And because of this, it makes sense that integration of these two is something that is a need to be filled. First, the what - what to integrate? There are four strategies that can be used for this integration: The old fashioned form of integration. If there are two acronyms that are at the center of nonprofit communications, it’s these two, CRM (Constituent Relationship Management - and I’m making this broad enough to include fundraising) and CMS (Content Management System). What’s involved in this?

CiviCRM originally only integrated with Drupal, but recently a lot of work has been done to also integrate CiviCRM with Joomla. This means that since the code sits in the same exact place,  and the databases could even be shared (or not, it’s your choice) in effect, CiviCRM is becoming part of your CMS. You install CiviCRM inside your CMS installation directory, and the CMS and CiviCRM talk to each other through PHP APIs (or “hooks”) CiviCRM was the first nonprofit-focused open source CRM (one of only two, at this moment.) It is a great tool for small to

As we move towards the critical donation season during the holidays in a recession, now more than ever it’s necessary to integrate social media into the larger communications mix . But, you can intelligently use advertising principles with calls to action and pull people through to make a donation, purchase cause-related goods online, opt-in to an email list, attend an event, or tell their friends about an effort (more email addresses for your database). How do you turn an organic conversation into something more, perhaps a donation or an action? Many organizations experiment

Most database tools have features that do not work well, that I just wish they would have not included at all. Our food has too much sugar and refined flour, our economy has too much credit, and our databases have too many features - all of which can lead to serious systemic problems. In a follow up to my post last year covering Really Simple Databases , here are a few simple online donor management tools to consider. I like tools that just work, even when they do not necessarily do everything I could hope for. DonorTools : A relatively new donor management service

In addition to Winter ‘10 from the mother ship , a lot of good stuff has been happening this Fall in our little ‘ole Salesforce database. Formspring introduced Salesforce integration Box.net introduced Salesforce integration Best of all: we haven’t had to spend an additional penny for any of it, since it’s all about tools we were already using . To me, this is what the cloud is all about.

Today we’re pleased to announce both Twitter and Facebook integration into the Mobile Commons platform! To integrate with Twitter, click the ‘Setup’ tab in your Mobile Commons account and enter your Twitter login information. Facebook integration really is incredible and deserves it’s own blog post which is coming soon. Our goal at Mobile Commons has always been to provide our customers with the best tools to run the most successful mobile campaigns. Twitter has had phenomenal growth over the past year and organizations have been very quick to

It's a hard thing to ignore, for numerous reasons: It's an instant, interactive content, document and data management interface out of the box, with strong interactive capabilities and hooks to integrate other databases. As I said a year or two ago in an article on document management systems , it has virtually all of the functionality that the expensive, commercial products do, and they aren't full-fledged portals and Intranet sites as well. Sharepoint 2007 (aka MOSS) is not free, but I can pick it up via Techsoup for a song. It integrates with Microsoft Exchange and Office

The power of the API lies in the ability to connect databases and applications to provide a 360-degree view of your constituents; this is something that can only be achieved when all of your systems (and other applications that contain valuable information) are talking in real time, versus collecting and transferring data after the fact. Your principal database – what you might call your “database of record” – also needs to reach out in real time into the systems in which your constituents interact and network. When I have the pleasure of talking with leaders in nonprofit organizations, two things come up again and again as critical to building a sustainable future: the need to achieve a broader and better view of their constituents; and the need to reach them in new and more meaningful ways.

Today we’re pleased to announce both Twitter and Facebook integration into the Mobile Commons platform! To integrate with Twitter, click the ‘Setup’ tab in your Mobile Commons account and enter your Twitter login information. Facebook integration really is incredible and deserves it’s own blog post which is coming soon. Our goal at Mobile Commons has always been to provide our customers with the best tools to run the most successful mobile campaigns. Twitter has had phenomenal growth over the past year and organizations have been very quick to

Today we’re pleased to announce both Twitter and Facebook integration into the Mobile Commons platform! To integrate with Twitter, click the ‘Setup’ tab in your Mobile Commons account and enter your Twitter login information. Facebook integration really is incredible and deserves it’s own blog post which is coming soon. Our goal at Mobile Commons has always been to provide our customers with the best tools to run the most successful mobile campaigns. Twitter has had phenomenal growth over the past year and organizations have been very quick to