Guest columnist: Grayson James, Petaluma Bounty
Engaging our community and cultivating meaningful relationships with our organization's friends, supporters, volunteers, donors, members, and partners is central to any nonprofit organization's success. In today's connected world, it's important to manage a wealth of information about various stakeholders, and be able to access that information instantly, from anywhere. Our organization was spending countless staff and volunteer hours each week navigating between several applications, yet several critical things couldn't efficiently be accomplished...and we weren't alone. We were using Excel, Saleforce.com, WordPress, and Google Apps and the job still wasn't getting done efficiently. On top of that, by using that many applications, errors are bound to occur. The staff at Mentor Me Petaluma shared the same frustrations. "We use Quickbooks for Nonprofits and have become 'The Land of 1,000 Spreadsheets'. Other software designers say they handle donor and volunteer information, but in our research and demos, they do not - not at the complex level of volunteer management we need for our mentoring program. NonProfitEasy does!," stated Val Richman of Mentor Me Petaluma.
In these tough economic times, non-profits are suffering just like for-profit businesses. Businesses and non-profits alike are resulting in constrained budgets and overworked staff. With these conditions, efficiency is key. Petaluma Bounty has collaborated with both IQR Consulting and Mentor Me Petaluma to develop a software system that identifies and works through the challenges non-profits face daily. Although there are other software programs that address pieces of simple organization, NonProfitEasy compiles every aspect including managing various relationships, producing work schedules, newsletters, mailings, reports and graphs. The software even provides an interactive website where people can donate as well as sign up to volunteer. Ask any non-profit and they will tell you this has potential to become a dream come true.
For more information on this new software, check out nonprofiteasy.com.