Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

That’s what I said to Tompkins Spann, of Convio, when he told me last week (after I duly signed the requisite NDA) that Convio was going into the donor database business by building an app on top of Salesforce.com. Actually, I didn’t use the Battlestar Galactica expletive, I used the one you’re more familiar with. :-)

Convio is launching the new application, built on top of the Force.com platform. It is named, as of now, Aikido. It has the kind of functionality you’d expect from a donor database.

It seems in a business sense, to be a brilliant move. Leverage the power of the open platform of Salesforce.com, and do the work that nonprofits (and consultants) have been having to do to bang Salesforce.com into shape as a donor database. And make it reasonably priced. They are starting with a “charter” program - a few nonprofit organizations, to iron out all of the varied issues, both technical and logistical, I imagine.

This ups the ante major league for Blackbaud, for sure, as well as other long time desktop donor database providers. It may, depending on pricing, even give the open source CiviCRM a bit of competition. And it means an interesting dance for those in the nonprofit salesforce community. Of course, the proof will be in the pudding - we’ll find out over time how this app works, and whether organizations like it. But the whole CRM field just got more interesting.