February 2012 Newsletter
A Message from Our President
I am the first to admit that we simply did not have the time to put together a January newsletter. January broke all monthly records by far in terms of usage and new organizations registering for our service. Even though our numbers are growing, we are still committed to providing exceptional customer service and website performance to all of our users, whether they be on Deluxe or Free accounts.
With this in mind, we are using this February newsletter to announce a couple of exciting new features as well as dispel a few myths about our service. Most importantly, I want to reach out to those who felt that our service was too difficult to set up, too difficult to use, or missing important features. Please contact us at support@yourvolunteers.com so that we may work with you to improve our service.
Sincerely,
John Wagoner
President
New Feature: Constant Contact® Integration
Quite a few of you have contacted us asking for a feature allowing you to synchronize your volunteer list with your existing Constant Contact® account. It certainly was not easy, but we have just released a beta of the new feature included on both the Deluxe and Free accounts. The integration will allow you to utilize all of the features of Constant Contact® including their email tracking. Many thanks to all of you that requested the feature and we appreciate your patience as we put it together.
New Feature: Public Calendars
By popular request, we’ve added the ability for you to provide your potential volunteers with a public calendar. You have the choice of embedding the calendar on your own website or simply providing them with a URL to view a calendar without having to first register on our site. The calendar does have a filter to only show shifts that still need volunteers and a popup with shift information will appear when they click on the shift name. Public calendars are available on both the Ongoing Needs and Special Events accounts in both the Free and Deluxe versions.
Myth #1: Errors on our site are because we are trying to push you toward the Deluxe products
Errors on websites happen. We who create them laugh in the faces of rocket scientists and mock the simplicity of their work. We keep a folder on our network with screenshots of big companies with website errors as evidence that it’s not just us. To be clear, we do not and have never used errors that you may encounter to nudge you towards paying for the Deluxe account. If you report the errors to us, we will do our best to ensure that they never happen again.
Myth #2: The purpose of our screening process is to sell you on our deluxe accounts
99% of the organizations that use our service stick with the Free versions and we are happy to provide them to you. As many of you who have been with us for a long time know, we are terrible at upselling and simply do not want to do it. The screening process is quick, and if you provide enough information when you request a Free account, you will not be contacted to verify the information.
Myth #3: The purpose of our screening process is really so that we may prevent certain legitimate groups from using the service
We do not discriminate against any legitimate group who operates within the confines of the law as long as they use volunteers. Period. All organizations, regardless of your politics, your geographical location, and your raison d’etre are welcome to use our service. The purpose of the screening process is primarily to ensure that you are a legitimate organization and not someone who would do harm to our service or who would use our free online volunteer management system to do illegal activities.
Myth #4: The YourVolunteers profit model is unsustainable and we will be out of business soon
We received a message from a user stating that a sales person from another online service told them that they shouldn’t bother setting up an account with us since we would be out of business soon. As the kids say, LOL. We have been providing an online volunteer management system since 2004. YourVolunteers is not our business – rather, it is one product of Primary Key Technologies, Inc. and we have been providing cost-effective web, software, database, and mobile app development services since 2002 to organizations around the world.
GiftingWishes.com Update
As mentioned in our December newsletter, YourVolunteers partnered with NPcatalyst in Reno, NV to create an online charity fundraising service at GiftingWishes.com. Since our launch, we’ve had more than US$10 million in wishes posted and interest from large organizations to create branded solutions for their fundraising efforts. As many nonprofit organizations have learned, the current world economy makes it difficult for individuals to make large donations. Gifting Wishes helps a charity to crowdsource funds for specific needs. The service is free for charities to post wishes and they receive donations directly through PayPal or Google Checkout.
