Power comes with responsibilities, but the greatest of human power in today’s context—the political power—comes along with the cyber responsibility, too. Pamphlets, audio and video clippings, word of mouth communication, banquet hosting and personal solicitation are all old and merely serving the purpose by draining money exorbitantly. Sensing this rickety process of popularity-building and fund raising, a few American politicians have gone world wide via the Web. This not only makes investments intelligent but also makes sure that profits still remain for the politicians.

Now, take a different scenario. A non-profit organization is losing most of its money in reaching its members and companies to raise funds. The calls it does, the shows it organizes, the traveling it fixes up and many other unrecognized activities are all costing dips into the already-shrinking pot. To reach each donor personally, by the shortest possible way— a direct mail or a telephone appeal—and telling him or her what the agenda for a proposed meeting is, will cost a minimum of $1, which can make a non-profits feel desperate, when the members are, say 50000. So, to avoid this unwise expense non-profitable organizations have also started looking towards the Internet.

Before politicians and non-profitable organizations could even know what and how much the Internet could do to them, some technologists were trying to build software to help these people do their dealings in a logical and the most efficient way. Convio is one such company today that maintains a big clientele including the democratic candidate for American Presidential election Howard Dean, the New York mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer and seven others on the political front. And also non-profitable systems like, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Easter Seals and Million Mom March.

To Make Both Ends Meet
Convio, a Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) company, as it labels itself, creates specialized software that harness e-mail and the Web for fund raising, cultivating long-term relationships with members and donors. Though, most of the profits are from the long-term retention of non-profitable organizations, Convio also serves its time-framed political campaigns, which garners two-three percent of its revenue.

In 2003, the Dean camp employed Convio’s technology to enable online donations, email campaigns, and recruitment tools. To keep up its work pace in Internet politicking Convio in turn employed 8 workers—two on data base, six on application servers and another two on email servers. Within a short six months, the Dean’s campaign raised $11 million over the Internet. And in no time, other politicians also learnt the wise works of Internet requests and were looking to Convio and its genre of soft ware developers to back them.

This new-media reality software is building a strong customer base among the nonprofit bodies providing strategy in addition to their online efforts. Convio is also providing marketing consultancy to help nonprofit organizations use the Web to run their operations a lot more efficiently. Its competitors “I Stand For” provides only software facility and Salesforce.com provides technology for commercial organization.

“Nonprofit organizations and political campaigns are all operating under limited budgets, so money is a major factor in choosing a tech vendor. Also, they typically have limited technology-savvy staff, which means that software must be easy to use,” says Vinay Bhagat the founder and Chief strategy officer of Convio.

Service Platform
Though the ASP model was fading off post the Internet boom, Bhagat still believed in sticking on to it, as he knew it was the right model that blends well with the web. “People are concerned about the effectiveness, the efficiency and the low cost, but not about the software itself, so the apt choice was the Application Service Provider model,” says he.

When the service had first started, there was lot of skepticism over the ASP model and its venture into the field of nonprofits. But, Bhagat had no doubts regarding its growth, as all the groundwork—intensive six months research and interviews with nonprofits—for it was done and it was this market that needed change in user-interface of software.

Convio: Now, Then and Later
Named in the Forbes 2004 list of private technology companies, Convio presently has a 97-employees workforce and is among the very few firms into viral marketing and more personalized interactions. Bulks of its customers are the nonprofit bodies but its foray into political spectrum—especially through Dean—was a high-volume and media-savvy one. Convio made revenues of $7million in 2003 and hopes to double it in the next fiscal year. “My vision was to be an integrated marketing system and with a centralized single database. Today we have achieved it,” says Bhagat. Five years since its formation, Convio has already built around 12 software packages.

Back in 1998, Bhagat began his rigorous research in learning the inefficiency in the online donation systems, also the unnecessary money invested in the direct marketing, which was estimated to be $13 billion a year. He knew his potential market could be the nonprofits and decided to steer software into a much user-friendly format. His website content management tools, email marketing combined with specific nonprofit functionality for online fund raising, email campaigning has all got Convio a good customer base. And finally, Bhagat chose to work on the ASP model.

In short time, the company sees reaching the $100 million mark and also going public. “Though competitors in this arena are still few, the potential in this market is enormous,” says Bhagat. “In the future we dream to grow big into an international company, but right now we have a small footprint in the European market and we are looking forward to build upon it.” Convio will also not just bind itself as a software developer but also concentrate on strategic consulting. “With the experience gained in the kind of work the nonprofits indulge in; what gifts they get and what emails they click on, we aim to give analytical, reporting and marketing consultancy to other nonprofits.”

The most innovative program Convio is tied up with is the initiative to bring the donors in the principle world of education through fund raising—by which individuals can contribute funds to universities and this in turn would help the higher education. A true altruistic cause—profitable, yet not-for-profit.