Conches

Salesforce.com and Google

Why Salesforce.com and Google Apps will Change the Game for Nonprofits

Nonprofit organizations should not need to deal with the plumbing of technology.  They should be able to move ALL of their resources on to the Internet (into the cloud) and concentrate their technical and creative talents on making the world a better place.  To date, this has been nothing more than a nice idea. However, that all changed yesterday. There are a lot of resources out there about exactly what is available and exactly what it will and will not do.

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Salesforce.com Foundation

I don't blog about my J O B much.  However, we just put on an event in NY that I am very proud of.  (...of which I am very proud.) 

I started at Salesforce.com Foundation in September of 2000.   In that year we donated our first instance of salesforce.com to a nonprofit organization, Business Today.  It wasn't until 2004 that we hit triple digits.  As of today, we have donated licenses to over 3,000 nonprofits in 56+ countries.  It is reasonable to say that our work has increased the efficacy of the global social sector.  (Maybe a very small amount but it is a reasonable thing to say.)

The On Demand Nonprofit

What if we could remove the complexity of technology as an obstacle to social good? What if a nonprofit could become dramatically more efficient by using on demand, Internet delivered services? Looking at the current landscape of nonprofit technology products and services, this seems like a timely conversation.

Web 2 glue: a possible business model

Project Management:

Seems like this already exists. Personally, I really like Backit.com. It is lightwieght but I really like that about it. There is aslso Basecamp.com, DreamTeam (salesforce.com plugin), Writely.com and I am sure there is more... But do they have all the pieces that I want...

So what:

To create a wholely new project management service may be smart but only if there is a real need. What seems more interesting is to look at business models that involve become web 2.0 glue, providing best-practices, services, "environments" where web 2 services can be stitched together. I have not seen a lot of this out there yet. Again, the idea is, use your programming muscle to stitch together multiple applications (the google suite, 37signals stuff, salesforce.com stuff, others...) in such a way that end users can simply choose their functionality from a menu of options that you provide.

The Business Web, The Community Web and Net Neutrality

Salesforce.com, the On Demand CRM company (and the corporate in the corporate foundation that employees me) is forwarding a new meme, the Business Web. The central idea here is that the Internet is more than a network, it is a platform. The pitch centers around the cost savings that come with:

 

1. a dramatically reduced IT infrastructure

2. a transparent and dynamically adjustable ROI

3. the leveraging of a common platform (the Internet) to create increased flexibility, customization and integration of mission critical services.