A Database for Rivers and Watershed Organizations

LeadGreen.org and River Network have worked together to develop a standardized database for rivers and watershed organizations and are looking for a handful of groups who wish to join in the second cohort of groups currently using it. The WaterGrass database has been customized by LeadGreen.org on the foundation of the popular Salesforce web database, currently used by many watershed organizations. It's currently being used by Alabama Rivers Alliance and West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

Service Offered

Database

The Watergrass Team installs for you a Salesforce Enterprise database customized for watershed organizations, which we call the “WaterGrass” database. It’s designed to track contacts (people), accounts (organizations, families), and contributions (money, volunteer hours, in-kind donations). It allows you to plan campaigns (activist or fundraising) and then reminds you to follow through on them, step by step. Use of the Salesforce database is a donation from the Salesforce Foundation, free for nonprofits for up to ten users.

Reports and Output Forms

The database includes basic reports, mail merge templates, mass-email templates, data views and other data output formats which are useful for watershed groups generally.

Support – Technical

We will provide support to a core group users in your organization in areas such as:
o Understanding the Salesforce Data Structure and Entering Data
o Emails and Mass Emails
o Creating templates for print and for emails
o Merges with Word for thank-you letters
o Setting up the activities and tracking hours for a river cleanup, fundraising events, or similar activities
o Setting up and tracking a major donor campaign
o Tweaking the database – changing field names, etc.
During the first month the WaterGrass Team will provide 6 hours of remote training and support. Thereafter you will receive one hour of custom support per month, as well as participation in a monthly one-hour conference call with other WaterGrass users to discuss topics of common interest, such as preparations for upcoming year-end appeals.

Support – Fundraising and Volunteer Management

Our support is designed to go beyond technical issues. The WaterGrass team will support you as you help your whole organization to adopt the database, because that improves the quality of the data and hence your total results. The monthly support calls with other WaterGrass users will also encourage you to use and maintain best practices in fundraising, volunteer management, and planning, such as regular contacts with major donors.

Data Migration

If you’re already using a spreadsheet or database, you’ll need to migrate your data to WaterGrass. Data migration is almost always a headache, but if you have a large body of historical data, it’s worth doing because it represents years of your work and allows you to compare future and past fundraising performance.

We will provide instructions and spreadsheets into which you export your existing data. (If you want us to, we can do this for an additional fee.)

After you export your accounts and contacts, we will import up to 500 records and their donations at no charge. We’ll give you an estimate of the cost for over 500 accounts and contacts and for importing previous donations and campaigns. From our experience, here are some estimates for larger databases: 1,500 contacts and 6,000 donations tracked by mailing, ten hours. 6,000 contacts and 20,000 historical donations tracked by mailing, using custom fields, fifteen to twenty hours. Our consulting rate is $65 per hour, well below the current standard.

If you’re not already using a spreadsheet or database, or if you have fewer than 300 records, it probably makes most sense just to enter your data manually.

Customization

We will show you how to make minor changes, such as changing field names. For substantive changes, such as adding tables or functionality, we will charge our normal (low) consulting fee.

Upgrades

We will upgrade your database free of charge with new features developed in our work with other watershed organizations (insofar as those features are generically applicable.)

Cost

First Year - $2,500 + costs of data migration and customization

Includes the initial installation of the WaterGrass template, with support and training for one year. This sum can be paid in four installments, invoiced quarterly.

Full Support for Subsequent Years – approximately $1,250 annually

Includes ongoing support, training, and upgrades.

Use of Database for Subsequent Years without Support – Free

If you don’t want the support, you may continue to use the WaterGrass database in following years free of charge, so long as you maintain your donated license with SalesForce. Salesforce updates are provided automatically. WaterGrass updates and training materials are not. If you need support, you can purchase it from us at our consulting rate.

Commitments

The WaterGrass team agrees to provide low-cost, high-quality service specialized to rivers and watershed organizations. It will respond within 24 hours to requests for assistance, except in extreme circumstances. It will share what it learns about the river and watershed movement with its client organizations and with the broader movement.

The organization understands that implementing any new database requires an investment of time, which it agrees to give. In particular, it agrees to create and follow through on a plan for gradual adoption of the database throughout the organization.

The organization agrees to make one of its ten free user licenses available for the WaterGrass team perpetually, so that it may work in the database. It agrees to let the WaterGrass team monitor its data in the aggregate (no data on individual contacts or accounts will be ever be shared), so that the team can monitor the state of rivers and watershed organizations as a group.

After the first year, if the organization chooses to continue to use the WaterGrass database without ongoing support or updates, it may do so free of charge. It does not need to continue with WaterGrass support.

If the organization decides to move to another database, the WaterGrass team will export its data into standard .csv files so that they may be imported into the other database.

The WaterGrass Team

• Baird Straughan. Prior to the last twenty years of consulting, training and research for environmental and conservation groups, Baird designed databases for nonprofits. A frequent presenter at River Rally, he’s one of the silver-hairs involved in the Watershed Support Network. www.leadgreen.org
• Carl Paulsen. Program Director at the New Hampshire Rivers Council, Carl has helped many other rivers and watershed organizations to design and install their databases. He was an early adopter of ebase and has worked as a database consultant to non-profits since 2001.
• Cory Crownover. Cory is a Salesforce data specialist who works from Asheville, where she boats, hikes, and studies nutrition. A stickler for precision, Cory focuses on clean data transfers.
• Francis Scudellari. Francis is a web designer and customer support specialist who has provided support for large commercial fundraising databases. Based in Chicago, he also draws, writes poetry and publishes a neighborhood newspaper.
• Amy O’Connor. Amy is one of the best all-around nonprofit organization development consultants out there. She began her career over 20 years ago building a database of activists and direct mail supporters, and will provide her insights on group conference calls.

What They Say About WaterGrass:

“Having a database (WaterGrass) that is able to provide us with clear and detailed tracking information about our donors and members is such a blessing! We are finally getting a good picture of our situation and taking important steps toward growing our individual donor program, an essential effort in these tough economic times.” – Cindy Lowry, Executive Director, Alabama Rivers Alliance

“As someone responsible for overall fundraising planning, Watergrass has allowed me to get a very clear picture of how our individual campaigns are doing, and how they feed into our overall strategy. The well designed interface and responsive support has meant that I have used the database more in two months than I used our previous system in the course of a year. I feel as if we now have the right tool to take our fundraising to the next level.” – Shanda Minney, Executive Director, West Virginia Rivers Coalition

For more information, contact Baird Straughan, (301) 657-8121 or baird@leadgreen.org.

WaterGrass Application

Footnote:
1 The SalesForce database is currently the fastest-growing web-based customer relationship management system in the U.S.. SalesForce’s founder has a strong commitment to nonprofits, and makes SalesForce available for free to nonprofits. River Network, Milwaukee Riverkeeper, Potomac Riverkeeper, River Alliance of Wisconsin and many other groups use it, and an extensive network of nonprofit SalesForce consultants has sprung up.