PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Kristina Kohler
kristina.kohler@beaconfire.com
703-894-0090
Beaconfire Recommissions Nonprofit CRM Survey
Falls Church, Va., July 1, 2002 —
Today, Shirley Sexton, Director of Internet Marketing for Easter Seals, and Beaconfire Consulting, Inc., a provider of Internet consulting services to nonprofit organizations, announced it has recommissioned Ms. Sexton's Contributor Relationship Management survey to revisit how nonprofit organizations are incorporating one-to-one marketing practices and technology systems into their business operations. The initial survey of nearly 100 nonprofit leaders was conducted in the fall of 2000 and Ms. Sexton's subsequent study, "Contributor Relationship Management: How Nonprofits Can Harness the Power of Technology to Build One-to-One Relationships," was published in November of 2000.
The survey was available until November 15, 2002, and is now closed. Professionals who have decision-making responsibilities regarding marketing, communications, database, Internet, and other technological investments at nonprofits were invited to respond. The subsequent updated report will include a case study on how Easter Seals is applying the theories laid out in the original report on a large scale, organization-wide basis.
While clarifying that the survey questions have not changed since the survey was first developed, Ms. Sexton said, "The intention is to learn how the level of interest in and adoption of CRM practices may have changed since the last survey. In addition, we hope to include the perspectives and experiences of far more nonprofits than the initial survey included. This will help the survey be more representative of the nonprofit community as a whole, and for us to make more definitive conclusions about how nonprofits are using CRM to support their missions."
Beaconfire CEO, Lynn Labieniec, a 20-year veteran of the software and consulting industries, spoke to Beaconfire's role in reissuing the survey.
"Beaconfire is a provider of objective consulting and system development services to nonprofits around the use of Internet technologies and helps clients strategically plan for their use to support marketing, fundraising, advocacy and other critical activities. We see organizations struggling with the right planning for the process, human resources, programmatic, and technology decisions that need to be made in order for nonprofits to become truly customer-centric. This has certainly affected the rate of adoption of CRM practices within the nonprofit community. Many organizations have simply not been ready to take on this level of analysis and internal change management, but those that have are seeing the returns on investment."
Sexton echoed those comments by saying, "The initial survey provided a critical snapshot of nonprofits' use of technology and marketing practices to better understand their constituents and align their organizations to meet customer needs. The picture in 2000 was that most nonprofits had not yet become as customer-driven as corporate organizations had become…the entire nonprofit community will benefit from understanding how much progress has been made in the past two years."
Ms. Sexton and Beaconfire will analyze the survey data and prepare the updated report, which will be published in November 2002.
About Shirley Sexton: Ms. Sexton is the Director of Internet Marketing for Easter Seals. She is part of a senior leadership team at Easter Seals that is working to develop an enterprise CRM initiative designed to meet the needs of the organization's clients (e.g., persons with disabilities), affiliates, and internal stakeholders. Beaconfire and Easter Seals developed an Internet Action Plan to guide the transition and are working collaboratively to deploy phase one of the technology infrastructure and to disseminate best practices across the organization. Ms. Sexton may be contacted at ssexton@easter-seals.org.
About Easter Seals: For more than 80 years, Easter Seals has been providing services that help children and adults with disabilities gain greater independence. Its primary services -- medical rehabilitation, job training and employment, inclusive child care, adult day services, and camping and recreation -- benefit more than one million individuals with disabilities and their families each year through one of 450 centers nationwide. Visit www.easter-seals.org to learn more about Easter Seals.
About Beaconfire
Beaconfire Consulting serves the nonprofit community with interactive markeing and fundraising, web design and development, internet strategy planning, and technology evaluation services. Beaconfire has guided some of the world's leading nonprofit organizations to achieve something remarkable with Web technologies. Results that shine..
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