February 2008
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE:
Welcome to our Ventures in Philanthropy E-Newsletter
  
 
Galas! Thons! Golf Tournaments!
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE		  
Does your organization suffer from 'event addiction?'

Here is your chance to be the counselor who gets them on the road to recovery. Try CAPITAL VENTURE’s '12 Step Program' to get your organization on the path to fundraising wellness. CAPITAL VENTURE has a team of qualified consultants who act as coaches to guide you through process, give you the tools to assess your events, and help you develop an integrated development program.
We’ve watched many nonprofits spend valuable time on event management — time which could be spent on cultivating major gifts. So we’ve developed a program to help cure organizations of Special Event Addiction. Here’s how it works.

  
Step 1—Evaluate your current events—CAPITAL VENTURE will do an analysis of your current special events and prepare a report with recommendations for improving, continuing or eliminating each event. Cost per event: $500

Step 2—Conduct a complete Development Audit of your entire Development Program. Cost for Audit: $5,000 for organizations with fundraising revenues of $100,000 or less; $10,000 for organizations with fundraising revenues between $100,000 and $1,000,000; and $20,000 for organizations with fundraising revenues of $1,000,000 or more.

Step 3—Review results of event analysis and/or audit with executive staff, board, and volunteers. Cost of Development Planning Workshop: $2,000 plus travel expenses.

Step 4—Choose an event or two events and get a detailed plan for improving the event. Cost for event plan: $1,000 each event.

Steps 5 through 12 are available on our website. Just click on www.cvfundraising.com/
More New Services—Consultant on Call
If you need consulting services, but cannot afford a high priced consulting relationship, check out our Consultant on Call Program:
Consultant on Call
Need an experienced consultant to answer any management questions or review agency documents but can’t afford one or don’t know one?

If your organization needs help with organizational, governance, fundraising, personnel or any other type of management issues, we have a program designed just for you!

Our new Consultant on Call program provides you with help from some of the country's leading consultants, trainers and authors. Two of the country’s most successful nonprofit consultants, Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE and Michael Sand, Esq. will answer any questions you have. If for any reason they do not have the expertise to handle your specific issue, they will get answers for you from the more than a hundred consultants that work with them.
What You Will Receive

Linda Lysakowski and Michael Sand will answer any questions about fundraising, governance or management issues you or any staff or board member in your agency pose to them by e-mail or telephone. They may consult with their Associates before answering your question. In addition, they will review agency documents and give their professional comments:

Questions or items to be reviewed may include:
  • Grant Proposals
  • Development Plans
  • Staff or Board Position Descriptions
  • Conflict of Interest Policies
  • Gift Acceptance Policies
  • Program Plans
  • Personnel Policies
  • Appeal Letters
  • Websites
  • Personnel Matters
  • Fundraising Questions
  • Management Problems
  • Board Development Issues
Special Offer

In order to encourage participation in this program, a limited number of agencies will receive unlimited service at the rate of $1,000 per calendar quarter. (We are only going to guarantee the unlimited service and this rate for the first ten clients that sign up each quarter, so please reserve your spot now for our 2008—Second Quarter.)
Nonprofit Technology Tips: Open Source Software
Kathryn Short
Introduction to Open Source Software (OSS)

You’ve probably noticed the ‘buzz’ about open source software over the last few years. Open source is not a new phenomenon. It has a history as rich and long as the software industry itself. So why all the hoopla now? The reason is the accelerated evolution of open source software over the last decade.

Open Source Software (OSS) appears, behaves and performs like commercial software, but without the limitations and cost of proprietary software. The difference with Proprietary software (Closed Source Software, or CSS) is the way it is licensed. Open Source is the perfect solution for nonprofit organizations with limited funds.

The Closed Source license (e.g., Microsoft and Adobe) often limits your ability to use or copy the software, an Open Source license explicitly gives you those rights. More specifically, it gives the right to copy, modify and distribute the software's original ‘source code.’

Open Source licensing opens up a whole range of new possibilities. It is this range of possibilities that has motivated millions of developers around the world to volunteer their skills in a highly collaborative and evolutionary way to provide thousands of programs for public use. The software they’ve created is equal to or better than commercial software in almost all cases.

A wealth of Open Source applications has been created over the last few years, covering the entire software spectrum of computer software, but finding the best programsyou’re your organization and implementing them can be confusing for new users.

Over the next few months, we’ll be looking at open source software for nonprofits in depth and eliminating any apprehension you may have about using it to drastically cut software costs. This introduction will help you navigate through the two major repositories to find solutions for your organization and to become familiar with search criteria and the basics of evaluating the software. Later installments in the series will investigate many other no-cost solutions, including customer relationship management (CRM) software, portals, blogs, forums, polls, utilities, graphics programs, ecommerce, MySQL and PHP databases and alternatives to the Microsoft Office Suite.

Navigating the Open Source Software Maze

As you learn more about Open Source software, it will become easier to find programs that uniquely fit the needs of your organization. For the sake of simplicity in today’s tutorial, however, let’s begin with a program every organization uses from time to time – a PDF creator. A quick search at Adobe.com quotes a price of $299 for a single-license copy of Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard. We will find a comparable solution today at no cost and with unlimited licenses.

SourceForge.net and Freshmeat.net are the two largest repositories for open source software. Freshmeat is a subsidiary of SourceForge and specializes in Palm OS and cross-platform applications. SourceForge.net is the largest with over 168,000 projects and nearly 1,750,000 million members. Membership is free and not required to search or download software.

To find a open source PDF maker at SourceForge.net:
  1. Go to http://www.sourceforge.net
  2. Select the 'Browse Software' tab on the menu bar at the top of the page
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the 'Software Map Topics' and select 'Display All.'
  4. From the menu tree on the right, expand the 'Office/Business' topic and select 'Printing' from the list. The results page will open with approximately 550 selections for the ‘Printing’ topic.
  5. Click the ‘Rank’ column so that the results are sorted in ascending order, the highest rank first. The first program doesn’t seem to meet our needs, so we’ll move to the second one, PDF Creator. Its rank is 44, an impressive statistic since it is competing with over 168,000 other projects. The Activity percentile is 99.98% - another impressive statistic showing visitors view this project 99.98% more often than the other 168,000. You’ll also notice that the program has been downloaded over 15,660,000 times! This is probably the one, but let’s check further.
  6. Click on the PDFCreator link to visit the project page. We see that the Development Status is ‘5-Production/Stable’ and that ‘Bugs’ in the program are being reported and addressed. This is one of the strongest advantages of open source software. Bugs exist in commercial software, too, but the ‘fixes’ for them are usually slow coming and often require an upgrade to completely eliminate. Open source is the extreme opposite. Anyone can report a bug. Many of those are valid problems and some are not, but all should be investigated as soon as possible.
  7. Access the ‘Bugs’ page by clicking on its link page view reported problems, open issues, and the time frame for eliminating them. A lot is happening, but everything seems under control for this software program.
  8. Returning to the Project Page, we notice that the Public Forum is very active, so we are assured that support is available when needed. The program also has a website with more support. SourceForge.net provides the project page free to the developers of an open source program. It’s worth noting here that not all developers use the Public Forum option because they prefer to offer community support on their own website. It doesn’t matter where the support is located, only that you make sure it is available somewhere before you download any program – commercial or open source.
As we explore open source software over the next few months, we’ll investigate the other details on the Project Page. PDFCreator speaks for itself, however:
  1. the first version became available in June of 2006
  2. it has been downloaded almost 16,000,000 times since then,
  3. the release is stable,
  4. it works on our Windows operating system,
  5. the community is active,
  6. and the bugs are being found and eliminated.
It is probably safe to assume PDFCreator is a program that will perform well with minimum problems. Select the ‘Download PDFCreator’ button at the top of the Project Page, and follow the directions for installing it on your computer. Join us next month for a review of OpenOffice, an alternative to the Microsoft Office Suite and instructions for installing it.

If you have any problems or questions before then, please email me at: KathrynShort@aol.com.
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Kathryn Short is a freelance graphic artist, web designer and marketing consultant who specializes in nonprofit support services.
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By Popular Request
Many people have requested that we take our workshops 'on the road' to cover a greater part of the North America. CAPITAL VENTURE, in conjunction with Advantage Consulting and Legacy Leaders will be conducting workshops throughout the country during 2008 on the following topics:
     
  • The Development Plan-—The Foundation of Success
  • Building Your Annual Fund Phone/Mail Program
  • Enhancing Your Planned Gift Marketing
  • Are You Ready for a Capital Campaign?
Sessions will be presented in four half day back-to-back workshops. Fees are $99 for one module, $179 for two modules, $249 for three modules or $299 for 4 modules. The tentative schedule for training is listed below. Dates and topics are subject to change. Please watch our monthly newsletters for our final monthly schedule.
February 19-20, 2008
April 20-21, 2008
June 5-6, 2008
Reno, NV
Las Vegas, NV
Philadelphia, PA
 
Other Training and Professional Development
You may order The Development Plan, Recruiting and Training Fundraising Volunteers and other books recommended by Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE, and learn more about our recommended fundraising books by visiting our website: www.cvfundraising.com/resources/cvbooks. CAPITAL VENTURE has developed a Training Catalogue, which is available by email. We offer a wide variety of workshops for groups such as AFP chapters, statewide associations, national organizations, Dioceses, United Ways and Centers for Nonprofits. If you would like to receive a copy of our offerings, please contact cvlinda@cox.net.
Linda's Blog is Here!
The Fundraiser's Coffee Break. Grab a cup of java, put your feet up and stop by to read the latest nonprofit news, commiserate with your colleagues, brainstorm, seek advice, or to just say hello.

UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS
February 6, 2008
eTapestry/CAPITAL VENTURE
The Development Plan
& Using Donor Software to Implement Your Plan
Reno, NV
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE
Mike Kierce, eTapestry
Email Linda for details
February 21, 2008
Affinity Seminars
The Development Plan
Webinar
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE
Click here for details and registration
February 22, 2008
Philanthropy Journal
Capital Campaigns - Part I
Webinar
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE
Click here for details and registration
February 13, 2008
AFP Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Chapter
Assessing Your Development Plan
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE
Click here for details and registration
 
March 10 , 2008
Funding Consortium
Capital Campaigns
Riverside, CA
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE
Pam Grogan
Click here for details and registration
February 14, 2008
AFP Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Chapter
Cultivating and Soliciting Major Gifts
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE
Click here for details and registration
March 11 , 2008
eTapestry/CAPITAL VENTURE
The Development Plan
& Using Donor Software to Implement Your Plan
Reno, NV
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE
Cody Sharp, eTapestry
Click here for details and registration
February 19-20
CAPITAL VENTURE/Advantage Consulting/Legacy Leaders
The Development Plan, Annual Fund, Planned Giving and Capital Campaign
Reno, NV
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE
Anthony Alonso
Michael Rosen, CFRE
Sue Kreeger, CFRE
Click here for details and registration
       
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CONTACT U S
CAPITAL VENTURE
Advancing Philanthropy through Consulting and Training for Nonprofits
Offices throughout the United States
    Administrative Office:
P O Box 731
Reading, PA 19607		 Executive Office:
10245 S. Maryland Pkwy., Ste. 1188
 Las Vegas, NV 89183
866-539-9990 toll free
702-892-0955 voice
702-892-0655 fax 		   
         
 
CAPITAL VENTURE Associates are located throughout the United States.
Call to find the one closest to you.
(866) 539-9990 toll free
 
 
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