I work on individual and corporate fundraising at Skateistan and manage our monthly donor program - The Citizens of Skateistan. Very happy to connect and answer any questions.
Lets keep growing the social skate scene together!
Hi Peter! We use a combination of Salesforce and Campaign Monitor platforms. Salesforce is used to track all donations and communication history with donors whereas Campaign Monitor is used for newsletter and email send outs and helps us manage different contact lists.
The benefit of Campaign Monitor is that it allows you to see open rates, click rates, bounce rates and response rates on all emails so you can determine what your donor base is most interested in.
Thanks so much for making yourself available to us.
I've heard some say that "crowdsourcing is dead" and that there is rampant "donor fatigue" in our little social skate world.
Do you agree or disagree? And would you suggest independent/ small organisations looking to fund their projects still consider crowdsourcing as an option or do you think it's best to start exploring better options?
Of course there are more social skate projects than ever and naturally these projects will be competing over a pool of money consisting of a similar donor base. It will always be better to diversify your funding away from crowdsourcing campaigns and start building your own donor lists, newsletter databases and monthly giving programs etc. That said, I still think crowdsourcing has an important role to play for new social skate projects if they are able to effectively track and store donor info and gain exposure for their project.
I see too many crowdsourcing pages focus on the specifics of the proposed skatepark e.g 'we want to raise 20k so we can build a 300m2 Skatepark in Honduras....' Whereas I think the best way to reduce donor fatigue is to switch to a narrative that offers a clear solution to an prevalent societal issue and how this facility will benefit the ones who use it as well as the wider community. This could be as simple as shifting from a focus on the costs/timeline or construction details of a skatepark to talking about a specific problem in that geographical space and the how having a Skatepark can help e.g. this space can be used to hold skate and language classes for the increasing refugee populations in the area who currently have no recreational and social opportunities.
Unfortunately I don't think such a list exists. The best thing to do would be to find funding information on websites or annual reports of other social skate projects and compile them.
There are very few skate specific donors. The Skateroom and The ROLL Models Program (that Skateistan will be running with Women Win next year) are two examples. So the key is to find broader areas of work that fit your project, for example Sport for Development donors, Girls Equality, Education donors, Youth development foundations, foundations that work in your geographic area, local government funding, etc....
Hope this helps - thank you for the question and best of luck with Kovalam!
There's a great resource that I've used in the past called Candid https://candid.org (formerly known as the Foundation Center). I've been to one of their training sessions in the past, but the real benefit is the Foundation Grant Library. This library has records of any major grants given to any non-profit... not sure the global accuracy, but there are many foundations that are US based that give internationally.
The only problem is that you either need to pay for access or visit one of their partnering libraries in person. The good thing is that they have partnering libraries all over the world.
I hope this helps at least a couple friends out there! Here's the link to find a library with access: https://candid.org/find-us
If you're not close to a library with access - hit me up. I'd be glad to do a search for you.
Thanks for sharing the link to Candid, Steve, and for the offer to do a search for people who don't have a paid membership – that's a great way that we can help each other out!
Similarly, I wanted to mention another super useful funding database called FundsforNGOs that has a free newsletter links to new funding opportunities, and then a paid membership where you can search for funders based on location, areas of work, etc. I also encourage you to follow/like their Facebook page – I've come across some good funding calls there and it's free!
And Skateistan has a premium membership with FundsforNGOs so we can also look up who might be interested to fund social skate projects in a certain location. For example below is a screenshot of a search I just did for donors that fund "Sports and Recreation" projects in India.
As CJF grows we're working more and more to get a complete, organised overview of all our supporters and donors so that we can effectively leverage the network for fundraising. To do this I've recently been researching potential CRM platforms for us, and across the board Salesforce seems to come out on top (even for NGOs), so we've signed up for the free trial of the NPSP (Nonprofit Success Pack) and I've been testing it out over the past few days.
I just read in Skateistan's annual report from 2017 that you're using this platform, and so I thought I'd reach out to you to ask some questions about Salesforce and your view on its value for a skateboarding NGO of our size. As a small skateboarding NGO, the main concern I have about Salesforce for us has to do with cost, both in terms of time and money.
While 10 subscriptions (users) for the NPSP can be attained for free (through the Power of Us programme), I am wondering whether this pack alone provides the functionalities required to make Salesforce an effective tool for a relatively small NGO, or whether it would be necessary to pay for packages such as Marketing Butt (which would allow for automated emails, personalized journeys, etc.). What are your thoughts on this? Is Skateistan only using the free NPSP or are you using additional packages as well? Considering the time costs, is the NPSP package valuable and effective as a standalone CRM front?
I've also read online that for NGOs to successfully and effectively use Salesforce it is imperative that it is configured specifically to that organisation. And that this requires either a) a monstrous amount of time to self-learn and implement; or b) that configuration be outsourced to a Salesforce professional, which would be costly. Considering we are in a position where we have not even begun to pay ourselves (and thus little extra time and money), what are your thoughts on this? Is it worthwhile for us to start using Salesforce even though we won't necessarily be able to configure it in the best of ways now when we start off?
More generally, do you have any recommendations on how we should approach the transition to a CRM platform, and how to make the most effective use of it?
Sorry for the long question. And I hope you have a great week.
Hi Troy CJF - good question! Yes, Skateistan uses Salesforce for both our CRM (fundraising) stuff and for our monitoring, evaluation and learning (ie. student database and attendance). However we have had to invest a LOT of time and resources into customizing this to work for us. We got some pro bono help along the way but it's a major commitment and may not be the best solution for a smaller NGO. I'm gonna tag in James from Skateistan's fundraising team and to give his perspective on Salesforce and cheaper alternatives for small NGOs.
Also tagging Skateistan's MEL Manager laurendellamarta since she might know about some other good CRMs or Salesforce alternatives for you to check out that are not to time/money intensive!
James got back to me via email as well. It does indeed seem like Salesforce is too much of an investment to be feasible. Would love to hear about some alternatives!
At the Tony Hawk Foundation, they use Salesforce for developmental CRM and Filemaker Pro for program management, (grants and case handling).
Like any tool, the more customized it is to your needs, the better it will function... and a lot of the work of deciding how to handle a complex set of tasks is to prioritize your needs. One of the benefits of an "off the shelf" tool is that it can keep you from expanding your custom solution into features that aren't essential. (Kind of like how looking at web templates can turn the "needs" into "what ifs" through the process of shopping.)
In my nonprofit experience I've always favored doing things internally to reduce expense. I know that this has limited my work in some ways but it has provided me with a good sense of the data I'm working with. That's just my personal preference.
A lot of mail-merges and donor communications can be managed by simple Office Suite tools, and even Google Suite has some great tools that are mostly free to use. I can't imagine doing ALL of a nonprofit's work using just these tools but I bet a scrappy crew could do most of their work this way.
Just copying some of our email here for others to see! Peter has some great insight too.
My initial thoughts are that if you aren't having any major issues tracking donations in a spreadsheet format or similar then I would hold off on diving into Salesforce. Especially as you haven't really started paying yourselves yet. We've had a lot of custom builds and add-ons to get our Salesforce where it is today (ie. automatic thank you emails & donation receipts, adding custom fields on donations and contacts, donation reporting etc.). And the truth is it still takes up a lot of my time to keep on top of while slowly improving all our integration with other donor systems.
One issue we had was that because we required many integration layers (i.e. with Paypal, Credit card payments, Xero etc) these still cause us issues today as we aren't able to easily fix problems that arise as we have to find the issues in someone else's code - and this is all with a dedicated IT manager. So there is also a danger you'll go down the wrong path and waste time. Basically it's a long road to get to a point where you'll notably save time and money and this will depend on the size of your donor base. At this stage I would say as long as you are acknowledging each donation and are able to reconcile the bank balances with your donation spreadsheets at the end of the month - that is the most important.
In the long run it is a hugely valuable tool so it would be beneficial to keep yourself familiar with the system with the free version and keep in mind for when your staff capacity increases and/or your donor base begins to outgrow your current systems.
James: What kind of software or service do you use to track and communicate with all of Skateistan's supporters?
Hi Peter! We use a combination of Salesforce and Campaign Monitor platforms. Salesforce is used to track all donations and communication history with donors whereas Campaign Monitor is used for newsletter and email send outs and helps us manage different contact lists.
The benefit of Campaign Monitor is that it allows you to see open rates, click rates, bounce rates and response rates on all emails so you can determine what your donor base is most interested in.
Hope this helps.
Hi James,
Thanks so much for making yourself available to us.
I've heard some say that "crowdsourcing is dead" and that there is rampant "donor fatigue" in our little social skate world.
Do you agree or disagree? And would you suggest independent/ small organisations looking to fund their projects still consider crowdsourcing as an option or do you think it's best to start exploring better options?
Thanks,
Shane
Hi Shane,
Thanks for the great question.
Of course there are more social skate projects than ever and naturally these projects will be competing over a pool of money consisting of a similar donor base. It will always be better to diversify your funding away from crowdsourcing campaigns and start building your own donor lists, newsletter databases and monthly giving programs etc. That said, I still think crowdsourcing has an important role to play for new social skate projects if they are able to effectively track and store donor info and gain exposure for their project.
I see too many crowdsourcing pages focus on the specifics of the proposed skatepark e.g 'we want to raise 20k so we can build a 300m2 Skatepark in Honduras....' Whereas I think the best way to reduce donor fatigue is to switch to a narrative that offers a clear solution to an prevalent societal issue and how this facility will benefit the ones who use it as well as the wider community. This could be as simple as shifting from a focus on the costs/timeline or construction details of a skatepark to talking about a specific problem in that geographical space and the how having a Skatepark can help e.g. this space can be used to hold skate and language classes for the increasing refugee populations in the area who currently have no recreational and social opportunities.
Hi James!
Is there a list available that shows all of the organisations and corporations that sponsor or fund social skateboarding projects?
If not, don’t you think that would be amazing!
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!
Hi Gaetan,
Unfortunately I don't think such a list exists. The best thing to do would be to find funding information on websites or annual reports of other social skate projects and compile them.
There are very few skate specific donors. The Skateroom and The ROLL Models Program (that Skateistan will be running with Women Win next year) are two examples. So the key is to find broader areas of work that fit your project, for example Sport for Development donors, Girls Equality, Education donors, Youth development foundations, foundations that work in your geographic area, local government funding, etc....
Hope this helps - thank you for the question and best of luck with Kovalam!
There's a great resource that I've used in the past called Candid https://candid.org (formerly known as the Foundation Center). I've been to one of their training sessions in the past, but the real benefit is the Foundation Grant Library. This library has records of any major grants given to any non-profit... not sure the global accuracy, but there are many foundations that are US based that give internationally.
The only problem is that you either need to pay for access or visit one of their partnering libraries in person. The good thing is that they have partnering libraries all over the world.
I hope this helps at least a couple friends out there! Here's the link to find a library with access: https://candid.org/find-us
If you're not close to a library with access - hit me up. I'd be glad to do a search for you.
Thanks for sharing the link to Candid, Steve, and for the offer to do a search for people who don't have a paid membership – that's a great way that we can help each other out!
Similarly, I wanted to mention another super useful funding database called FundsforNGOs that has a free newsletter links to new funding opportunities, and then a paid membership where you can search for funders based on location, areas of work, etc. I also encourage you to follow/like their Facebook page – I've come across some good funding calls there and it's free!
And Skateistan has a premium membership with FundsforNGOs so we can also look up who might be interested to fund social skate projects in a certain location. For example below is a screenshot of a search I just did for donors that fund "Sports and Recreation" projects in India.
Hi all,
Hope you're doing well!
As CJF grows we're working more and more to get a complete, organised overview of all our supporters and donors so that we can effectively leverage the network for fundraising. To do this I've recently been researching potential CRM platforms for us, and across the board Salesforce seems to come out on top (even for NGOs), so we've signed up for the free trial of the NPSP (Nonprofit Success Pack) and I've been testing it out over the past few days.
I just read in Skateistan's annual report from 2017 that you're using this platform, and so I thought I'd reach out to you to ask some questions about Salesforce and your view on its value for a skateboarding NGO of our size. As a small skateboarding NGO, the main concern I have about Salesforce for us has to do with cost, both in terms of time and money.
While 10 subscriptions (users) for the NPSP can be attained for free (through the Power of Us programme), I am wondering whether this pack alone provides the functionalities required to make Salesforce an effective tool for a relatively small NGO, or whether it would be necessary to pay for packages such as Marketing Butt (which would allow for automated emails, personalized journeys, etc.). What are your thoughts on this? Is Skateistan only using the free NPSP or are you using additional packages as well? Considering the time costs, is the NPSP package valuable and effective as a standalone CRM front?
I've also read online that for NGOs to successfully and effectively use Salesforce it is imperative that it is configured specifically to that organisation. And that this requires either a) a monstrous amount of time to self-learn and implement; or b) that configuration be outsourced to a Salesforce professional, which would be costly. Considering we are in a position where we have not even begun to pay ourselves (and thus little extra time and money), what are your thoughts on this? Is it worthwhile for us to start using Salesforce even though we won't necessarily be able to configure it in the best of ways now when we start off?
More generally, do you have any recommendations on how we should approach the transition to a CRM platform, and how to make the most effective use of it?
Sorry for the long question. And I hope you have a great week.
Kind regards,
Troy
Hi Troy CJF - good question! Yes, Skateistan uses Salesforce for both our CRM (fundraising) stuff and for our monitoring, evaluation and learning (ie. student database and attendance). However we have had to invest a LOT of time and resources into customizing this to work for us. We got some pro bono help along the way but it's a major commitment and may not be the best solution for a smaller NGO. I'm gonna tag in James from Skateistan's fundraising team and to give his perspective on Salesforce and cheaper alternatives for small NGOs.
Also tagging Skateistan's MEL Manager laurendellamarta since she might know about some other good CRMs or Salesforce alternatives for you to check out that are not to time/money intensive!
Thanks Rhianon!
James got back to me via email as well. It does indeed seem like Salesforce is too much of an investment to be feasible. Would love to hear about some alternatives!
Keep on being awesome,
Troy
At the Tony Hawk Foundation, they use Salesforce for developmental CRM and Filemaker Pro for program management, (grants and case handling).
Like any tool, the more customized it is to your needs, the better it will function... and a lot of the work of deciding how to handle a complex set of tasks is to prioritize your needs. One of the benefits of an "off the shelf" tool is that it can keep you from expanding your custom solution into features that aren't essential. (Kind of like how looking at web templates can turn the "needs" into "what ifs" through the process of shopping.)
In my nonprofit experience I've always favored doing things internally to reduce expense. I know that this has limited my work in some ways but it has provided me with a good sense of the data I'm working with. That's just my personal preference.
A lot of mail-merges and donor communications can be managed by simple Office Suite tools, and even Google Suite has some great tools that are mostly free to use. I can't imagine doing ALL of a nonprofit's work using just these tools but I bet a scrappy crew could do most of their work this way.
Hi Troy,
Just copying some of our email here for others to see! Peter has some great insight too.
My initial thoughts are that if you aren't having any major issues tracking donations in a spreadsheet format or similar then I would hold off on diving into Salesforce. Especially as you haven't really started paying yourselves yet. We've had a lot of custom builds and add-ons to get our Salesforce where it is today (ie. automatic thank you emails & donation receipts, adding custom fields on donations and contacts, donation reporting etc.). And the truth is it still takes up a lot of my time to keep on top of while slowly improving all our integration with other donor systems.
One issue we had was that because we required many integration layers (i.e. with Paypal, Credit card payments, Xero etc) these still cause us issues today as we aren't able to easily fix problems that arise as we have to find the issues in someone else's code - and this is all with a dedicated IT manager. So there is also a danger you'll go down the wrong path and waste time. Basically it's a long road to get to a point where you'll notably save time and money and this will depend on the size of your donor base. At this stage I would say as long as you are acknowledging each donation and are able to reconcile the bank balances with your donation spreadsheets at the end of the month - that is the most important.
In the long run it is a hugely valuable tool so it would be beneficial to keep yourself familiar with the system with the free version and keep in mind for when your staff capacity increases and/or your donor base begins to outgrow your current systems.
Cheers!