Last week Blackbaud, who acquired Convio's Common Ground fundraising software product a few months ago, decided to eliminate the product altogether, leaving recent purchasers stuck with a product that will be unsupportable in 18 months. This webinar will help you recover from such an occurrence. While you may not be able to recoup your investment, we will provide tips for evaluating products at a deeper level and helping to ensure that your next acquisition will be the right one.

1. What To Do When Your Vendor
Kills Your Fundraising Software
Cheri Weissman
September 25, 2012
A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

2. Protecting and Preserving the www.cjwconsulting.com
Institutional Memories of
Nonprofits Since 1993 (866) 598-0430
info@cjwconsulting.com
A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

3. www.mission.do
A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

4. Today’s Speaker & Host
Cheri Weissman
President
CJW Consulting & Services, Inc.
Assisting with chat questions:
Jamie Maloney, Nonprofit Webinars
A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

5. Reselecting Fundraising Software
What to do when your vendor kills your
software
Presented by
8331 Central Avenue
Morton Grove, IL 60053
800/977-6377
www.cjwconsulting.com

6. Define your options
 Where are you in the process?
 Just committed and paid vendor
 Data conversion and implementation in
process
 Within three months of going live
 Live for longer than six months

7. Determine your action
 Just committed
 Switch to another product provided by vendor
 Request full refund and begin search for another
solution
 Conversion and implementation in process
 Request full refund and begin search for another
solution
 Switch to another product provided by vendor IF
vendor will waive costs of aborted conversion

8. Determine your action
 Within three months of going live
 Data conversion and training costs fully
refunded
 Live with software
 Use the sunsetting period to prepare for
another solution

9. Things to avoid
 Taking the first option offered
 Give yourself some time to consider before
jumping at another solution
 Sticking with the vendor because its
easier
 Really? The vendor that just killed your
product?
 Taking your second choice
 How distant a second was it?

10. Be Better Informed
 Release date of product
 Fundraising software takes time to develop well.
In general, don’t consider a product that’s been on
the market less than 5 years
 Number and frequency of upgrades
 With Software As A Service becoming the norm,
it’s easy for vendors to “upgrade” their software
very often. From an end user perspective, the
best case scenario is no more than 4 upgrades a
year.

11. Be Better Informed
 Ownership history
 You’re better off with a product that has
been developed by one source
 Number of users
 If a product has been around more than 5
years and has less than 200 users, you
have to wonder
 History
 Initial release date, # of upgrades, size of
staff overall, # support staff, training staff.

12. Decide to be proactive
 Talk to references
 Discuss at length things like quality of
support, ease of upgrade process,
knowledge shown by support staff, etc.
 Get names of people who switched from a
product you are considering and ask why
they chose to switch
 Vendors will be happy to give you names of
people who dumped another product for theirs

13. Starting Over
 Platform
 If you decided to go with a hosted solution
(SAAS), restart your search in that arena
 Don’t consider in-house software unless
you are unable to find an online solution
that will meet your needs
 Budget
 Do your best to find an alternative you can
afford

14. Dig Deeper
 Search for information about a possible
vendor and product.
 Google the software and actively look for
articles in which they are mentioned, news
releases, etc. that are NOT found on the
vendor’s website
 Tech Soup (www.techsoup.org) is a great
resource for information
 Find published software comparisons to
see where your next choice might fall

15. Dig Deeper
 Look for forums on vendor websites
and see what other users are saying
(pro and con) about their experience.
Unmonitored forums can provide
valuable information

16. Decide to be prepared
 What else do I need to think about?
 Staff time needed
 Who will be involved in conversion
 Training
 Where is the training
 In what format is the training
 Project timeline
 Recreation of output

17. Decide to be prepared
 Costs (known and hidden)
 Costs vary widely for products and services, so it’s
not feasible to consider this question until the
desired solution is found. Then, consider:
 Conversion
 Implementation
 Training
 Hardware
 Time
 Ongoing costs
 Support

18. Keep your options open
 Frequently when products are sold or
sunsetted, vendors will reach out to
you, sometimes offering the ability to
buy into another product at a discount.
 Consider these options carefully,
remembering that a lower price for a
product that won’t meet your needs isn’t
worth anything.

19. Questions?
 Cheri Weissman
cheri@cjwconsulting.com
866/598-0430

20. Find listings for our current season
of webinars and register at:
NonprofitWebinars.com
A Service
Of: Sponsored by: