KIMBIA

Did you attend NRB 2010? Get the presentation here.

Spencer Whelan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:30:27 +0000

On Saturday, Feb. 27th, KIMBIA Director of Marketing & Communication, Spencer Whelan and KMA VP of Online Marketing, Tim Kachuriak hosted a boot-camp session titled, “Taking Pages from Obama’s Fundraising Playbook”. (Boot-camp session details can be found here )

In the session, Whelan and Kachuriak explained the high-level fundamentals of a successful online fundraising operation like Obama ‘08, and then unpacked the strategies into tactics that any organization can use to raise significantly more money online. Some recent examples of joint KIMBIA and KMA clients were used to show these tactics in action.

If you attended the event and would like to download a PDF of the joint presentation, please see below.

Taking Pages from Obama’s Fundraising Playbook

Do KIMBIA forms work on mobile phones?

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:44:08 +0000

The answer is yes, when the phone is using a modern web browser.

KIMBIA's apps rely on JavaScript functionality and security features, as well as CSS 2 support. These technologies are commonplace on todays desktop browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Safari & Opera). A few mobile browsers are currently supporting these standard browser technologies, and therefore are also able to support donating/registering with a KIMBIA form:

	Apple™ iPhone/iTouch	Google™ Android	Windows™ Mobile 6.5	BlackBerry™	Nokia™ phones w/ Symbian™ OS
Safari
Google Browser
Opera	Mini v5β (coming soon)	Mobile v10 (coming soon)	Mobile v10	Mini v5β	Mobile v10

Based on these most recent statistics, KIMBIA donations and registrations could be accessible to more than 69% of mobile Internet traffic. We expect this number to only trend upward as more mobile browsers are released and/or improved.

Check back soon for our article on integrating KIMBIA into your mobile fundraising campaigns.

Installing & Customizing your KIMBIA Advocate Look-up Widget

maubin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:57:55 +0000

Are you a KIMBIA customer running an Advocacy-based fundraising campaign? Have you challenged your supporters and athletes to raise funds on behalf of your organization?

Our Advocate Look-up widget allows your web site visitors to more easily support their friends by entering their name or email address. Now, they don't have to remember or find that old email with a personalized URL from their friend. They can just visit your website and look their friend up!

After an Advocate's information is submitted, the Look-up widget will either send the user to that Advocate's personalized donation form, or it will ask the user to choose the correct advocate from a list of potential matches.

This post covers:

Installing the snippet for the Look-up widget
Customizing your Look-up widget with CSS

Installing the Advocate Look-up Widget

Simply paste the following code into the HTML page you wish to display the Advocate Look-up widget:

Make sure you replace [campaign_prefix] with the actual prefix of your campaign listed in the 'Hosted Page' address on the Campaign Details page shown below:

Customizing your Advocate Look-up widget with CSS

We think our Advocate Look-up widget looks great out-of-the-box. But, if you would like to edit its look and feel, please be our guests. Using the custom CSS template below, you can easily adjust the default look and feel to match your existing HTML.

As always, customizing the CSS is optional. If you do choose to create a custom CSS file:
1) you're responsible for hosting this file on your website
2) only include the style attributes from the following template that you wish to override. Placing null value attributes in your declarations will cause your styling to break in unexpected ways!

KIMBIA Advocate Lookup Widget Custom CSS template
The following image gives provides a visualization of the HTML elements available for styling and how the markup relates to the rendered widget:

Does KIMBIA allow me to manage “offline” registrations?

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:04:33 +0000

Yes, using KIMBIA's standard form creation tools, you can easily create a form that allows your staff to manually enter information about donations and/or registrations that were not transacted online. These manually entered data points can then be included in your overall data for the fundraiser or event.

Success Profile: KIMBIA Donations on Facebook with the Heritage Foundation

Spencer Whelan — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:19:21 +0000

Facebook has undoubtedly become the primary Social Networking site for this generation of Internet users. Millions of people log on everyday to see the latest updates from friends and family, as well as information from the organizations they support by being a ‘fan’. However, making a donation directly to an organization through Facebook has been a challenge… until now. By taking advantage of KIMBIA’s “anywhere” technology, our customers are able to build custom Facebook applications featuring a KIMBIA donation or registration form that allows Facebook users to complete a transaction directly within a Facebook app or fan page.

The Heritage Foundation Facebook fan page features many options for its fans including links to advocacy tools, special content features and events calendars. Uniquely, however, it also features a “Donate” tab that gave Heritage Foundation fans a one-click access to a fully functioning KIMBIA donation form. Donors are able to complete an entire transaction on their credit card with a trusted organization without ever leaving the Facebook website. This feature is critical in respecting and supporting the users who have integrated Facebook into their daily online lives.

Launched last week, this excellent example of next-gen online fundraising is the result of great strategic thinking combined with a little technical expertise. The Heritage Foundation was able to realize this concept with standard KIMBIA snippet codes combined with custom Facebook development from the David All Group , a modern grassroots communications firm based in Washington DC.

If you or someone in your organization is familiar with building applications in FBML, you too can have your own KIMBIA donation forms placed inside of Facebook. If your organization would be interested in having a custom Facebook application developed with KIMBIA integration, please feel free to contact us at info@kimbia.com. We can put you in touch with one of our services partners like the David All Group, who can help you plan and build a fundraising application that is right for you.

Client Success: The Nation’s Triathlon

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:20:23 +0000

The Nation’s Triathlon in Washington DC is the fastest growing triathlon in the US, and is the only triathlon in the country dedicated to building awareness and raising money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Washington Sports and Event Management (WSEM) owns The Nation’s Triathlon™ and produced the 4th annual running of this event on September 13, 2009. WSEM registered 6,000 athletes from 855 cities, 46 states and 7 countries participating in one of five different event categories.

KIMBIA was selected to serve as the event management engine in late 2008 with the ambitious goal of enabling WSEM to take full control of their brand and the relationships with their athletes and volunteers. To accomplish this goal WSEM needed the power to customize and tailor registration processes for different events and different audiences. All these tools needed to integrate seamlessly with their Web site and branding. Since The Nation’s Triathlon™ is a major event that sells out every year, WSEM also required a platform that can handle thousands of registrations at a time without any delay for registrants. Finally, WSEM needed full access and control of all athlete data in real-time, and wanted ownership of all funds related to their events at all times.

Read the whole story in the Client Success PDF below... Client Success: The Nation's Triathlon

Rackspace down this afternoon for 30 minutes. Everything is back to normal.

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:31:44 +0000

Rackspace was down for 30 minutes this afternoon from approximately 3:35 to 4:15 Central Time. Since many of Kimbia’s systems are hosted by Rackspace, the KIMBIA administrator control panel and other KIMBIA applications were likely to be unavailable during this period.

There were no issues with Kimbia’s systems. Now that Rackspace has recovered, everything is online and working normally.

More info is promised at Rackspace’s official blog:

http://status.rackspacecloud.com/cloudservers/2009/12/cloud-sites-dfw-investigating-current-issue.html

Houston (Bay Area) Habitat for Humanity powers their annual 5k “Women Build” race with KIMBIA registration forms.

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:13:16 +0000

The goal of Bay Area Habitat's 2010 Women Build 5k is to raise $65,000. This figure represents a concrete concept that everyone can understand: the cost of a new house for a family in need.

Many of Bay Area Habitat's projects are supported by local corporations and churches, organizations whose members can easily organize into teams based on departments, neighborhoods or families. For this fundraiser, Bay Area Habitat had specific requirements:

register a 10 person team at no charge
different levels of team financial commitments ( $1,000, $5,000 or $10,000)
each team member's personal goal must be an equal share of the overall team commitment

Bay Area Habitat is leveraging KIMBIA's personalized fundraising pages to enable each team member to commit to raising an equal portion of their team's total commitment. Each team member receives:

their own personalized donation form on the organization's website with a progress bar tracking their individual progress
access to tools that will enable them to solicit donations via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and their email address book.

Step 1: Select a Team with a financial Commitment

Step 2: Register the Team

Step 3: Donate to an individual team member

By activating both online and offline communities of supporters, Bay Area is well on its way towards its goal.

Kimbia Reporting Guide

maubin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:02:50 +0000

Successful online fundraising and event registrations always leads to the need to generate reports and analyze all the great information that is gathered in the process of securing those valued donations and registrations. As our clients know, their data is valuable and KIMBIA's reporting features make it all readily available - in real time. These immediate access reports are enabling KIMBIA customers to more effectively achieve their business objectives and answer their pressing questions, for example:

Need to produce a report of all donations and refunds for October for Accounting? Check
Need to provide your T-Shirt vendor with a real-time view of shirt orders for that event? Check
Need to understand which Advocate is generating the most money? Check
Want to keep tabs on how much has been collected today, yesterday, this week, or last month? Check
Does your Executive Director want to be notified when "high dollar" donations are received? Check

The following PDF contains the following to help you quickly build better, more useful reports:

A report selection guide - to help you understand how to select report types and templates
A review of the Report Build Screen - to help you understand how to build and configure your reports, including adding forms, setting the report format and columns, filtering, and defining summaries (totals and subtotals).
A glossary of the terms and concepts available in KIMBIA Reporting - organized by Category, to help you identify the available columns, what they are, and where to find them.
An explanation of common KIMBIA Data Types - to help you understand what they are and how you can use them to achieve the report output you want.

Reporting How To Guide

Thundercloud Subs Turkey Trot registers over 13,000 while reducing paperwork

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:23:01 +0000

The 19th annual Thundercloud Subs Turkey Trot benefiting Caritas, registered a record 14,500 participants, 13,033 of whom registered online. The event partnered with KIMBIA to automate and streamline registration and packet pickup. Using KIMBIA's major event features, the ThunderCloud Subs Turkey Trot designed a registration and packet pick up system that streamlined the process for both participants and race organizers. Since KIMBIA is a system operated by race organizers, rather than a separate registration "portal", the Trot team was able to design a system around their own needs and those of their participants.

For the first time, race participants were able to sign up directly at www.thundercloud.com. Also, for the first time, web registration was left open until the evening before the event. A total of 12,071 registered online. Another 962 participants registered onsite at packet pickup using KIMBIA registration screens to process credit card, cash, or check registrations. Thanks to KIMBIA's bib assignment and packet pickup features, registrants were able to immediately pick up a packet regardless of where or when they chose to register. The system also dramatically reduced the amount of paperwork for volunteers and established the Austin event as one of the greenest major events.

11.30.2009 Release Notes

maubin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:56:24 +0000

The November 30 release of KIMBIA improves usability for administrators and end users alike. This release introduces a new tally table feature to help donors and registrants preview charges on a single page form as well as improved Control Panel terminology to make things simpler for the KIMBIA administrator. Please review the following document to learn more... Release Notes - November 30, 2009

2009 Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot: Another record year!

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:56:11 +0000

The 2009 Capital One Bank Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot, the nation’s largest Thanksgiving Day race, set a new record for online registrations this year.

This year’s Turkey Trot handled 16,824 online registrations, and also set a new, single-day record with 1,682 online registrations.

This is the second year in a row of record growth.

For more information about the Capital One Bank Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot visit: http://www.thetrot.org

11.09.2009 Release Notes

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:25:54 +0000

The November 9 release of KIMBIA improves the usability of the KIMBIA reporting engine with a report selection guide and an updated color scheme. Please review the following document to learn more...
Release Notes - November 9, 2009

2010 USA FIT Marathon & Half Marathon Registration on KIMBIA

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:16:13 +0000

Registration for the 2010 USA FIT Marathon & Half Marathon in Sugar Land, TX benefiting the Fort Bend Education Foundation is on KIMBIA. Through the use of KIMBIA's event and fundraising technology, USA FIT is able to keep the participants engaged on the USA FIT site by hosting a Kimbia form on their own site - the user never leaves the USA FIT site to register for the race.

You can register for the event at
http://usafitmarathon.com/raceinfo.php

Configuring automatic additional fees

admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:20:37 +0000

Many KIMBIA customers provide premium items along with donations which have associated fulfillment costs. Similarly, customers setting up events may need to add additional fees based on the participant's selected registration type.

It is easy to add these fees in KIMBIA and, importantly, tie different fees to different donation levels or registration types.

In this example, a KIMBIA administrator is configuring a donation form with two gift options with associated premiums and two gift options without premiums. KIMBIA fundraising applications can be configured to charge additional fees unique to each premium item and not add additional fees if a straight gift is selected.

Step 1
In the Question Library, create a multiple choice single response question but add only one response.

Now repeat the same process and create another question for the other premium item.

Step 2
Create a new fundraiser and add donation levels.

Step 3
In Donation Questions, add the two questions you created. Edit the questions, making them required, and inputing the additional amount to be added.

Step 4
Back on the donation questions screen, click on the "Asked for all donation levels" link below each question and specify the donation level associated with the additional fee question.

That's it. With this configuration, any donor selecting one of the premium items will automatically see an additional amount automatically added, so the payment screen will look like this.

If the donor selects the other premium item, the other fee will be added. If they donor chooses the non-premium donation and elects to specify and donation amount, no additional fee will be added.

As we mentioned at the top, the process is exactly the same for adding additional fees to specific registration types. For example, if a race is being conducted by a running club, the club might add a "one day membership fee" for non-members participating in the event.

KIMBIA Payment Gateway Setup

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:00:51 +0000

UPDATE 10/23/09: We've updated our Payment Gateway Setup document with updated gateways and instructions.

KIMBIA supports a number of internet payment gateways. The attached PDF lists compatible payment gateways and the details the information we need for each when setting up an instance of KIMBIA.

KIMBIA connects directly with a customer’s payment gateway account. By tying directly into your gateway account, you receive the money once the charge has been processed.

NOTE: Recurring payments are only supported through Sage Payment Solutions.

KIMBIA Payment Gateway Set Up

KCET powers latest pledge drive with KIMBIA

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:03:48 +0000

KCET, a PBS station in Los Angeles, created multiple unique KIMBIA donation forms for their latest pledge drive. With a form for each program on the air, KCET was able to encourage "contextual giving" in their donors by providing membership levels and thank you gifts that were relevant to viewers of specific programming.

KIMBIA's flexible reporting system also enabled KCET to create and download custom reports that could be imported directly into their donor management and fulfillment system.

http://support.kcet.org/site/PageServer?pagename=nolfnv_support_makeadonation

Paul Quinn College creates and distributes KIMBIA donation forms

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:00:53 +0000

Paul Quinn College created a set of donation forms and distributed them to two sites on the web in support of their mission.

They created a unique donation site and a news blog that contained a distributed form. By expanding their web presence with KIMBIA-powered forms, they've created a fundraising network to help increase their donations.

http://www.supportpqc.com/donate.php

Joyful Heart Foundation launches KIMBIA donation form

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:00:01 +0000

The Joyful Heart Foundation needed to replace their old donation system - which sent supporters off their site to process their donations.

They were able quickly able to deploy a KIMBIA powered solution, and by keep supporters on their site through the whole donation process, increased their donors' confidence and loyalty in the online giving process.

http://www.joyfulheartfoundation.org/donateonline.htm

Question: what size should my form widget be?

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:58:32 +0000

By default, the KIMBIA form widget is designed to work in areas of 180px to 600px In terms of KIMBIA best practices, we recommend the following guidelines ...

More space equals more money
The smaller it is, or the less it is featured, the less it will be used.
Big enough for what you want to do
e.g. bigger than your video player/images etc. that will be embedded in the form.
Some points of reference about widths on the web
- 625 pixels is the default central column size on Blogger
- 425 pixels is the default size of an embedded YouTube video or Google map
These are both comfortable presentation sizes.
Below 300 pixels it starts to get too small
better than nothing but significantly less used than wider forms.

Placing a widget in a Sidebar

When first evaluating where to install your widget, you may find it convenient to place your widget on every page of your website by placing it in the sidebar of a page template. Beware: depending on the existing content in the sidebar, this may work against your fundraising/registration goals.

If your sidebar currently contains items that are unrelated to the content of the page (links to external websites, ads, promotional items etc.) our experience shows that your existing web users will consider any new items in the sidebar also be unrelated, and therefore not a focal point.

If the sidebar is the only viable solution, we strongly recommend:

customizing the look and feel of your form through a custom CSS stylsheet that allows your form widget to stand out from other sidebar items
Placing the form at the top of the sidebar and hopefully 'above the fold' so it will grab your visitor's attention