Google checkout for non-profits = 100% of donations to non-profits

Today Google announced that until the end of 2008 donations to qualified 501c3 organizations processed through the Google checkout system (see my previous post on the Google checkout donate button) will be free. By free, they mean 0% credit card fees (Google is underwriting the credit card fees) and zero per transaction authorization fee.

This is huge news for non-profits.

How about this vendor stack for a kick ass enterprise architecture (for small non-profits with less than 10 employees):

Google Apps for Infrastructure (free)
Google Grants for search engine marketing (free)
Google Checkout for donation processing (free)
Saleforce CRM for back end donor management (free for first 10 licenses)
NING for website and social network. (less than $50 per month)

This is also exciting times for The Acceleration Agency because we are positioned to provide real-time integrations with a soon to be announced integration environment.

Official google checkout donate button

While doing my normal netvibes scanning the headlines this morning, I ran across a mashable.com post talking about YouTube's Free Channels for Non-Profits. What I found really interesting is that there is now an official "donate" button for google checkout for these channels.

Up to this point, the only way to get a donate button within the Google checkout system was to hack the generated HTML form code with your own donate button. Strictly speaking, changing the button to non-Google branded buttons goes against Google checkout policies. Checkout the one.org YouTube channel and their donate button.

I am one, are you

I am reminded how powerful one person can be. Please visit www.one.org.

Kintera Sphere + Facebook = win for charities

As many in the non-profit world know, Kintera has opened their platform up to outside partners via the Kintera Connect platform. At the same time Facebook, the current winner at the for-the-masses-social-networking platform with millions and millions of users, has recently opened their platform up to developers. Also, NING, a social networking platform allow developers full access to source code for white-label/private-label social networks (such as www.myafh.org)

Given these facts, a partner can create a Kintera connector which is a Facebook application or social networking widget that allows their constituents to leverage their social network to raise awareness and money for their causes. With the currently available connectors, Kintera has the potential to own non-profit fundraising and awareness space on Facebook and other social networking platforms such as NING.

In the final stages of development at my acceleration agency, is a Facebook and social networking fundraising widget leveraging the Kintera Connect platform. If any charity out there with software engineering resources wants know how to do this, I will be more than happy to share the architecture. For those that just want the widget/application (customized for your charity), please contact me to discuss the details.

Convio + Salesforce

During my due-diligence process for a client, I realized that one Convio's strengths is their newly created elegant content management system (CMS) and that SalesForce.com has a complete lack of an integrated CMS. (Salesforce Foundation even gave a $25k grant to Plone to integrate Plone with Salesforce.) Salesforce.com has been gaining market share in the non-profit space due to the flexibility, extensibility, and pricing (free for the first 10 users) of the Salesforce environment. Self admittedly, one of Convio's week points is their lack of a complete back-end-database-of-record system, which is a strength of Salesforce.com.

Now if Convio decided to leverage the strengths and momentum of Salesforce.com, Convio could use the coat-tails of Salesforce.com to gain even more market share and provide a complete and scalable hosted/SaaS solution for non-profits that is both elegant and scalable. I also think that a formal partnership at this level would help increase Convio's expected IPO stock price.

Brilliant, yet so simple

http://www.groovle.com/ is one of those ideas that is so simple yet some powerful. Gives the power of personal customization to the people and Groovie make a few bucks in the process.

Seth Godin talking about Web 2.0 and Social Networking with Gerhard

Here is a link to Seth's blog and this topic. For the social networking newbies, this is a good start to understanding why digital and analog social networks work. We all have social networks (not digital) which is about friendships, relationships, and shared goals/meaning/experiences. Once the shared goals/meaning/experiences is lost, you can never get it back.

Look at mySpace...it will die as fast as it grew because there are too many people to have shared goals/meaning/experiences.