SimpleGive - Server Upgrades

FYI - We are working on upgrading our servers. We are moving our servers to a company called RackSpace, which is one of the leaders in the server industry. You shouldn't notice any issues with our services, but this will require an occasional restart of our services while we get this completed over the next 24 hours. We are posting this notice on the off-chance that something is noticed. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at support@simplegive.com.

SimpleGive

October Updates, (aka September updates)

New Enhancements

Most of the new ideas for our service come from you, our customer. If there is something that SimpleGive could do to increase online donations or make your job easier, then please e-mail those ideas to us at support@simplegive.com.

One example of an idea is an integration with DonorTools that we just completed. One of our customers (Travel the Road - www.traveltheroad.com) uses DonorTools to track their donors and how much they give. DonorTools has an "Open API" that allows other software to add donor and donation information to their system. We added an enhancement to SimpleGive that automatically adds the donor and donation information to DonorTools for any of our clients that have this feature enabled. This means that Travel the Road doesn't have to enter their online donation information into their bookkeeping system because it is now done automatically.

Another example is the concept of the envelope or member number. We have the ability to enable this field for your organization so the donor can enter their existing envelope/member number when making an online gift. Many churches use it to track families/donors within their existing bookkeeping software. One of our customers uses this number to better match the individuals when importing the information into their bookkeeping software.

What bookkeeping software do you use? Are you interested in working with us to see if we can automate some of the data processes? E-mail us at support@simplegive.com if you are interested in this.

@simplegivellc

www.facebook.com/simplegive

Thanks!

Better Support

Better Support

Since early May we have been beta testing a new support process. It is working out GREAT and we are ready for everyone to start adopting this new process. Please e-mail any requests for changes or any questions to support@simplegive.com. Any e-mails that come into support@simplegive.com are automatically logged in our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system as a support case. Since they are logged in an online CRM system, we are able to collaborate internally about support issues and more importantly to follow-up and track every support request until it is resolved. Our previous method was to just check off e-mails within Microsoft Outlook. This worked out great a few years ago, but as we began to grow some customer requests started to slip through the cracks. We apologize if this happened to one of you! Please feel free to e-mail us at support@simplegive.com with any questions you have - we want to make sure your questions are addressed.

We also have other initiatives underway that will further increase communication and will publish information about them as they are launched over the coming months.

Thanks!

Your likes and Dislikes

Thank you!

First of all, thank you for being a customer of SimpleGive! We strive to provide an online giving service that helps your church, ministry or non-profit be more effective. The main goal of this monthly newsletter is to increase communication between SimpleGive and the organizations we serve. We want to better communicate with you about the enhancements we make (many at the request of our customers) and to also ease the ability to communicate back to us.

Please let us know what you like and don't like. We really like hearing what you would like to see in functionality.

Wives and IPads are on the same playing field!

Wives and IPads are on the same playing field!

Dear Awesome Customer,

We have started a SimpleGive referral program! We at SimpleGive believe that

word of mouth referrals are the best way for us to gain a new customer. Our

goal is to gain your trust so that you will refer us to your friends and

colleagues. This is how we have grown to this point. But why should you refer

someone? What’s in it for you? Well, when we sat down and asked ourselves

what is it that makes us tick. What wakes us up in the morning? What keeps us

going? Two things came to mind.

Number One: IPad 2. Which literally wakes me up in the morning. I have had

the IPad 2 for as long as it has been availiable. It has become a necessity in

my life. Well, not really, but it is really cool and has some really great

apps that have simplified my life. I don’t go anywhere with out it.

The second thing… and don’t take this the wrong way… But our wives. So 1 and

2 are IPads and wives. Yeah….lets keep this referral program between

SimpleGive and the referrer. No need for the princess to know that I put her

on the same playing field as an IPad 2. One of the things I love is my weekly

dates with my wife. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s always great company. One of

our favorite places to go is Bone Fish Grill. We really like the Bang Bang

shrimp.

Jason and I want to give back to our customers via a referral program and we

want to thank you for your referrals. Here is how it works. If you refer a

church who signs up with SimpleGive, once they are up and running we give you a

75 dollar gift card to the restaurant of your choice (or your wife's or

husband's choice.) If you’re not married, no problem, just let us know from

where you would like the gift card. The second thing that happens is you are

entered into a drawing for an IPad 2. We will draw a name for every 10

referrals. The 10th referral will trigger a drawing for the IPad 2. There

are no limits on the number of entries you get. Please feel free to forward

this information to other people you work with so they can refer their

colleagues and win, too!

We thank you for your business and we look forward to serving you and your

colleagues.

Ben Sealey

Founding Partner

Did you know?

SimpleGive has been serving churches and nonprofits for 4 years. We are a

debt-free company and currently provide online giving services for 225 churches

and nonprofits.

Do you have ideas?

We would like to hear about ways we can improve our service for you. Please

e-mail your ideas to support@simplegive.com.

Online Giving - New Website, New Pricing & Twitter

Below is a brief blog entry about some changes that have recently occured:

• New Website - We just launched our newly designed website. This new design will allow us to better organize our information for potential and existing customers. We'll be integrating this look into our admin areas and will use it in a few different modules that are currently under development.


• New Pricing - We launched a new pricing methodology for our online giving service on July 1. Our previous monthly fee was $59/month. We noticed that that price was cutting out some small-medium sized churches and nonprofits that could really benefit from online giving. However, we can't drop the price down for everybody and still sustain the business. Because of this, we have implemented a tiered pricing structure. This tiered pricing structure should better allow small/medium size churches and nonprofits to take advantage of online giving. This pricing is effective immediately for any new customers. We will migrate existing customers to this new structure by the beginning of the next billing cycle (August 1st, 2011).


• Twitter - We recently relaunched a twitter feed. Please follow us @simplegivellc. This will be a place where we can give brief (and more frequent) updates about enhancements, etc with our service.

That's it for now. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.


Jason
Founding Partner
SimpleGive

Online Giving - Enhancement for Catholic Diocese

As I mentioned in the previous post, one of the things that keeps us busy is implementing enhancements to our online giving system at the request of clients or potential clients. The Catholic Diocese of Sioux City uses our services for their online giving needs. They approached us about the need for a purchase page for their newspaper they publish, called The Globe. This sounded easy enough! However, they also wanted the ability for a person that buys a subscription to make a donation that will allow other people in the Diocese to receive it for free. We had not previously developed a page that had a set price with an optional donation amount - but we do support it now! Please see the online giving/online purchase page below that uses this functionality:

https://www.mysimplegive.com/SG/landing?id=globe

Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions, comments or suggestions!

Jason
Founding Partner
SimpleGive