Technology Blog

EPIC Giving Inspire

Don Kern — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

Remember the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge? That social media campaign started small but quickly went viral reaching an estimated 17 million people. This is just one example of the power of social media. Social media has become a popular and important platform and is still growing. It can help spread your story, build a community and drive traffic to your website. But, it can also be a very time consuming effort to get your story out in public view. With the power of nKind at your fingertips, you can create messages and publish them to your website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, move through a podcast or even send as an email to a mailing list allowing you to connect to anyone through multiple channels. Hashtags can be assigned to your messages as a reference giving future and current donors the ability to comment on your message keeping them connected and engaged through your website or their favorite social media platform. And that's not all. You can link promotional products within your message to direct anyone to your website and entice them donate to your cause once you have their attention and inspired them with your message. You can even assign campaign codes allowing you to track where your future donors are coming from. All of this is possible because nKind is also a donor-centric website offering donations, promotional products, and merchandise with a fully secure checkout process. nKind also supports creation of events with easy to use registration forms that allows any volunteer within the community that you have built to assist you in your cause. Sounds easy, right? Well, that's because with nKind, it is.

EPIC Giving Evaluate

Erik Beach — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

Where does your organization need to focus its limited resources? When is your website's busiest time of day? Day of the week? Do more people visit the site from their phones, or from their desktop computers? Analytics can give us the answers to these questions and more. Website analytics is the collection, reporting, and analysis of website traffic. Analytics can tell us how people are using your website, like showing which blog post is the most popular, or if that new outreach copy you worked so hard on is attracting attention. Analytics can also be used to see where in the giving process users might be exiting your site, giving you the vital information you need to convert visitors into donors. nKind's evaluate philosophy goes beyond just website analytics. With our intelligent dashboards and reporting tools, you can see the state of your organization at a glance. How many users signed up last night? Is that Facebook post I made getting clicks back to the new landing page? Create unlimited targeted campaigns to see if your users respond better to targeted emails or even a QR code printed on a flyer. It may sound complicated at first, but nKind was built from the ground up with analytics in mind. As part of your individual onboarding process, our team will provide you with the skills to use our simple but powerful tools. Stop guessing and start EVALUATING your organization with nKind today!

EPIC Giving Protect

Eric Cockrell — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

Protect just might be the most important part of EPIC Giving. The hottest topic these days is data security. It seems almost weekly someone, somewhere is announcing a data breach. Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and credit card information is being sold hourly on the dark web. Selling stolen information is big business (Here's How Much Your Personal Data Costs on the Dark Web and Here's How Much Your Personal Information Is Selling For on the Dark Web). Thieves use this information to steal identities and money from people like you and me everyday. They don't care that you've spent your entire life protecting your credit score or saving for your retirement or your children's education. You've also spent years building trust with your donors, clients, or simply your web site visitors. The last thing you want to do is tell your donors their information has been stolen. Using the wrong platform can literal destroy your church, ministry, or nonprofit (60% of Small Companies That Suffer a Cyber Attack Are Out of Business Within Six Months, Five Consequences of an Information Security Breach). While no system connected to the internet will ever be 100% secure, it is of the utmost importance to use the most secure platform available. Data security is paramount to your mission (Bad Outsourcing Decisions Cause 63% of Data Breaches). If you are currently using or are considering WordPress, run. Run far, run fast! Check out this quote from WP WhiteSecurity (70 Percent of WordPress Installations Are Vulnerable to Hackers) about the top 1 million web sites. According to statistics From 40,000+ WordPress Websites in Alexa Top 1 Million, more than 70% of WordPress installations are vulnerable to hacker attacks. Don't be another data breach victim. Don't use WordPress. Use nKind. Your web site will be setup in it's very own virtual server. We use Microsoft's cloud platform, Azure, which also means we scale the power up for big events. Why is your web site hosted in it's own server? Because web sites on shared servers are vulnerable to attack from the other web sites on that server. On a shared server your web site could be hacked because another site has lax security, a backdoor, poor passwords, or various other security risks. In this environment, your data is yours. It's not ours, it's yours. You have complete control over the privacy of your data. We give you the tools to safely manage that data correctly. Using nKind, your site will be fully PCI compliant. No credit card information is ever stored in your data. It is immediately and securely transmitted to your payment processor. It's safe, secure, and fast. At nKind we take your data security seriously.

EPIC Giving Connect

Douglas Naufel — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

In today's interconnected world of data, technology doesn't stop evolving. Often the software you use simply cannot keep up with the changes. Your business cannot afford to spend time and resources on trying to stay current with technology trends just so that you can get your message out and analytic data in. At nKind, we understand that having your data when and where you need it is critical to staying on top. There are six keys to how nKind helps make sure your website works for you and not the other way around. First, how software is built can determine its future ability to connect and adapt. nKind is built from the ground up with integration in mind. An example would be swapping to a different CRM, email marketing service, or accounting system and still have your website, mobile app and other services continue to work in real-time. That means regardless of whether you use QuickBooks Online, Dynamics AX, or another accounting system, nKind can still push detailed information about donations, orders, and donors for things like year end processes and FMV calculations. Another example might be automating content through a new social platform that is becoming popular. With some services, this requires a great deal of time and effort, but with nKind, creating you integrations is fast and easy. Another aspect of nKind's integration is that it is bi-directional. This means that it can act as a provider as well as a consumer of data and content. There is no need to enter a message, event, or promotion in to your website, update your mobile app, then login and create an email blast about it, and then update each of your social networks. You also do not have to then check in each service or other analytic systems to see how many people are hitting your links and coming to your website. You can see the important data such as new names and donations directly in your nKind dashboard while seeing exactly where they came from. If you see that you got 250 new users from the instagram post nKind made for you in the morning and 10 from twitter, you know you need to evaluate the results to be more effective. nKind integrated websites also provide feeds compatible with today's consumption devices and services. When you enter content in to your website, it is always available as RSS. This can be used for messages, events, and promotions. When that content includes audio or video files, those can immediately drive podcasts, Roku channels, mobile apps, live web events and more. Your media content work with nKind content no matter where it is stored, including services like Vimeo, YouTube, Haivision, and Amazon.

Deep Dive on Messages

Zach La Lond — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

The most important part of interacting with your target audience is getting your message into their hands. nKind provides the ability to get your message out to a number of platforms, with the technology to identify what's working best for your needs. When creating a message, we at nKind encourage you to think of them as more than a blog or a social media post - a message can be anything you want it to be. For example, a church can create a daily devotional that's published on a daily basis. This devotional can be anything from a couple lines of text to a fully featured piece of content with images, videos, and links. Then that devotional can be published to your website, sent out via an email blast, or shared to one of the social media integrations we provide such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. A message can also be a call to action (CTA) on your website. On our information page, we're using messages to hold the detailed descriptions for our EPIC Giving, nKind Features, and Back Stage information blocks. The only limit to our messaging is your imagination! Publishing Your Messages Once a message is created inside nKind, you're presented with a number of potential options regarding what to do with this message. It can be published immediately, or set up to be published at a future date. It can be emailed out via our email provider integration, or just posted to the website. It can also be shared to one or more of your integrated social media platforms. nKind gives you all the tools you need to be able to get your message out to your consumers. Is My Messaging Working? You've sent out a link to your latest message via a tweet, a post on Facebook, and an email blast. How can you tell which one is getting the most engagement? nKind uses campaigns and channels to group your messages by content and platform. For example, there's a campaign geared around an October promotion, so every message you share that's tied to that is tracked under that campaign. Then we use channels to categorize the platform it's shared to (like Twitter). Using this technology, nKind can help you identify which messages are working and help you improve your customer engagement. Tracking Messages Internally As your organization grows, it's likely that the amount of content you're creating will grow as well. nKind provides a "tag" system so that you can put tags on your messages to easily group, display, and search your messages. For example, all the daily devotionals could have tag of "devotional" that you can use to only see those devotionals. In correlation with the tag, the campaign tracking mentioned earlier can help you quickly identify relevant messages. Once identified, you can view engagement, make updates, or delete the messages as required. Messaging is arguably the most important part of your brand's identity. With nKind, you can compose custom messages of almost any format and quickly get them into your consumer's hands, giving you the power to grow.

Deep Dive on Donor-Centric Commerce

Jeremy Lakey — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

Closing the loop on identifying your donors interests and what motivates them to donate. Knowing where your donor base is coming from is possibly the most important thing to knowing how to communicate with them and keep them coming back to support you and your mission. Do your donors respond better to your twitter campaign, instagram images, or facebook posts? nKind identifies the channel by which your users arrive at your site to create and account and also which channel causes them to place a donation. Identifying which channels your donors arrive at your site and ultimately decide to donate to your cause will allow you to increase your exposure in those areas and correspondingly increase your donation revenues. Donation for variable amounts as well as suggested amounts, tailored to the donor. The use of a highlighted default suggested value leverages a marketing technique called anchoring. This relies on the brain’s tendency to heavily rely on the first piece of information (such as price) offered when making decisions. In the case of donations, it will cause people to tend to give closer to the anchored value than they otherwise might have. It is important to understand that it can work in both directions, though. Small gifts might come up in average value, but you’ll want to watch to see if your larger donations also tend to move down towards the anchor. Anchor too high and your average online donation might come up, but the number of donations might begin dropping off costing you money in the end. Anchor too low and you might get more donations, but see a drop in average value. Of equal importance to the suggested amounts is allowing your constituent to donate an amount of their choosing. We have seen that donors typically will give five to ten times more than the suggested minimum donation if the option is given. Fair-Market-Value (FMV) and its implications for End-Of-Year (EOY) Tax Statements. At the end of the year, most non-profits are required to send tax statements to their donors to file with their income tax statements (and most donors would really like to receive them). Any FMV must be deducted from these amounts however for promotional items received as a result of this donation. nKind tracks those promotional items on orders and will prepare a summary report of the actual deductible amount for your constituents donations in a given year to help you prepare those tax statements accurately, quickly, and with ease. Premium Promotional Items for Donation. Many ecommerce packages provide the promotional functionality of coupon codes, special offers, discounts, free shipping, and the like. nKind provides those as well, and also extends the concept into Promotional Items for Donation. Giving an item in return a donation is a concept that can help increase your donation revenues, and nKind has several promotional templates for making these offers easy to extend.

Cloud Infrastructure Breakdown

Jeremy Lakey — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

nKind partners with Microsoft Azure for hosting your nKind-powered website in the cloud. Cloud-hosting provides the benefit of "right-sizing" to your hosting needs. We will work with you in understanding your traffic and needs and guide you to the correctly sized instance to ensure your constituents consistently have an optimal experience on your web sites and mobile applications. We are pleased to offer uptime guarantees as follows: Monthly Uptime Percentage: The Monthly Uptime Percentage is calculated using the following formula: Monthly Uptime % = (Maximum Available Minutes-Downtime)/(Maximum Available Minutes) x 100 Monthly Uptime Percentage Service Credit < 99.95% 10% < 99% 25% Azure meets a broad set of international and industry-specific compliance standards, such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2, as well as country-specific standards like Australia IRAP, UK G-Cloud, and Singapore MTCS. Rigorous third-party audits, such as by the British Standards Institute, verify Azure’s adherence to the strict security controls these standards mandate. Instance Overages The package you select will guarantee you that rate for a maximum of 744 hours and up to 5 GB of output bandwidth per month. If you need more resources such as bandwidth or additional instances of your website to support larger than expected traffic for a special event, you will be charged for any such overages as follows: Premium Pro Elite Application Instances $0.10 per hour $0.20 per hour $0.30 per hour Bandwidth $0.01 per GB $0.01 per GB $0.01 per GB Additional Needs If you need further configurations that fall outside of our packages, we've got you covered. Call us and we will help you work out a suitable solution for your needs.

nKind Onboarding Process

Zach La Lond — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

"I'm interested in nKind...now what?" The first step is to contact a member of our sales team, so they can work with you to help determine exactly what nKind can provide to your organization. Our team at nKind is going to identify how we can best work with the tools you're using today by asking a number of questions about your current environment. For example, if you're using a current CRM or Donor Management system, or if you have Chartbeat/Google Analytics on your current website, nKind can integrate with these tools to reduce disruption to you and your organization. Alternatively, nKind provides a complete website with social media/email integration, our custom nKind CRM, and all the rest of the tools you need to immediately begin receiving revenue. Our team will work closely with you to identify which parts of your current setup you'll keep, which parts nKind can replace, and provide you the details you need in order to understand what the rest of the process will look like. At this time we'll also work with you to determine the nKind service plan that makes the most sense for your organization. We'll base this on the amount of traffic your website currently has, as well as the amount of traffic nKind can help you achieve. Once that's done, the next step will be to sign the contract and an NDA. At nKind, your content is your business. We'll help you get your message out, but we won't be sharing any of the information you provide us with anyone else. Now the actual onboarding process begins! Step 1: Design and Content Our onboarding coordinators will work with you to pick out a style for your website. We'll provide a number of choices regarding your site's fonts, colors, and layouts. Many customers prefer to keep their current website's general theme, but we also provide the ability to start fresh with a new template. We'll expect you to provide the content you want displayed, but we'll do all the work of actually building the site for you. Our team of experts have decades of experience building websites, and using nKind's tools makes this process a breeze. Step 2: Integration At this point, we'll integrate your new site with the following things: a) Payment Processor b) Social Media Accounts c) Email Marketing d) Website Analytics (optional) e) CRM/Donor Management system f) Accounting System g) Video Hosting Provider (optional) These items will be added into the site by our team, handling all the complicated integrations on your behalf. This is only one of the many values nKind can provide. Step 3: Testing, Training and Go-Live Once the site is built and properly integrated, we begin a 1-week beta period. During this time, the site is tested by both our nKind team as well as your company's representatives. Your team will be provided training on how to add content, messages, events, and take advantage of the suite of functionality that nKind now provides. After the 1-week beta period, your nKind hosting contract begins, and your website goes live to the world! We suggest you coordinate this rollout with social media posts and email blasts to notify your consumers and constituents. You'll be thrilled with what nKind can do for your organization!

Demo Message 5

Jim Doe — Tue, 01 May 2018 04:18:52 -05:00

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nKind Introduction

Douglas Naufel — Sat, 07 Apr 2018 12:00:00 -05:00

People love to give to good causes. Community is part of human nature. Most people want to lend a hand, give their time, or spend their excess resources helping others when they see a need. Often, the inability to find an obvious need where they can make a difference impairs giving. You spend valuable time getting your message out. Whether you are part of a Church, helping with a ministry, or expanding a non-profit organization to help those in need, you undoubtedly spend a lot of time spreading your message. You need to communicate with the local community, broader community, the nation as a whole or even around the world. So many times, your work goes unread, unheard, and unseen. Once you've inspired people, it should be simple and satisfying to give. When people are moved by your message of care or hope, they want to give of their resources. It is important that they are able to do that with ease. Complicated forms or processes could cause people to feel like it isn't trustworthy or just too much effort. Keeping track of those donors once they have given doesn't have to be hard. Data and analysis is important in understanding what is working and what is not working. You need to see when you have new donors, where they came from, and what inspired them. You need to be able to see who your biggest partners are and what drives them. Tracking this does not have to be hard when you have the right tools. Then you want to let them know about what's going on so they can share in your success and involved. In today's world, there are so many ways to keep in touch with people all over the world. And you need to continually keep fresh content in front of your donors so that they can see that their contribution of time and resources is making a difference. This is challenging when you have to manage so many channels from website to email lists. You don't have to be frustrated. It can be simple having a website, blogs, newsletters, social media, and even donor management. All of this technology can be overwhelming and ultimately can cause you to spend more time on your computer than working on your mission. With nKind, you can enter your messages once, give them types, categories, and tags and then push them through many channels including podcasts, blogs, social networks, and email lists.