What exactly do you mean by “Open”?

While some words and terms have multiple meanings, that is not the case with “open software.” So it’s very troubling to see the scores of nonprofit CRM software vendors who, in recent months, have been parading around the term “open” to describe their respective products, with each company using its own definition.

While it’s encouraging that the open software movement is forcing vendors to adopt this posture, there’s simply too much creative marketing spin with little substance. The result is a lot of messaging clutter and – no surprise – confusion about what open means, why it matters and what a nonprofit should do vis a vis its CRM solution.

To try to help nonprofits sort through the clutter, I recently wrote an article (it was featured on NTEN’s Blog, on Fundraising Success and PNN Online) on the three levels of “openness” currently available for nonprofit’s for CRM. Not all solutions touted as “open” are equal in their functionality and benefits for nonprofits. In fact, some definitions of “open” are complete misnomers.

For example, Blackbaud has been talking a lot recently about their new “open” initiatives. They point to new user forums, podcasts, blogs and “sample code” for downloading as evidence of being “open.”

I enthusiastically applaud Blackbaud for finally beginning to try to listen to customers. Engaging in a dialogue with customers can only help Blackbaud – really any firm – become a better company. (It is something we at MPower learned that we cannot live without over the last seven years and I suspect that Blackbaud will wonder why they didn’t do it earlier.)

But, while forums, podcasts, demo sites, etc. are excellent communication tactics and a smart use of the Internet, including social media — they are not features of open software. The reality is that this vendor’s products and services still remain a “walled fortress”, lacking integration, access or collaboration outside of the company with the very community of nonprofit users it serves.

For any company serving nonprofits, an authentic move towards being “open” would involve:

• Eliminating large, up front and version upgrade license fees. If we really believe organizations should be able to ‘try’ before they buy, then we should do away with license fees that cause vendor lock-in. An organization may quickly discover, once they are using a product and not being shown a ‘demo’ that it does not meet their needs. However, when a vendor has extracted huge fees up front, a nonprofit feels held hostage. That is good from the vendor’s point of view, but not for the charitable group.

• Openning up its source code so users truly own the code in which they’ve invested. Open source makes sense for all non-profits, whether or not they ever read or develop a line of code. This is fundamental for transparency, vendor accountability, and innovation and, at the end of the day, makes the product better for everyone. It ends the idea that a software vendor knows more about your mission and needs than you do. And, it allows you to reap the benefits of incorporating other nonprofits’ innovations into your software.

• Freely giving away application programming interfaces (APIs) for all products to allow innovation and creative problem solving by nonprofits and the entire marketplace. This is empowering nonprofits and a true sign of “openness”.

• Creating a partner and product ecosystem to provide services. Now customers are not restricted to using only that vendor’s services or products. Choice is power for nonprofits, so vendors should integrate with other products (like accounting packages, Web applications, etc.). Currently, nonprofits and potential partners have to blindly brute force many systems with little or no support from their vendor. Coercing customers into all-in-one software and services solutions meets the vendor’s needs, but not those of nonprofits.

So, let’s applaud the moves by all vendors to embrace an open posture. But let’s also demand that if they are going to call themselves “open,” they eschew the marketing spin and truly live up to that promise in their products and services.

MPower on SourceForge

Your donors, your data…and, finally, your CRM platform

One week ago, MPower’s full feature CRM and fundraising solution was accepted and launched on SourceForge, the world’s largest online development and download repository of open source software code and applications. Now anyone in the world can download and modify MPower. If you are not technical, that may not seem like a big deal. However, it is a very important step in helping to drive adoption of the unique and powerful platform we provide to the nonprofit community. Let me explain, in laymen’s terms, what this means.

Historically, and with all other mature CRM and fundraising software currently available to nonprofits, you have no control to change, expand, modify or customize the software. Your only options for making changes to any software from the many vendors in our space have been:

• Lobby, beg, cry, threaten. You submit a “feature request” or something similar to the company and hope that a.) Enough other organizations are clamoring for the same feature (You would need at least 10 and sometimes hundreds of groups to also ask for this same feature to have a prayer) or b.) Your organization is high-profile enough that the vendor had to keep you happy (Unless you are the American Cancer Society, American Red Cross, or the like, good luck).

• Pay for a customization. Nothing gets a vendor moving quickly like thousands and thousands of dollars on the table. However, even then, software companies dislike doing customizations because of the inefficiencies and challenges in maintaining those customizations across upgrades and new release cycles. Because software companies do not like them, the costs of customizations are intentionally set prohibitively high. So, if you were ready to spend $10,000 to get what you want, then you might have a chance.

• Build externally and integrate – Assuming your software has a decent open application programming interface (API) with good documentation that allows access to the right data and applications in the software product (and this is still frighteningly rare), you could build what you need externally and attempt to integrate with your other mission-critical applications. This can work well, sometimes. But, anyone who has been through any type of integration process knows how time consuming and painful it can be. You also know that if you change anything, on either side of the integration, it has a bad habit of breaking.

True open source software provides another way. Since March, we have made MPower available as a free download (no license fees). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Now if you want to add a feature or customization or just create a specialized application for your CRM system, you can do it directly. No begging, threatening, paying or unwieldy integration. The source code is yours. Just as you own your donors and decide when and how to build relationships with them, you can now truly own and manage your software to meet your organization’s unique needs. Rather than being reliant on the mercy of a vendor to choose what tools and functionality you get … you choose.

I have gotten a lot of questions recently about why we decided to go open source with our full feature software. There are two reasons:

1. We continually hear from nonprofit marketing, fundraising, development and IT professionals that they want control over how they operate and that includes control over their technology;
   
2. MPower as a company believes providing that control – which really is freedom to fundraise – is the right thing to do for the nonprofit community which should have the same powerful technology as the for-profit sector where open source solutions are widely used.

Now with powerful open source CRM readily available to nonprofits it no longer matters if we listen to our customers or not\ because they are not beholden to us. Don’t like a certain screen or the workflow of a certain module? You can change it, improve upon it and share it. Frustrated because some simple functionality you think should be included is not in the software? Write it, launch it, share it. No software company should be deciding what is best for you. Instead, why not provide the most robust, powerful platform possible , and give you full power and access to modify and integrate with the tools you need? To me, that is an exciting, market changing proposition. Instead of spending your time wrestling with your software and your vendor, we give you the freedom to fundraise the way you need to do it to help more people and effect change in the community you serve.