/Indiegogo seem closer and have the added benefit of being related to what one might associate with a nonprofit i.e. fundraising. What do you think?
- kevinshinobi 12y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I can see how this can be confusing if you browsed the Giveffect marketplace first. The reason we chose to use the Shopify analogy is because we power the nonprofit's frontend fundraising experience, much like an online storefront does for ecommerce. An example of this is http://donate.campwinston.com http://donate.campwinston.com which is powered by Giveffect. The Giveffect marketplace is the aggregator/hub whereby any client licensing our software can push their fundraising campaigns for discovery. This is just an added extension of the solution to provide clients with a venue for campaign marketing and donor acquisition.
  - levlandau 12y ago
    "we power the nonprofit's frontend fundraising experience" This is it right here...as well as the custom domain So "Shopify for nonprofit fundraising", while limiting, would have been completely clear. But "Shopify meets Salesforce"...now that's confusing :) Trust me I know how hard it is to come up with these so definitely not trying to be negative. If your customers get "Shopify meets Salesforce" without further explanation then it's probably just me being slow :)
    - Anisa_Mirza 12y ago
      but here's the thing, we also 'power the backend with full admin and CRM features for online/offline giving" - hence the salesforce reference (not my choice comparison btw). So, 'Shopify for nonprofit fundraising' has our clients immediately reacting, "oh, so there's no data management system?". To be clear, we NEVER describe GE as either when speaking to a client (we simply say fundraising,, volunteer and donor management software). So, given this, I'm curious to ask - how would you tagline us?

58 points by Anisa_Mirza 12y ago

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

tekelsey 12y ago
I did my PhD dissertation on open source CMS and related systems, and one of the questions was sustainability. For those that can sustain the issues with a system like CiviCRM, it might be appropriate. Alternatively, an enabler like Greenleaf could help an org -http://greenleafadvancement.com http://greenleafadvancement.com Or, a product like Giveffect might be helpful.
- jordanlev 12y ago
  > I did my PhD dissertation on open source CMS That sounds really cool! I work with CMS's all the time and will be teaching a class on them -- is your dissertation publicly available, and/or do you have any interest in sharing or chatting about the topic? (my contact info is in my profile)
  - screature2 12y ago
    I think this is it? Sustainable multilingual communication: Managing multilingual content using free and open source content management systems by Kelsey, Todd, Ph.D., Illinois Institute of Technology, http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/906782853.html?FMT=ABS http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/906782853.html?FMT=ABS
    - tekelsey 12y ago
      Yeah that's it - thanks - there's also a Google presentation with the high points at http://tinyurl.com/gomultilingual http://tinyurl.com/gomultilingual
  - tekelsey 12y ago
    hello, feel free to reach out on linkedin - http://linkedin.com/in/tekelsey http://linkedin.com/in/tekelsey - I also wrote books on drupal and wordpress - students might enjoy dissertation though. glad to skype into a class.
- Anisa_Mirza 12y ago
  coincidentally, our most disgruntled clients come from civiCRM. That's actually how we at Giveffect even learnt of CiviCRM (through their former nonprofit clients eager to jump on ship with our software because of product and customer support issues). ps: I'm the founder and ceo of Giveffect. Happy to answer any questions about our product.
MWil 12y ago
Hadn't heard of CiviCRM before. I work at a Legal Aid office and I really hate our CMS system, which I know is a bit of a different beast. Things we'd need in a CMS are 1) security 2) document management and 3) knowledge base.
icebraining 12y ago
Also, check out Odoo; open source CRM, CMS (with a graphical website builder and ecommerce support), HR, ERP, and more, all integrated. https://www.odoo.com/ https://www.odoo.com/ (Disclaimer: I work for a partner company; we've put Odoo on some of the largest companies in our country)
- eltondegeneres 12y ago
  I'm not very familiar with Odoo, but I think what sets CiviCRM apart is that it only targets nonprofits/community groups. Nonprofits have different uses for CRMs, like accepting donations and managing membership, and don't work with leads that much.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Odoo can manage memberships [1]. There are also community modules for managing donations (such as [2]), though they may not fit all use cases. By the way, both Alpinter and the WWF use Odoo: https://www.odoo.com/blog/customer-reviews-6/post/how-alpinter-provides-humanitarian-help-with-odoo-213 https://www.odoo.com/blog/customer-reviews-6/post/how-alpint... https://www.odoo.com/blog/customer-reviews-6/post/how-many-eucalyptus-trees-wwf-helped-to-grow-with-odoo-188 https://www.odoo.com/blog/customer-reviews-6/post/how-many-e... [1] https://apps.openerp.com/apps/modules/8.0/membership/ https://apps.openerp.com/apps/modules/8.0/membership/ [2] https://apps.openerp.com/apps/modules/8.0/donation_recurring/ https://apps.openerp.com/apps/modules/8.0/donation_recurring...
jim_greco 12y ago
A lot of software is free. Hopefully though your overriding decision for the best software to use for the job is based on the value you get out of it and not the absolute lowest cost.

tekelsey 12y ago

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

Anisa_Mirza 12y ago
thanks!

pfooti 12y ago

I work for a nonprofit, and this looks interesting. However we do already get Salesforce at a ridiculous discount, as salesforce has a great nonprofit pricing scheme. That said, the real price of salesforce is in hiring people to write apex code or whatever else you need. Or worse, me having to write apex code myself.

Anisa_Mirza 12y ago
hey there, would be happy to chat and show you a bit more of our solution. One thing to clarify: our solution isn't just the back-end CRM, it is also front-end fundraising (like crowdfunding, ticket sales, marathons, galas etc) as well as volunteer admin. The part clients love most about our system is that the CRM is automated - meaning all the donor data is automatically collected and imported into their CRM powered by us. I started my journey in the nonprofit space as a Dev Director before starting Giveffect. The inspiration behind GE was to create turn-key, streamlined software for nonprofits, with a true understanding of the sector's needs.

OmarIsmail 12y ago

Congrats Anisa!

dalerus 12y ago

I run an agency that works exclusively with NGOs (marketing, design, development). This is an interesting solution, but I am curious about if you offer an API? The link in the site footer doesn't go anywhere. The problem I see, is that all-in-one solutions do a lot of things but are really masters of none. Does the CRM allow integration from the NGOs website automatically? Does your email marketing support list segmentations? Is PayPal the only payment option? Most NGOs have long standing contracts with merchant service accounts. I like the idea, but I am not sure I could recommend it to our clients based on the information from your website. Lots of potential for this type of system. Right now we usually setup clients on Salesforce, super great discounts for nonprofits, and lots of out of the box integration already available.

allanshin 12y ago
We've designed and built the system from the ground up, specifically to meet the nonprofit's needs. It's different from giving them a generic CRM and having them retrofit their data into something that may or may not track the fields that they're interested in. With the various fundraising campaigns, funds, events, donations, receipts, volunteering, etc, we're obsessed with making sure that the user experience is easy and intuitive to make sense of it all. Our reports and graphs go a long way in this regard.
kevinshinobi 12y ago
Hey there, I'm one of the technical cofounders of Giveffect. Good questions! The reason why our clients are choosing the "all-in-one" solution is because they are fed up with disjointed systems. Why shouldn't their fundraising pages on the frontend automatically talk to their CRM on the backend? Our solution is integrated in the "NGO's website automatically" as we are a complete white labelled solution powering the entire fundraising/crowdfunding/campaign-style experience on their own website. The email marketing solution is something we're still building out, and while still in the early stages we have integrated with some cool patent-pending technology that provides deep insights and analytics. We can gather data such as which subscribers have read the email, how many times, duration spent reading the content, on which device, location opened, whether or not they clicked through any links, and furthermore converted. All of this feeds back to our integrated CRM to further segment high value, highly engaged contacts. Currently we use PayPal as our payment gateway because they were the only ones to offer a low NGO rate for our clients. Plus they have a long standing trust with nonprofits and donors, and most NGO's already have a PayPal account with many using it as their donate button, making it an obvious choice.

levlandau 12y ago

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

kevinshinobi 12y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I can see how this can be confusing if you browsed the Giveffect marketplace first. The reason we chose to use the Shopify analogy is because we power the nonprofit's frontend fundraising experience, much like an online storefront does for ecommerce. An example of this is http://donate.campwinston.com http://donate.campwinston.com which is powered by Giveffect. The Giveffect marketplace is the aggregator/hub whereby any client licensing our software can push their fundraising campaigns for discovery. This is just an added extension of the solution to provide clients with a venue for campaign marketing and donor acquisition.
- levlandau 12y ago
  "we power the nonprofit's frontend fundraising experience" This is it right here...as well as the custom domain So "Shopify for nonprofit fundraising", while limiting, would have been completely clear. But "Shopify meets Salesforce"...now that's confusing :) Trust me I know how hard it is to come up with these so definitely not trying to be negative. If your customers get "Shopify meets Salesforce" without further explanation then it's probably just me being slow :)
  - Anisa_Mirza 12y ago
    but here's the thing, we also 'power the backend with full admin and CRM features for online/offline giving" - hence the salesforce reference (not my choice comparison btw). So, 'Shopify for nonprofit fundraising' has our clients immediately reacting, "oh, so there's no data management system?". To be clear, we NEVER describe GE as either when speaking to a client (we simply say fundraising,, volunteer and donor management software). So, given this, I'm curious to ask - how would you tagline us?