I love GetActive, which is a company that manages the email lists and online marketing for many of this great nation’s top nonprofit organizations. They have a nice eCRM — which usually means customer relationship management (or constituent relationship management) which, in English, means they track people who interact with you online, most often by email. They have also added a CMS product — content management system — to their offering and have had some success selling that. Our client AJWS has been considering the CMS, so that their CRM and CMS will be on one platform — meaning one vendor and one training.
Now, GetActive announced last week, they are merging with Convio. So, the three majors who provide these services to the nonprofit world will become two. (The other is Kintera, which is a public company, so everyone can watch as they not-so-slowly bleed cash.)
GetActive and Convio are selling the sell-out as GetActive’s great CMS combined with Convio’s great CRM. Huh? I could be wrong, but I think the biggest part of GetActive’s business - and what everyone knows them for — is the email management, constituent management, online advocacy/fundraising management, which is all the CRM.
Here is something from the press release:
The acquisition will enable Convio to offer the most complete set of Internet solutions available that are specifically designed for nonprofits, associations and institutions of higher education. Convio plans to leverage GetActive’s strong expertise in advocacy, its highly regarded content management platform, as well as the company’s strong services operation based in Washington, D.C. The combined company will serve more than 1,400 customers.
Reading between the lines, what I hear is that Convio wants GetActive’s Washington office and connection to the advocacy organizations that are GetActive’s bread and butter. It also seems that GetActive has more customers than Convio but we can assume that GetActive’s are on average smaller and less profitable.
The CEO of GetActive sent out an email to their clients today. This kind of language makes me worry:
Client Migrations
GetActive and Convio have given a lot of thought to client migrations from the GetActive eCRM platform to the Convio eCRM platform. Efforts are already underway to identify the differences in functionality between the eCRM platforms. We have also begun discussing plans and ideas to make these as smooth as possible for our clients.
It is our explicit goal that clients will not pay fees for their migration to the Convio eCRM platform and that disruptions to their important work will be minimized. However, given the potential for unknown variables and the likelihood that clients may want to take this opportunity to implement Convio features previously unavailable from GetActive, there are some atypical scenarios that may require fees. For example, the decision to add integrated peer events or e-commerce functionality not currently offered by GetActive. An initial migration plan will be reviewed with clients by March 30, 2007.
OK… I have no idea what this really means, and they probably don’t yet either. One thing this means is, we will charge you if this whole thing turns out to be too much work. It might all work out fine in the end. But if I was deciding right now what to do, I would ask a lot of hard questions, get some guarantees in writing, and look seriously at the alternatives.
Kintera is trying to capitalize on all of this:
The proposed merger of Convio and GetActive, two niche product providers of nonprofit software, creates uncertainty regarding the integration of technology platforms, culture, and which platform survives.
“In this rapidly growing market, consolidation can be expected among technology providers. Nonprofits shouldn’t be forced onto a platform that wasn’t part of their initial analysis,” said Richard N. LaBarbera, Kintera COO.
He’s got a point, but they should be careful with their words. Given their current state at Kintera I wouldn’t be surprised if soon we were hearing all of these guys announce the newly formed GetConvioKintera.