Convio and MPower announced a jointly developed product, the Convio/MPower Database Connector. This product integrates Convio’s online constituent relationship management (eCRM) suite and content management system (CMS) with MPower’s offline donor management solution.

 

The connector enables nonprofit organizations to achieve real-time, bi-directional integration of data in their online Convio and offline MPower databases. Organizations will be able to conduct better fund raising and marketing campaigns. The channels included are direct mail, television, radio, online, telephone, events, personal contact, newsletters and subscriptions besides others.

 

MPower offers open, flexible and powerful software especially designed for non profit organizations for offline constituent relationship management (CRM). The solution is preferred because it can consolidate data from online and offline channels and segment the data very precisely using the powerful segmentation engine of the company.

 

“The Convio-MPower integration is the natural progression of Convio’s Open Initiative and MPower’s commitment to open technology approaches for nonprofits,” said Gene Austin, CEO, Convio, Inc.

 

Austin went on: “The new connector lets nonprofits tap the fast-growing online channel without worrying about data integration. A nonprofit using Convio and MPower now can have an immediate, complete and accurate view of each constituent’s interactions with the organization, which is key for conducting more targeted, effective marketing, fundraising and advocacy in today’s multi-channel world.”

 

Convio and MPower enable easy data exchange between online and offline donor databases. Organizations using their solution can automatically synchronize constituent data collected in their CRM systems donations, contact information updates, participation in events, advocacy activities, etc. This avoids duplicating of records and other errors which will arise with manual data entry besides reducing cost of manual integration.

 

Constituent data can be captured and stored in a single donor database and use it for personalized and targeted marketing for appeals and campaigns. New operational data collected online can be passed to MPower’s database for follow-up and management.

Social networks like Facebook (News - Alert) can be used for getting new prospects and donors for future online and offline communications adding them to the MPower database.

 

“MPower and Convio make it possible for nonprofits like ours to get out of the business of managing technology to ensure data integration,” said Joshua Youssef, Executive Vice President of Leading the Way.

 

He pointed out that his company gets that integration automatically, along with a holistic view of constituents which allows communication with them in more relevant ways, form stronger relationships, and ultimately drive giving and other participation. The Convio-MPower partnership also offers the freedom to pick and integrate the best online and offline applications for the company’s unique needs instead of using one vendor’s solution.

Shamila Janakiraman is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Shamila’s articles, please visit her columnist page.