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In tough times like these needs never been greater, yet the financial resources nonprofit organizations devoted to meeting needs are so much more limited.

 

That makes it extra imperative for these worthy groups to more effectively reach out, engage and motivate people to support their causes.

 

In a pair of timely moves, Convio -- which provides hosted online marketing, fundraising, advocacy and constituent relationship management software and services to nonprofit organizations – has unveiled its new Convio Web Services. This is a new set of standard interfaces for building client applications that retrieve and synchronize data with Convio.

 

The company has also delivered several new APIs and launched a new developer version of its Open web site, which offers improved documentation as well as access to more than 60 APIs (application programming interfaces) at open.convio.com. 

These new and enhanced solutions should help nonprofit organizations bolster their incomes and outreach. Nonprofit organizations used Convio to process $777 million in online donations during 2008: a 72 percent increase over 2007. 

Convio clients sent more than 3.1 billion e-mails to constituents during that period with an industry leading deliverability rate in excess of 95 percent. Charities of all types used Convio to power more than 3,500 web domains as well as complete 44 million advocacy calls to action.

The new Convio Web Services follow the SOAP standard, in which all messages between the client and server follow a particular secure XML format. In addition, all supported operations are described in a machine-readable document written in the Web Services Description Language, or WSDL. The combination of SOAP and WSDL makes it easy to create Convio-aware applications with most popular development environments, including Java and .NET (News - Alert).

“Convio’s web services has made it possible for us to efficiently and effectively help clients move massive amounts of data back and forth between Convio and Revolution (News - Alert) Online,” said Gina VanderLoop, president and CEO, ROI Solutions. “By embracing open technologies, Convio is helping to break down the barriers between systems and is making it easier to access and share data than ever before. The impact is great and allows clients to have up-to-date information in one place and provides better and more strategic marketing opportunities for our clients.”

At the same time Convio’s rich set of APIs empowers organizations to create custom experiences that result in higher activity levels and deeper engagement. Convio currently offers APIs to customize the constituent management, donation, team fundraising, events and authentication experience, and now there are new capabilities offered through the API set, including:

*Designated Giving. This allows an organization to incorporate designated giving options into their custom built donation forms;

*Flexible Sustainer Giving. This permits an organization to incorporate donor-defined recurring giving schedule options into their custom built donation forms;

*Participant Center. This solution helps an organization to build a custom participant center experience for their race participants; 

*Address Book. This tool helps organization to build a custom address book management experience for their constituents.

Charity Dynamics is one of several partners and developers that have leveraged the open platform to connect applications such as for the iPhone (News - Alert), YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon Payments, to Convio’s online fundraising, marketing and advocacy platform. 

Convio’s open platform easily integrates to build solutions with Salesforce.com (News - Alert) and other cloud-computing environments. The organization said the Convio solution has helped it and others reach, engage and inspire people to support their causes like never before.

“With Convio’s APIs for fundraising, donor management and social media, we have been able to help organizations of all sizes to use video, mobile applications and other tools to more effectively customize and enhance the donor experience while achieving new levels of success,” said Donna Wilkins, president of Charity Dynamics, a provider of comprehensive online solutions for nonprofits and authorized partner in the Convio Solution Provider program. “Our Boundless Fundraising application, for example, leverages Convio’s open platform and has enabled nonprofits to raise more than $8 million since the beginning of 2009 alone. 

“As the Internet continues to redefine online marketing and fundraising, it is critical that nonprofits are able to tie their online efforts to fundraising, advocacy, donor and constituent relationship management systems if they want to fulfill their missions—open platforms like Convio make that possible.”

Convio's new site includes updated news, documentation, and examples that will make it easier for developers to be successful in their use of Convio’s open technology.

“Leveraging APIs, web services and excellent documentation allows us to create highly extensible and personal campaigns around Convio,” said Tom Camerlinck, CIO, Greenpeace. “Having access to quality documentation around an open platform allows our developers to focus their time and effort on value added integration and applications. Our technical staff leverages the core Convio product to create and integrate applications that meet our unique needs and the unique expectations of our donors and other supporters.”