MPower’s New Web Integration Platform Sets New Standard, Enables More Nonprofits to Easily Optimize Fundraising

DALLAS, TEXAS (April 17, 2008) – MPower – which provides the most open, flexible, and powerful software for nonprofit constituent relationship management (CRM) and fundraising – today announced that its solution now includes a Web integration platform enabling users of the company’s full feature donor database to integrate easily and in real time with Web content management systems (CMS) of their choice.

To date, nonprofits have not been able to easily integrate donor databases and CMS solutions from different vendors. MPower’s new functionality gives organizations more options and flexibility than ever before for building and leveraging CRM systems that meet their unique needs.

Easy, real time, bi-directional integration of constituent data collected in offline and online databases is key for conducting the most effective marketing and fundraising campaigns. Such integration gives nonprofits an immediate, complete view and understanding of constituents who nowadays interact with charitable groups through multiple channels, e.g., direct mail, television, radio, online, telephone, events, personal contact, newsletters and subscriptions, and often have multiple relationships including donor, event attendee, advocate, customer, subscriber, etc.

Hundreds of charitable organizations all over the world, including many of the savviest direct marketers, use MPower for their donor database. MPower is available without license fees and users have access to the source code so they can customize the software. Recognizing nonprofits’ needs for a single view of all their constituent data and truly flexible technology solutions, MPower collaborated with nearly 20 clients to develop automatic, bi-directional integration between its solution and any CMS that can import and export data.

Many nonprofits use proprietary CMS solutions – such as Convio, Kintera, and Blackbaud’s NetCommunity – that do not automatically integrate with donor databases. These nonprofits have to custom develop an application programming interface (API) to connect the two systems, hire a consultant to do that, or rely on their CMS vendor to provide the API. Doing so can entail additional costs and time for implementation, and also strip a nonprofit of control of over its technology and operations. Additionally, nonprofits that use Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge for their donor database can only integrate with the company’s CMS, NetCommunity, regardless of whether that solution meets their needs.

“MPower has solved a very significant business challenge for nonprofits and by doing so is setting a new standard for effective fundraising practices,” said Eric Kippel, Director of IT for Amazing Facts. “By building a Web integration platform into its donor database solution, MPower makes it simple for an organization like ours to pick the Web content management system we want so we have full control over our marketing and fundraising – versus being forced to use our donor database company’s proprietary CMS or having to depend on either our CMS provider or a consultant to create integration.”

In addition to integrating with commonly used proprietary CMS solutions like Convio, MPower integrates with open source CMS solutions used by nonprofits including Joomla, Plone, Drupal and DotNetNuke.

The MPower Web integration platform enables key constituent data to flow back and forth in real time between MPower and an online CMS, including:

Contact information
Giving history
Order history
Source codes (codes on an account that indicate how a constituent was acquired, e.g. which communications channel, which campaign or event, etc.)
Motivation codes (multiple codes on an account that signify responses to specific events and/or fundraising appeals)

For example, with MPower’s Web Integration Platform, when a donor uses a nonprofit’s Web site to make an online donation or purchase (e.g., event tickets, branded merchandise) or update his/her contact information, all data automatically downloads in real time to the organization’s MPower donor database.

In the past, a nonprofit would have to enter the online information manually which could take days and also result in data entry errors. This new functionality reduces operational complexity and automates what to date has been a very inefficient process. Real-time integration gives a nonprofit immediate access to complete and accurate constituent data, which enables better forecasting, more precise database segmentation and highly effective marketing.

About MPower

Dallas-based MPower provides the most open, flexible, and powerful suite of software and services for fundraising and constituent relationship management for today's nonprofits. MPower enables organizations to manage important daily operations (including donation processing, fulfillment, event and volunteer management, call center activity tracking and major donors relations) and also capture and leverage key constituent data from all channels for building strong, lifetime relationships. MPower serves hundreds of nonprofits of all sizes with diverse missions and constituencies, including some of the world's largest and most sophisticated direct marketers. For more information, please visit www.mpoweropen.com.