google sites :: next killer app for business

So, today The Google announced a new feature called Google Sites for their google apps platform. At first glance, it seemed like just another cool google tool. But after playing with it for a few hours, I think it will be as powerful as blogger/blogs. So, within that hour, I setup an intranet and client facing extranet with file management tools, and collaboration tools.

Just think, your company can create an area for you users, customers, constituents to interact in a Wiki manner (and for free). Here are just a few ideas: Share new product ideas, product reviews, help guides, or document support services (for those non-profits out there).

So how did Google do this? Well in 2006 it acquired the wiki company Jotspot and then integrated it into the Google apps suite of services. In the short time Jotspot was Jotspot, it had hosted more than 450,000 wikis. (no wonder Google purchased them...)

To enable site, the Google app administrators need to enable it explicitly and need to enable the Next Generation interface

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.

Non-profit 2.0 :: A reality

I have been thinking a lot about how to make the whole Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0 now) a reality for Non-profits (I call it non-profit 2.0). My technology recommendations for non profits with less than 20ish million in revenue is:

Google Apps for Non-profit enterprise email/contacts/calendars
NING for Social networking (with Joomia or Drupal CMS installed on their platform)
SalesForce CRM for a CRM (and has a very open platform for integrations. I think Kintera is a very close second if their connect platform rivals SalesForce.)

Now the question is how can we take donations online with this setup? Well, Salesforce has integrations with 3rd party (via AppExchange) credit card processors that can take money online. And, I also recommend that Google Checkout be used as a donation engine due to easy of integration and the low over head of processing/credit card fees (2%...and 0% until Jan 1, 2008).

So adding everything up, the total costs for small non profits is less than a few hundred a month. (For example,www.myafh.org is using this stack. As Athletes for Hope is using my recommended technology stack. I will report back on their success.)