AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 6, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Easter Seals -- the nation's 21st largest charity (according to Nonprofit Times) -- has picked Convio(R) to help support nationwide growth of its "Walk With Me" event series. This expands Easter Seals' existing partnership with Convio, the leading provider of Internet software and services that enable nonprofits to optimize fundraising, marketing, communications and overall management of constituent relationships.
Easter Seals (www.easter-seals.org), which provides services to help children and adults with disabilities gain greater independence, launched Walk With Me last year in 11 U.S. cities as its new national signature event to raise funds and awareness about the organization's mission and services. In 2003, Easter Seals plans to more than double the number of walks to 25; 35 walks are forecast for 2004; and the organization hopes to have 300-500 walks within eight years. As the walkathon grows, Easter Seals will need an increasingly scalable and reliable partner for online management of the event and is using Convio TeamRaiser(TM).
"Managing these events over the Internet is a necessity because as the walk series grows, it would be time-consuming and cost-prohibitive to use traditional methods of separate databases, manual reporting and -- let's face it -- index cards in shoe boxes," said Peggy Berg, Easter Seals National Director of Event Marketing. "In addition, our initial experience indicates that the average funds raised by an online event participant are considerably higher than funds raised by a participant who only uses traditional methods of acquiring sponsors because the online participant can easily email all friends and family, wherever they might be, to sponsor him or her as a walker."
Easter Seals has chosen Convio for several reasons. "After carefully evaluating vendors, we decided to use Convio because the tools have an easy-to-use, intuitive interface for both the public user and our internal administrators," said Shirley Sexton, Easter Seals Director of Internet Marketing. "Convio's commitment to making its tools accessible to people with disabilities was an important factor in our decision. And by having our event tools highly integrated with other online efforts, we can move beyond event management to constituent relationship management."
Convio Empowers Volunteers
With Convio TeamRaiser, local Easter Seals volunteer team leaders will have user-friendly, online tools to build Web pages (without knowledge of HTML) that explain why they are participating and that motivate others to get involved. They also will recruit new constituents by sending relatives and friends personalized emails with links to these personal Web pages for quick, simple event registration or making donations. People can sign up to participate as individuals, rather than as part of a team.
Convio makes it possible for Easter Seals affiliates to streamline management and administration of their walks and also put a "human face" on the organization's mission. Each affiliate assigns "honorary ambassadors" -- local Easter Seals' clients -- to communicate with participants via personalized email and Web site content on all matters related to the walk, including updates on fundraising progress, event day logistics and post-event reports. Participants initially get to know their ambassadors through pre-event online communications and then meet them at the walk.
Easter Seals already works extensively with Convio. In August 2002, the organization re-launched its national Web site and email marketing system with Convio. Currently, nearly 30 of the group's 90-plus affiliates power their Web sites and email marketing with Convio, with 54 affiliates -- or 60 percent -- projected to be running on Convio by August 2003. Easter Seals is migrating its entire organization to a single Internet technology platform and constituent database for more coordinated, integrated fundraising, marketing and communications.
"Any nonprofit that wants to run efficient and successful special events such as walks or runs should invest in easy-to-use, high return-on-investment online tools, whether the organization is launching a new event or wants to boost the performance of an existing one," said Vinay Bhagat, Convio's founder and CEO. "These tools empower a group to leverage volunteers and other supporters as fundraisers and ambassadors in the local community, automate event administration which reduces the burden on staff, and through ongoing communications, convert participants to loyal supporters."
About Easter Seals
For more than 80 years, Easter Seals has been providing services that help children and adults with disabilities gain greater independence. Easter Seals' primary services are medical rehabilitation, job training and employment, child care, adult day services, and camping and recreation -- benefiting more than one million individuals and their families each year through 450 centers nationwide. For more information about Easter Seals or to locate an Easter Seals service site near you, visit http://www.easter-seals.org.
About Convio
Austin-based Convio is the leading online Constituent Relationship Management (eCRM) company serving the nonprofit sector. Convio provides Internet software and services to help nonprofits increase their effectiveness in attracting, engaging and retaining constituents to provide funding and other forms of support. The Convio software solution consists of six product suites: Special Events, eFundraising, eMarketing, Advocacy, Content Management, and Constituent Center. The Convio platform automatically shares data among all six product suites, giving nonprofits a unified view of each constituent so staff can conduct more personalized and targeted marketing. Convio also offers services to help nonprofits adopt online marketing best practices.
In addition to Easter Seals, Convio's clients include Mothers Against Drunk Driving, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, University of Texas at Austin's Texas Exes, National Trust For Historic Preservation and KCET (PBS, Los Angeles). For more information, please visit www.convio.com.