It's been roughly three years since we shipped the first version of GiftWorks (then GiftWorks 2006). We put out a bunch of free updates to that product but never sold an upgrade until now. The upgrade comes in three parts. In March we released GiftWorks 2008 Standard to new customers. In April we shipped the first update to GiftWorks 2008 Standard that included a database upgrader so existing customers could start moving over to 2008 Standard. Finally in the next couple months we will be releasing GiftWorks 2008 Premium which is what the product team is working on now. I would like to do several posts on how GiftWorks 2008 came to be and how it's turned out, but for right now just jump on over to the website and check it out.

We've made GiftWorks available for a low fee on TechSoup Stock. Depending on the size of your non-profit, the software is discounted or will be donated to your organization. I think the quantities are limited, so get them while they last.

We haven't seen our point-and-shoot since the summer. Turns out we left it at one of our friends house and we just got it back. Going through the pictures on the card I found a couple from a golf outing some of us in the office participated in. The golf outing was in support of The New School of Lancaster. Steve, Jonny, Chris and myself had a great time. Here is one of the pictures from that day. Steve is the one who looks like he's out on a bad date with my golf bag. Jonny's in the back adding to the fun.

For the past few years Mission Research has been selling it's well-known product called GiftWorks to non-profit organizations. On January 31st 2007, we launched another product targeted at small businesses called SalesWorks. SalesWorks is a lot like GiftWorks. It looks and feels the same and has a lot of the features GiftWorks has. Instead of managing donors and donations, SalesWorks will manage contacts, opportunities and sales.

We are hard at work trying to release SalesWorks. It is currently in beta 1. We are pushing towards releasing a beta2 in the next month or two. I will be posting information to this website as it becomes available. Check back.

Until the release you can find out more from some of my posts about the launch event or just go and download the beta and try it out.

Yesterday we launched our new Consultant Partner Program on the Mission research web site. If you are a consultant you can sign up with the program and take advantage of the benefits which include up to 5 free licenses of GiftWorks, phone support, co-marketing opportunities, training and you will be listed in our consultant directory. More information about the program is here.

If you are a consumer and are interested in finding a consultant to get your organization up and running, you can find a consultant near you by entering your state into the Consultant Directory search.

I know I've been promising an SDK for some time now, but we've finally had some movement on that front. Some of you may have received an email announcing the first release. We've started a new web site to host all-things-SDK. Check out DevHero.com for everything you need to know to get started.

We plan to release the SDK in small pieces as beta downloads. We want to crawl before we run and we want your feedback all along the way. At some point, when the small pieces become mature and stable enough, we will add them to the release version of the grand SDK.  The first download is some code and examples to create your own reports inside of GiftWorks. A recent survey of our customers indicated that reporting was a big part of what you'd like to customize. This should get you started. Please let us know what you think via the DevHero forums. Thanks.

A common question we get from customers is "how do I access my GiftWorks database from outside the office?" We decided on using a file-based database for GiftWorks early on. We chose to go that path (instead of using a client/server database) to make installation, management and the user experience in general, very simple. I think the path we chose was a good one but it's not perfect. We knew that a file-based database would not address the needs of a small portion of of our customers. One of those needs is remote access. While remote access cannot be as good as if we had built GiftWorks using a client/server database, there are options available to you.

One solution is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to connect your remote computer to your organizations internal network. If you have a VPN connection you can connect to your organization's network shares anytime and anywhere you have an Internet connection. It's basically the same way you would connect when you're in the office except the files and folders will be shared across the VPN connection. The two biggest problems with this solution is that your connection will likely be slower and it's not the easiest thing to setup a VPN for your office.

Because you will be connecting to your office network over the internet, the throughput and response of your connection will depend on the quality of your internet connection. It will never be as fast as when you're in the office -- you will have to adjust to the somewhat slower user experience when on the road, but it will let you access your donors and donations remotely. 

I have never had a lot of luck setting up a VPN connection. Microsoft Windows has VPN software built into it, but because of the common use of firewalls and shared internet connections through routers, it is very tricky if not impossible to make that software work. The good news is that there is a free alternative that is easy to setup and it works great. This "zero-configuration" VPN program is called LogMeIn by Hamachi.

LogMeIn is available as a free download. It's very simple! You download and install it to the computer that has your GiftWorks database on it (this will be in your office). Then you download and install it on the computers that need remote access to your database (likely a laptop or your home PC). Once installed you create a virtual network and give it a password. From your remote computers you connect to that new virtual network and enter the same password. At that point you can browse your office computer from your remote computers. You'll be able to see all your shared folders and files. Run GiftWorks on your remote computers and tell it to open an existing database. 

It may take a little bit to understand what's actually happening. Just think of it like your remote computer is actually on your office network. The main LogMeIn window shows the other computers in your network. Look at the image to the left. It should resemble the window on your remote computer. The office computer should be listed there. Just right click on it to bring up a menu and choose to Browse that computers files. That should open a window of shared folder on that computer. Click through the shared folder that contains your GiftWorks database. Once you see your database (the file with a .gds extension) you should  be able to get the information needed to open that file within GiftWorks.

In that browse window (as shown to the right) you'll see the path and filename that you'll want to tell GiftWorks about. As an example, the screenshot shows the path and filename \\5.118.37.163\giftworks\my-donor-data.gds. Give that path to GiftWorks when you choose to open an existing database.

Like I said earlier, the experience could be slow depending on your internet connection, but it should work. I have used LogMeIn on several occasions with good results. Let me know how it turns out for you. 

In November, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) launched their annual Fundraising Effectiveness Survey. This survey asks charities to compare their 2004 and 2005 fundraising results. The results of the survey are intended to enable non-profits "to compare their growth-in-giving results across a variety of measures with the performance of similar organizations." Russ Burke has published an article about how this helps your organization.

FEP partnered with over one dozen software firms in assisting their clients with the survey. Here at Mission Research, Chris Walker, a Product Manager donated some time to building a GiftWorks add-in that would automatically gather and send the survey data for GiftWorks users. This is a great example of how GiftWorks can be extended to support additional functionality. And truly it's not very difficult to do given the proper documentation (which is only available internally right now).

I'm very curious how the FEP survey was exposed by the other partnering software makers. If any readers have used the software by the other partners, please let me know your experiences.

In a lot of organizations, the fundraising is at a very personal level. In those cases you might find it useful to keep photos of your donors in your records. A new GiftWorks add-in will now enable you to do that for your donors.

Steve Fafel has created a sample add-in to demonstrate some of the extensibility of GiftWorks and it has turned out to be a very popular add-in. Please download and try it out. The source code comes with it, so check that out too.

This post is just a quick roundup of some other Mission Research blogs.

Add Attachments to GiftWorks' Emails
Steve explains how we've added attachment support in GiftWorks' mailings and how you can use them in your own mailings.

Create a SmartList of Individuals and Organizations
Mike explains some hidden functionality that allows you to create SmartLists that contain both organizations and individuals.

Help Define the Next Generation of GiftWorks Integration with QuickBooks
Jonny explains how you can help define the upcoming project to make GiftWorks better integrate with QuickBooks.

Also, for those of you that are having some problems getting GiftWorks to run properly, Steve introduces an online support tool you can run yourself to help diagnose the problems you are having. Please check that out if you are having problems.