Christine

Mission Research Raises Series B Financing

Though I don't normally pass on 'press release' type news, I'm making an exception today. As a common shareholder and advisor to Mission Research, I'm thrilled to disclose that the company has closed on its Series B financing, led by TBL Capital. Mission Research launched as a vendor of customer relationship management software for nonprofits (GiftWorks), and is now entering the small business market with SalesWorks. Congratulations to Charlie Crystle and team!

More from their PR guys:

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Mission Research, Maker of SalesWorks CRM & GiftWorks Fundraising Software Raises $2 Million Series B Venture Investment to Help Home Office, Small Office, Boomer Markets With Customer Management and Marketing Needs

Mission-Aligned Fund TBL Capital Invests Only in Socially Responsible Companies

LANCASTER, PA - March 24, 2008 - TBL Capital has invested $2 million in Mission Research, Inc, of Lancaster, PA, to fund the software company's expansion into the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) retail software market with SalesWorks, and continue its industry-leading growth in the nonprofit sector with GiftWorks Fundraising Software. GiftWorks is the fastest growing fundraising software for nonprofits, and is known for its affordability and unique, elegant user interface, donor segmenting, easy mail merge, and inherent social networking capability. Mission Research serves most nonprofits with software for $399 while companies like Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) target large enterprises for an average cost of $40,000.

"We're thrilled TBL has invested in our success," said Charlie Crystle, Co-founder & CEO of Mission Research. "TBL shares our values of social responsibility, and shares our goal of enabling small nonprofits and businesses to do more through feature-relevant, easier to use web-enabled desktop software. While other software companies serving nonprofits are selling off, stagnating, or losing money, we are growing at unprecedented rates. TBL is helping to smooth that path as we continue to democratize fundraising software for nonprofits."

SalesWorks Standard 2.0 launches in late April into the online retail channel, and will be priced at $99. "Business people have suffered with difficult, bloated contact management for too long, and the online apps just don't perform nearly as well as the desktop. So we take a simpler approach to user interface design, presenting only features that are relevant to each customer, rather than showing everything all at the same time, which makes it easy for people to understand and use the software, which is really quite powerful, despite its easy appearance."

SalesWorks also brings together the power of the desktop with the utility of the web in the company's Hybrid Web(TM) platform, which ships as part GiftWorks and SalesWorks. "It just makes sense to keep the data safe and secure in the desktop application, but to enable customers to send mass email, or map a list of customers, or show each contact's Facebook profile if they have one. In fact, our built-in social networking in GiftWorks integrates well with the Facebook platform in prototype tests, making GiftWorks the first fundraising software to integrate seamlessly with online social networking tools."

TBL (Triple Bottom Line) Capital invests in socially responsible companies that have social impact as well as profitability. "We invest in companies that have significant social impact, and Mission Research is having tremendous impact in the nonprofit sector, enabling thousands of small nonprofits to focus more of their resources on their missions and less on technology,” said Joe Marshall, Principal at TBL. "We're particularly inspired by the company's commitment to its local community. The co-founders combined donation of 20% of founding stock to a foundation, combined with their mission to enable nonprofits to build their capacity to do good, is a model we want to see succeed. So far, they're doing a great job, and we expect that to accelerate with this investment." TBL is led by Mark Finser, Board Chair of RSF Social Finance.

The company has grown in revenue and size by almost double in the past year, and is expected to double again through the investment. "We could have moved to the West Coast," said Crystle. "But this is home, and we're happy to be a part of Lancaster's community and have impact here. It's refreshing not to have to move merely to raise money."

About Mission Research

Mission Research is a socially responsible software company focused on serving the nonprofit and small business sectors with contact, customer, and donor management software that's affordably priced and easy to learn and use. Started in 2002, the company launched GiftWorks fundraising software in 2004 and SalesWorks in 2007. The Pennsylvania company was founded by former US Senate candidate Charlie Crystle, David Weaver, and Chris Walker, the original team behind Chili!Soft, sold to Cobalt Networks in 2000; ChiliSoft is now owned by Sun Microsystems [NASDAQ:JAVA]. Mission Research company is partners with Avery Dennison, Intuit [NASDAQ:INTU], and over 400 independent consultants. Mission Research can be reached at 1-717-431-0200, or info@missionresearch.com. 

About TBL Capital

TBL Capital has developed an intentional, patient capital venture fund platform that focuses on the needs of the entrepreneur with a balanced emphasis on people, planet and profits. With $50 million under management, the firm invests in entrepreneurs who are committed to building companies with strong triple bottom line returns. We provide growth capital to help companies succeed and support entrepreneurs as they manage the many opportunities and demands of a growing business. Launched in the fall of 2007, TBL Capital focuses on a targeted range of socially beneficial sectors: consumer products, service providers, software, clean technology, green building, health and wellness, and retail.

For more information please contact:

Charlie Crystle, CEO
Mission Research
717-368-2445
717-431-0200

Top Ten Mashups for Social Change (Vote Now for Your Favorites!)

Mashups for social change? Apparently, you're not the only one that thinks this is a good idea. Last week, 122 project ideas were submitted to the annual NetSquared Mashup Challenge. This week, you (yes, you) get to choose which of these projects will get support.

Based on the contest's voting guidelines, I voted for projects that would get the most bang for the buck out of combining mashed-up data, exposing it intelligently to the public, and giving communities the opportunity to leverage that information towards change. Many projects provided interesting information, but didn't put a lever into the individual's hand. Alternatively, other projects provided great depth of participation, but not in a way that would scale to multiple communities.

Here are my picks for the top ten mashups for social change:

• OpenCongress.org :: Track Congress with Social Data. New data mashups on “My OpenCongress” will allow users to customize the stream of info they receive about their tracked items. In other words, it can be a lot easier to separate the signal from the noise on Capitol Hill-- to figure out what bills and votes are important or meaningful to you. Users will have access to a wider variety of content, more streams of helpfully-curated data about their interests, and more social wisdom from around the web.

• You Are Here. Punch in your zip code. Immediately, you find out that your water is piped in from a steadily dwindling aquifer in another state, that your garbage is being carted off to an incinerator in the the poorest part of your city. You see pictures of these places, discover their proximity on maps, see related statistics and individual comparisons about resource use and waste production. And something makes you mad--maybe the incinerator is a stonesthrow from your daughter's school. Good news: you don't have to seethe behind your computer, alone with your outrage until you get distracted by the next shiny thing on the net. With a couple of clicks, connect to organizations working on just these issues—suddenly you're linked up with a group working to create a city composting program or a water-conservation organization.

• KnowMore.org Firefox Extension - Get Alerts of Corporate Abuses When You Visit Company/Brand/Product Websites. A Firefox extension that will alert users to corporate crimes whenever they visit company and brand websites. This way, when you visit a company or brand's website that is in the KnowMore directory, the KnowMore extension will automatically display the relevant issues and ratings within your browser. For example, if you were to visit AmericanApparel.net, the statement - "This company has areas of concern around worker's rights and business ethics. Click HERE to Learn More!” would appear over the top of that website.

• MAPLight.org: Mapping Money and Politics. Anyone can create, view, and share maps of contributions from the oil industry, labor unions, or any other interest influencing government. You can compare candidates, to see who has the most local support and whose financial support comes from out-of-state. You can even display income, ethnic, and other demographic information

• City of New Orleans: A Mashup for Citizen Monitoring of the Recovery.       Think New Orleans will provide a citizen driven tool for the notification of demolitions. Not only that, it will provide an interactive map of the recovery: Permit overlay – Citizens will be able to view the pace of construction and the nature of construction with an overlay of city building permits. City demolition overlay – We wrestle with the city to get an accurate list of the houses they intend to demolish. When we do, we will add that information as an overlay to the mashup. Permit and demolition notification – Neighborhood groups are the driving force of New Orleans’ recovery. We want to provide them with a notification tool, that will allow them to get daily updates on who’s rebuilding, who’s coming back. Incentive Eligable Inventory – As further tax incentives for restoration become available, the map will outline the historic districts and map the eligible housing inventory.

• Mapping the Hunger Gap. People will use the Google Mashup to look at the data in communities relative to how much need there is for food, and how many hungry people there are. When they zoom into a city, or a census tract, they will get a picture of how many people in that area are suffering from hunger insecurity. (Sponsored by Second Harvest Food Bank.)
  

• Volunteer Now! - by mobile phone. Tap into the massive untapped capacity to do good by merging human location data with volunteer opportunity data. Spontaneously volunteer your labor or expertise by connecting to volunteer opportunities in your immediate vicinity – or to organizations that can use your expertise over the phone. A scenario: You’ve just missed your airplane and have 6 hours to kill at the Philadelphia airport. You click the “Volunteer Now!” button on your mobile phone and tell it how much time you have. You decide that it’s too much effort to go somewhere to volunteer in person, so you select an organization that needs your expert help reviewing a contract.

• CorpWatch - Government Data on Corporations. By adapting visualization software such as Prefuse into a Drupal module, a large database of unwieldy government information can be made accessible and intuitive for activists and citizens to interact with. The visualization would illustrate the relationships of who-owns-who in the global corporate landscape and shed light on the often dizzying maze of shell companies used to displace liability and avoid corporate accountability.

• Change Broadcasting Channels. CBC (Change Broadcasting Channels) allows users to select channels of social change, and receive instant news about these channels on a mobile phone through SMS or twitter. Every channel has a community of subscribers that use the community tools to promote and share big stories and events. 

• Live Climate. LiveClimate.org is a retail website that links greenhouse gas offset projects in low-income countries, with buyers who value the social and environmental co-benefits of their carbon offsets. The Live Climate retail channel directly connects the offset buyer with the project in a developing country that generated the offset. Vivid descriptions of the community, and people affected by each project and clear descriptions of the social co-benefits inform customers as they select an offset project to buy from. A mashup of maps and project information would allow customers to see where they will make an impact. Customers can get ongoing information about the projects they support through RSS feeds and continuing pictures. 

 

Here's some more info on the event from the Yahoo! Developer Network:

The polls opened this morning, and will remain open until this Friday at 5PM Pacific time. NetSquared has asked that you keep these contest objectives in mind as you're picking favorites:

• Does the Mashup use the power of community and social networks to create change?
• Is there a clear way to measure the success of the application; does this measurement directly relate to creating social impact?
• Does the application give you a sense that the project exhibits passion and commitment to work for social change?

Voters may vote for up to ten projects that they find interesting. Head over to NetSquared and vote! Come on back here to talk about your choices.

Quick Post on Philanthropy and Microlending

Brad Garland posted a question earlier this evening on how to best apply his small company's burgeoning interest in charitable works. A quick Seesmic exchange that followed touched on not only what his team had to give (some time and cash on an ongoing basis, and a one-time donation of equipment and hardware), but also what outcomes they were interested in. What change do they want to see in world? Given that change, how can they contribute towards making it? More time and effort will be going into this topic for the team, since that's a big question.

Full Circle Fund Seeks Nominations for Digital Inclusion Grants

The Bay Area's own Full Circle Fund (of which I recently became a proud member) is seeking grantee nominations for the Technology Impact Circle. The TIC is focused on "digital inclusion" and supports organizations whose work is aligned with the TIC's own theory of change. The five core tracks include:

Nonprofit Technology Conference Names Award Winners

The Antonio Pizzigati Prize

The Antonio Pizzigati Prize, awarded by the Tides Foundation, recognizes outstanding public interest computing. Specifically, the award process seeks open source software developers that help nonprofits to be more effective in their efforts for social change. The first annual winner of the prize (and its $10,000 honorarium) is George Hotelling of CitizenSpeak. (Flickr photo by kathryn.) CitizenSpeak is a free e-mail advocacy service for grassroots organizations, and is available for download as a CivicSpace module at CivicSpace Labs.

March of the PICnet Penguins

Making an encore appearance at this year's Nonprofit Technology Conference....the PICnet penguins. Lucky attendees woke up this morning to find a bouncy inflatable penguin waiting at their hotel door, with an encouraging note to bring their new friend to open source sessions. A great way to start the day!

7 Tips for Successful Social Network Campaigns

It's a well-established Web 2.0 trend that people are gathering themselves into online social networks. Mobilizing these individuals and communities into action, however, is still an emergent practice. At N-TEN's 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference, folks gathered to share best practices on how to not only effectively spread a message using social networks, but also drive people to take action. These seven tips are worth noting:

Last Call for Nonprofit Video Contest

Videos, film, animations, and mashups have emerged as effective vehicles for mobilizing individuals around social change. Participant Productions, Jeff Skoll's production company, has had a significant impact in this area by funding projects such as Syriana or An Inconvenient Truth in conjunction with social activism programs. To showcase this technique being used at a smaller scale, N-TEN and See3 are sponsoring the first-ever NTC Video Competition

2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference Seeks Innovators

The Nonprofit Technology Network's annual Nonprofit Technology Conference (I am on the steering committee) is seeking nominations for its inaugural "Innovation Plaza" highlighting best-of-breed use of technology by nonprofits. Nominated candidates must be a 501(c)(3) organization, and yes, you can nominate yourself. Selected candidates will be invited to demonstrate their application, thereby sharing best practices and earning exposure.

The NTC will be held in Washington, DC from April 4th - 6th. Folks interested in the Innovation Plaza can both get more info and apply online.

Seeking a Great Product Geek

Two companies that I'm involved with need to fill key positions ASAP. The first, Mission Research, is looking for a Software Product Manager to start immediately. (Disclosure note: As a former exec at/current advisor to Mission Research, I have a personal equity stake. So I really would like to recruit a great PM.) Here are the basics:

Call for Speakers and Sessions: The 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference

If you're a nonprofit techie, or if you're interested in helping nonprofits, please help us to shape the 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by N-TEN. (I am on the steering committee for this event.) The agenda planning process is in full swing, and we are looking for speakers and sessions.

Want to be a "Vlogger in Residence?"

The artist in residence...the writer in residence...the vlogger in residence? My old pal Freeman Murray has an interesting new creative proposition. Freeman is purchasing an eco-friendly residence in San Mateo, and creating a Video Blogger in Residency program. The basic idea:

Top 5 Best Practices for Disaster Relief

Hurricane Katrina relief veterans Grace Davis and Sara Ford were joined by tsunami aid activist Dina Mehta in discussing best practices for bloggers delivering tangible aid to communities in need. each of these speakers brought a different perspective:

How Video Blogs are Driving Social Change

Instead of a lazy Saturday slurping down chai, my weekend kicked off with a panel on political blogging and social change at Vloggercon in San Francisco.

Lessons from WineCamp

Before leaving Calaveras, the cadre of WineCampers sat down to share thoughts on the weekend:

How MoveOn and Democracy Now! Sow the Seeds of Grassroots Politics

Citizens are beginning to demand more openness and transparency from their leaders. As Dan Gillmor noted yesterday, the individuals who used to be the audience are now becoming co-producers. People are attracted to participation; they like the power of co-creation, the opportunity to do more than simply write a check. In this NetSquared dialogue, Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum asks: How can nonprofits thrive in this environment?

Citizen Journalism All-Stars Align

Journalist Michael Rogers hosted an all-star panel at NetSquared on citizen journalism and social change.

Nonprofit Revenue Strategies That Go Beyond Online Fundraising

Vince Stehl from the Surdna Foundation, which was instrumental in the creation of TechSoup, moderated this panel on nonprofit revenue strategies at NetSquared.

Communication Technologies that Support Human Rights

The ecology of human rights organizations is immensely complex. As Patrick Ball of Benetech walked through the quantity of players and social dynamics at NetSquared today, it became clear that developing technology for the human rights community is an intimidating challenge. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is a funder of Benetech.) On one end, there are local, grassroots groups with sensitive information to share. Ball had useful advice for folks trying to bridge these groups with larger efforts via technology:

Howard Rheingold on Leading Disruption

Howard Rheingold, Paul Saffo, and Lucy Bernholz spoke out on disruption at today's NetSquared conference. The conversation and Q&A toured a variety of issues, but one salient bit related to the issues of leadership that came up at this weekend's WineCamp.

Real-World Community (2.0)

The erosion of real-world community is a compelling topic. As our culture has evolved lifestyles away from the community interactions that were driven by churches, stay-at-home parents, etc., we've failed to come up with replacement connections that are pervasive, cross-generational, cross-cultural, and real-world. New community networks were discussed at this weekend’s WineCamp.

Storytelling that Drives Community Engagement

One of the recurrent themes that came up at this weekend’s WineCamp at Ferriere Vineyards (our wonderful host!) was the concept of storytelling. In particular, one arts educator wanted to explore how participatory media and collaborative storytelling could lead to community engagement.

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Originally uploaded by Raines.

E-Mail Face-Off: AOL, Goodmail, and GetActive vs. the EFF

Amidst all of the conversations on Net Neutrality, a related issue has gone unremarked: the variable pricing of e-mail communications. There are a number of solutions being tested that address  the deterioration of trust around e-mail communications. One of the more controversial is AOL's new Certified Mail system:

Ramifications of Web 2.0 for Nonprofits with Participatory Applications

Although Web 2.0 may be a dying buzzword in technorati circles, its paradigms are still new within most nonprofits. At N-TEN's 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference, traditional issues of community, advocacy, and participation were explored within the context of individual ownership and content remixing:

Nonprofits Using VoIP for Advocacy, Outreach, and Service Delivery

Folks came to this 2006 NTC session because they were interested in telephony cost savings, networking distributed organizations, and reduced operating costs. The presenters (organized by Duncan Drury of the London Advice Services Alliance) presented some great case studies and context: