Our Blog

 When we're working on any branding projects, one of the most important, yet difficult tasks, is coming up with a solid mission statement. It's the one-liner that sums up what an organization is and what they mean to the world around them. Here are a few of our do's and don't on the perfect mission statement for your organization. Three Tips f...

One of the common questions we get from clients (and potential clients) revolve around website security; what are the dangers, and what things can be done to minimize risk. For the sake of this article, we'll focus on two CMS (content management systems) - Joomla and Wordpress - and things you can do within 24 hours to tighten securi...

If you don’t have an extremely solid understanding of what PCI Compliance is, and you take credit cards in any way, then I beg you to read this article in its entirety. It’ll be the best 5 minutes of your week. Now that I’ve set the expectations high, let’s get on with it...

What the serious heck is PCI Compliance and PCI DSS?PCI compliance is a phrase fairly unknown to most people, but a phrase that can send chills down the back of those familiar with e-commerce. Why? Because it can be super-scary, and I’m here to make you feel a bit better about it.PCI Compliance, or Payment Card Industry Compliance is born out of something called PCI DSS (Data Security Standards). There’s a lengthy history of PCI DSS, but I’ve summed it up for our wonderful readers with a very simple dialogue, as follows:Internet: “It’s 2006, and OMG, so many people are using credit cards to make online purchases with me!”Bad people in the world: “Wow, it’s 2006 and so many people are using their credit cards online. I can totally steal the credit card information super easily and make fraudulent purchases at places you’d never shop.”Smart techy people: “We need to form a governing body, and set some rules set in place to stop the bad people from doing bad things to people with poor taste in where they shop. Ok, let’s start PCI DSS, and it’ll be a list of things that companies must do to protect consumers from said bad people.”And then, my friends: PCI DSS was born.Should you care about PCI Compliance and PCC DSS?Yes. If you’re a business owner taking payment, then this article is meant for you. If you’re a consumer, then you should also know if a company is PCI Compliant.Why business owners should really, really care?If your transactions are hitting your server in any way, you’re liable. If there’s a breach, you can be fined from $5,000 to $500,000 per month.  What Can You Do about PCI Compliance and PCC DSS?There are a few options. If you’re looking to read through hundreds of pages PCI DSS guidelines, then have at it. However, since the interwebs are filled with such glorious e-commerce platforms, they can take the heavy lifting and let you do what you're good at: selling goods and services. Many e-commerce platforms have likely invested millions to make their platforms as secure as possible. Let’s go over some basic terminology to ensure we’re cruising down the same boat.

E-commerce package: This is what sells your products. This may or may not be part of your main website.Merchant's web server: Where your e-commerce is hosted. If using a package such as Shopify or the likes, this is most likely also your web server.

Payment Gateway: This is what connects the e-commerce package to the banks. Think of the payment gateway as the super gossipy kid in class that's passing notes back and forth to everyone. Settlement Bank: This is where your funds get settled (aka your bank).So someone buys a Grumpy Cat t-shirt off your site (E-commerce package), it goes through the payment gateway, your payment gateway chats with the e-commerce platform (which may or may not be part of your site) and eventually - into your bank account. Within that process, it could also hit the merchant web server. In that case, you'd be totally open for PCI DSS scrutiny. We good? Cool. Let’s go on...So instead of using an e-commerce platform *and* a payment gateway that hits your own servers, you can use a fully hosted solution (which lives on their servers - their liability). Anytime you’re evaluating anything that accepts payments, be sure you ask about this aspect in writing.“Are you 100% fully PCI Compliant?”Surprisingly, many vendors will start to dance and avoid the question. If they do this - run, don’t walk - run away. We’ve had conversations with extremely well-known form services that “leave it up to the customer to handle PCI compliance.” Some e-commerce platforms are fully compliant, and take pride (as they should) in it. For example, Shopify boasts full compliancy, however it’s also important to ensure any payment gateways they work with also claim the same. This is imperative. On the other hand, BigCommerce seems to be a bit more vague with their statement: “BigCommerce takes care of the vast majority of the steps toward PCI compliance for any customer on our platform.” (via https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/pci-compliance/). *As a disclaimer - we don't get any kickbacks or anything from Shopify: we just really like them.If you take a look at the two links above, you’ll see a really noticeable difference: Shopify is quite straightforward about it. “Yes, Shopify is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant. This compliance extends to all online stores powered by Shopify,” says their site. This, compared to BigCommerce, is very different. BigCommerce’s explanation seems to go on and on, and dancing around the fact a bit.These are the red flags to look for. BigCommerce may be PCI DSS compliant, but it’s a bit difficult to tell.In general, when the payment is hosted elsewhere (say PayPal), it’s safer to know they’re compliant. However, with PayPal’s “on page” payment solution (e.g. Payflow), where the transaction is made on your site (e.g. www.myshop.com/payment) vs. (www.paypal.com), PCI compliance once again becomes a major issue.The same red flags go for anything that receives payment; online forms, event registrations, you name it. These are questions you should be asking yourself, your IT team, your app vendors (e.g. Shopify, Wufoo, etc). The best takeaways I hope you receive from this article are:- Ensure you know what PCI Compliance/ PCI DSS is.- Understand the right questions to ask.- Understand the red flags.- If red flag - then run!If you have any questions on e-commerce, we have a lovely team that’s happy to help. Just give us a shout here.

Lessons learned starting a company.I write about fun things, and other times I write about super-nerdy and technical things. Today, I thought it would be valuable to create a quick list of “musts” (at least IMHO) for anyone that has that crazy/ nagging idea that keeps them up at night. Otherwise, known as the thought of starting their own company.So let’s get on with it…1) You’ll never be your own boss in your start up company.Somewhat typical scenario on a Saturday evening...Me: [Pours another glass of red]Person: “So what kind of stuff do you do for work?”Me: “Oh, I run a digital agency in Ravenswood.” (that’s a northside neighborhood in Chicago for y’all not living in Chicago...)Person: “OMG, like totes OMG, you’re so lucky to be your own boss!”Me: [Pours another glass of red]The above scenario happens on a weekly basis (including the wine part), and couldn’t be further from the truth. Every client is your boss. Not just the hiring person - but literally every single person on the client team. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the truth. If you’re dealing with a project that has 30 people from the client side - then you have 30 bosses. Combine that across a couple hundred projects - and it can be slightly intimidating. Every client, every point of interaction from the people that you’re building things for - they’re your boss.Being your own boss is fictitious. The local, independent coffeeshop owner has her patrons. An up and coming niche author has her readers. Bill Gates had his Board.The President has his constituents.Regardless if you’re on a local or national stage - nobody is their own boss. Ever.2) Know your startup company more than anything else in life.This may seem obvious, but there are a lot of people with a strong love and affinity for something amazing. Someone may love dogs, so opening a doggie day care may seem (and may be!) an amazing idea. However, a passion for something only goes so far. Has that person worked at a doggie day care? Do they know the demand in that area? How many people in that area are Googling for doggie day care services? What’s the profit margins for every single product in that store? What’s the employee turnover in that sector? What kind of insurance is required? The list could go on and on. It comes down to one thing: understanding the minutiae of everything. There’s a point where you can hire smarter people than you to take on certain tasks, but on Day One - you need to be prepared for everything. 3) Be really, really resourceful.Understand what you’re great at and do it yourself. Understand what you’re good at, and learn to be great at it. Understand what you’re really terrible at, and find the most economical way to make it happen.The lowest rated skill as of this posting is the ability to be resourceful.With a plethora of online learning tools (Lynda.com is a fantastic one!), it’s much easier to learn new skills and fill in any gaps.When thinking of starting a company, if you have more “cannots” than “cans”, then starting a new company may not be the best endeavor to pursue. There’s almost *always* a place to begin, and slowly build to something bigger than yourself. Especially in the digital world - there are talented designers/ developers in our on-demand economy that would love to work on a challenging project. 4) Have clear expectations.My first year in business, I think I made around $12,000 in revenue. I launched a digital platform for music teachers, and figured customers will swarm in like tourists leaving a cruise ship in Barbados. Yeah, yeah - I read all of the “it’s not a build it, and they will come” sort of thing. But either my over-optimism or ignorance (or a healthy mix of the two) didn’t prepare me for what would come.The most important thing is setting mental expectations, and don’t give up. Sure - it’s cliche, but nothing rings more true. Nothing amazing comes easy. 5) 60% Digital marketing, 30% CRM, 10% Website.We hear this question a lot for anyone starting a new company: “I’m wanting to start a new (insert company or nonprofit). I have (insert budget here). What do I spend it on?” There’s usually a roundabout answer, but here’s a lovingly blunt one:-Spend the least amount on a site. On Day One - it just really needs to explain who you are, what you do, have great content, and ways to convert visitors to qualified leads.-Spend a bit more (but not a ton) on a CRM (customer relationship management system) to track engagement and communication with prospects or customers. There’s a ton of easy systems to get up and running quickly (we use Active Campaign, and they’re pretty awesome) - you can always upgrade later, if/when needed.-Spend most of your budget on digital marketing (aka getting people to your site). There’s a *lot* that goes into this, and not really in the spirit of this article. Site development is part of digital marketing, technically - but hopefully you get my point. :-)6) 18 hour work days is a thing in your startup company.Yup - I’ve read the “work smarter, not longer.” It’s not true. Expect 16 hour days, and even 24 hour days with food and bio breaks, especially in the first year or two. Those hours will dwindle as you grow, but it’s inevitable there’s going to be a lot of sweat equity that goes into crafting your dream. I agree in “work smarter”, but at the beginning, it needs to be “work smarter, and work longer.”7) Listen to the market and quickly react.You can do all the market research and develop a product or service accordingly, and then you’re going to realize that you got a lot of things right. And… a lot of things wrong. Leave the ego at the door, and constantly adjust based upon what you’re hearing, and how people are using your product or service.We started out as a platform for music teachers. Then, a lot of music nonprofits came to us needing help with using digital to raise a lot of money. We created a spin-off of the music platform into a nonprofit platform that combined social networking and fundraising (before Kickstarter). That evolved to being a full-service digital agency.In 2009, I never planned for any of this, but instead - went where the current took us. 8) Start surrounding yourself with people that make you betterKnow your strengths, and capitalize on them. Know your weaknesses, and find good people to fill those roles. Never hire anyone that isn’t smarter than you.9) Look into coworking.While we have a fun, lofty office space that allows dogs (and my 2 year old Golden Retriever comes to the office daily), there were many, many days and nights working from a small desk in a 1 bedroom Chicago apartment. The days bled into nights, the coffee slowly transitioned to wine, and 16 hours would go by realizing I’m still in my pajamas. This thing called human interaction would go by the wayside, and it can take its toll.Depending on where you’re at, coworking is a huge thing, and it’s only becoming bigger. For a monthly fee, you can surround yourself with like-minded professionals starting a company. Simply bouncing ideas around goes a long way. In college, think of how much you learned inside the classroom vs. the ‘real world’ college experiences. Going into coworking is like leaving your tiny dorm and surrounding yourself with peers that encourage each other and help push your start up company to the next level.If your area doesn’t allow coworking, check out local ads for people looking to share their office space. It beats Starbucks, and your clothes won’t perpetually smell like coffee.10) It’s competitive. Be nice (and hopefully that’s yourself).There are zillions of digital agencies out there. While most would disagree with me, I think the supply outmatches the demand. The market has also been flooded with agencies that are focused on the technology itself vs. using it to solve a big business problem. But alas, there are still an abundance of players in this market.When a potential customer is looking at two different companies to work with, and both companies are equal in terms of talent, timeline and cost, the thing that’s going to separate the two will be personality. Be nice, be willing, and always want to make your customers the best they can be.What are your tips for anyone looking to embark on their own startup company? Let us know in the comments below!

You wake up in the morning, and perhaps you grab your phone from your nightstand (because heaven forbid a phone be too far away from us!), and you comb through your emails. You see one from your friend that has a link to a website of cats playing pianos. You click on it, but you can't experience anything because you're experiencing blindness, or pe...

This is the first in a series of blog posts (61 in total!) that will cover the different elements of WCAG compliance. There are tons of official recommendations per the compliance guide here, but for the sake of brevity and efficiency, we'll be focusing on the most common scenarios and easiest ways to make your sites more accessible with the wealth...

The Fancy Name: WCAG 1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded)   This is ensuring that your visitors can understand the gist of video/ audio content in similar ways to those viewing/ hearing the media. I'm a huge fan of applicable learning, so let's take this video of cats flying to Star Wars themes (because what other example would I poss...

Enter heading here... The Fancy Name: 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded) - Level A: Captions are provided for all pre-recorded audio content in synchronized media, except when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labeled as such. This one is pretty easy to understand, so we'll spend more time understanding actionable things you can do...

What does adding audio descriptions to video mean? So there are captions, which I describe in a previous blog article . However ,   an audio description is more of a narrative of what's happening in the video itself. It needs to contain descriptions such as audible pauses, and laughter, as well as elements that make the video informative and/ ...

What does adding live captions mean? More than 5% of the world's people are deaf and/or hard of hearing. Also, around 30 million people in the good ole U.S. of A. have some degree of hearing loss. As our population gets older, this statistic is extremely likely to grow. So there are captions, which I describe in a previous blog article. However, li...

What does adding an audio description mean? Adding audio descriptions is pretty much what it sounds like. It's simply using spoken audio to describe what's happening in your video content. For example, things to be included in the descriptions would be: Describing/ introducing who's speaking Explaining overall setting, and visual elements that are ...

What does this compliance item mean? Captions are helpful for those with auditory impairments, and audio (spoken) descriptions are very helpful as video descriptors. However, sign language adds much more depth to the media; it has expression, personality, and dynamics that simply aren't possible with captions or audio descriptions. This level of co...

Consider these scenarios: Imagine that you're a person experiencing visual impairment. You're a student at a prestigious law school, and you're watching a recording of last week's lecture that was posted online. You have a test next week, and while watching the video you can hear the professor, but you're unable to see what she's writing on the boa...

​What a Media Alternative Means A lot of this Level AAA mandate is a bit redundant if you provided a text description. This mandate is much more in-depth and requires that all audible and visual cues be described in sync with the media. Since a lot of this is already covered, we'll go into a bit more technical detail on how to embed something like ...

The post-Thanksgiving daily blitz of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday will wrap-up with Giving Tuesday - an opportunity to support your favorite nonprofit or 501c3. In order to make your dollar stretch as far as possible, we have a quick and easy methodology to determine *how* to give. The goals are really simple:&...

As part of our mini-project to cover different aspects of WCAG 2.0 in a way that people can understand, this item helps people partake in events that are audio-only (no video). ​We've already covered adding captions to live video broadcasts here . This mandate is extremely similar, except sans video. To keep this short and sweet, the best way to do...

When you're reading a document on the Interwebs, you'll notice several textual elements: page titles, headers, sub-headers, bullets, and supporting body text. When you fill out forms, you'll notice that fields are in order (or they should be!), with notes about requiring fields close to the required fields itself. People experiencing visual impairm...

You’ve worked hard building your brand, but does your brand accurately reflect who you are and what you do? Personally - I use the cocktail party litmus test. When someone asks where I work, do I cringe when saying the name? For quite awhile, the answer was a resounding “yes.”

We’re freshly rebranded - with the process top of mind.

I started SocialRaise back in 2008 as a social fundraising platform, so the name made sense. However, throughout the years we’ve taken an agency approach solving problems for clients by concentrating on digital marketing, technology development, CRM and BI.

In 2008, the name worked - in 2017, not so much. We just relaunched the company as Monday Loves You (more on that below).

What about you? When is it time for your company to rebrand?

Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) is a fancy, tech-ridden phrase that means something quite simple. It helps you organize your people and run a more-efficient organization.

It allows scenarios such as:

If one person attends a bunch of events, but doesn't give any donations, then you know to ask for donations to him differently.If someone clicks several of your emails, but doesn't come to any of your events, maybe you'll want call her with a personal invitation.Your Executive Director can log into a CRM and see a personalized dashboard of all of this week's donations versus to the same time last year.You can break down the "silos" - development, programs/services and volunteers - and better understand how an individual or family truly relates to your organization.You may want to automate your volunteer recruitment and scheduling.Or possibly manage your members better.

It ties your donors, volunteers, staff, board members and constituents under one roof.

CiviCRM

CiviCRM certainly has a polarizing set of pros and cons. CiviCRM is an add-on CRM that's available to organizations running their site on either Drupal or Joomla content management systems. It's community is tight-knit and there's an active forum around troubleshooting and issues. It now has a global community in 20+ languages with 15,000 users.The Pros

I love that CiviCRM is seamlessly integrated with an organization's website (assuming if they are on either Joomla and Drupal, and more recently; Wordpress). Tight integration with a CRM can be terribly time-consuming and pricing. CiviCRM is installed within a few seconds and configuration can start taking place.There are no licensing fees, so you can add users for no additional costs.Easy to customize. Since CiviCRM's code is open-source (e.g. not proprietary to the software company), it's really straightforward to customize to fit exactly how you want it to perform.Smart community of people. We've been on the Civi forums, and its members are usually quick and eager to respond and help an organization out. It's quite refreshing.The functionality, while may take a day or two learning curve, is fairly straightforward once you get the gist of things.

The Cons

There's a delicious plethora of open source CRM systems out in the wild. In this article, we take a look at a few, and give some pros, cons and things to think about for each. To begin a comparison, let's start with SugarCRM, VTiger and CRMery.

First, what is open source CRM?

Open source means the code (all the stuff that makes software work) is openly available for users to modify and adapt. There are quite a few of caveats that go along with this, and you can read more about that here. But, for the sake of this article, it means the code is modifiable. While a vast majority of open source CRM systems are free, open source doesn't always necessarily mean free.

Let's first take a look at SugarCRM

Ah, SugarCRM. It used to be the creme de la creme of open source CRM. It had a community edition that was built from talented developers all over the world, and became a viable option to Salesforce. SugarCRM has an enterprise edition as well that was hosted by Sugar with some additional functionality, however the SugarCRM Community Edition was available as open source. You could download and install it on your own server (needed an Apache setup, with the wiggly-bits of Linux, MySQL and PHP), however the process was uber-straightforward. Not exactly plug n' play, but those with a decent techie-hat could do it in 20 minutes or so.What I love about SugarCRM: Number one is its flexibility. There are some CRMs that are built with some main use-cases in mind, but doesn't necessarily adapt for organizations that need a good amount of flexibility. SugarCRM's Studio Builder is really nifty. It has a drag n' drop interface to easily customize different screens, and amazing access control to provide access for some users, but constricting other users to a tailored view.The reporting dashboards are also a huge plus. Every user can have a different view that's specifically built for him or her.The development community for SugarCRM was also extremely large with several key components offered at no-cost.Oh, and SugarCRM Community Edition is... err... was free.Which brings me to:What I don't love about SugarCRM: SugarCRM, like a dagger to my tender, wounded heart, stopped supporting its own Community Edition and reinforced its dedication to the paid, enterprise edition. This makes me weep. Why? Thousands of super-smart developers gave their time, money and energy devoted to an open source CRM project. Somewhat out of the blue, Sugar announced that it was no longer going to be around.BUT... WAIT THERE'S MORE!Another develop company bridged SugarCRM's Community Edition and is continuing to develop on it under another open source CRM project called SuiteCRM with a download here. It's great to see this project continue!

Let's take a look at VTiger.

VTiger is another open source CRM application that's built from some code used in SugarCRM (I should mention, that SugarCRM *has* really provided tons of benefit to the open source world). VTiger's interface is simple, but it doesn't represent the user interface that today's 2015 users are beginning to be accustomed to (flat design, etc) so there are some basic UI improvements that can be made.But anyways... let's move on. VTiger has really cool tools that make it easy for users to opt-in for certain marketing offers, and the information becomes populated into the CRM. Sure - this is a fairly common element of any CRM, but VTiger's experience makes it a breeze.VTiger's project management feature is also well-developed and easy to use. In many systems, the CRM project management feature tends to be a bit overlooked or an afterthought. With VTiger, I feel like it's part of the forefront of their thinking (which I truly appreciate).VTiger's development community doesn't seem to be as active as what Sugar's used to be, however I think if they can make some key user interface updates to make it more current, then this system would be really beneficial to those looking for a good CRM.

Now let's look at CRMery.

Many people won't recognize CRMery (and for full disclosure, we have no connection with the company besides the fact that we kinda love it). CRMery is a component to be purchased and seamlessly connected in the Joomla CMS (content managment system) backend. The good thing is that it assumes the similar look and feel as the site itself since it's sharing the same design (the same global CSS files for the techie-nerds out there). So for user adoption, this is a huge win.The design trumps the other CRMs on this list. It's clean, it's functional, and it's evident that the user experience was placed smack in the middle of the CRM design and development.The learning curve is a breeze, and it's easy to customize fields for different forms or other calls-to-action.One of the biggest cons of CRMery is the new-ness of it all. From what I gather, it's developed and supported by a small shop (I've chatted with the lead developer, and he's awesome) so there's always a risk of implementing a CRM that may eventually not be developed or supported any longer. I really hope to see this CRM grow, as it has a ton of promise.So there's 3 different open source CRMs. We're looking to do a comparison on some others. Are there any CRMs that you would like to see us compare? Any thoughts about the systems reviewed above? Please let us know in the comments below.Have a CRM Question? Contact us and we'll help.