NPTech News:How has this focus changed in the last 2 years?
Harris: NOZA has officially been around for about two years. Our first two years focused on developing our technology, amassing data, and building relationships with leading data and technology companies in our sector (LexisNexis, Blackbaud, Kintera, Iwave Information Systems, Target America, DonorSearch.net). As we enter our third year our core focus is still the technology and the data. The biggest change for NOZA is occurring right now as we enter the public phase of our own campaign to reach researchers with what is now the most significant source of data of its kind.
NPTech News:What are your current initiatives?
Harris:Our public phase began on October 1st with the re-launch of NOZASEARCH.com. We have completely rebuilt the website to make it faster and easier to research existing prospects, and much easier to build instant prospect lists from scratch. We've also added a folder system enabling our customers to save and manage their prospects. The most popular change to our webservice is that we are now providing free access to our extensive database of nearly 900,000 foundation grant records. Philosophically, this is actually our way of telling the nonprofits to stop spending so much time and resource focusing only on foundations. The free foundation grant records represent only 3% of our data, and only 10% of the total annual private contributions to charity. Access to our database of 25,000,000 individual and company donation records still costs only $25.
NPTech News:How has your market segment changed over the last year?
Harris:We define our market as any nonprofit that needs to raise money from individuals, businesses and foundations. Considering that our webservice entry cost is only $25, we have essentially guaranteed that we have not priced anyone out of our market. The standard business model for philanthropy data providers is to charge several hundred or even thousands of dollars to subscribe to their websites, and target the sales approach to only the largest organizations with the largest fundraising budgets. NOZA considered following the same path early on, but we knew it would prevent our data from reaching those who needed the most help. Finalizing our business model enabled us to finalize our mission statement. Approximately 30,000 new nonprofits were formed last year in the U.S., so I guess you could say NOZA's market segment grew by about 1 percent.
NPTech News:What are the greatest challenges for your customers in adopting and implementing technology for your customers?
Harris:Adopting NOZA's technology is actually really easy. Even the less technically savvy can build instant prospect lists in about 5 minutes, especially if they call us up and take advantage of our free unlimited technical and strategic support. That part is a breeze. What's really hard is getting the leadership of the organization, board members and senior staff, to pick up the phone, set up a meeting, and initiate contact with prospective donors. A great prospect isn't worth much if she isn't solicited. And a solicitation isn't very effective if the prospect hasn't been cultivated. It really comes down to picking up the phone and trying to set up meetings with prospects. Having served as fundraising counsel for numerous campaigns, it is my strong opinion that the number one problem with nonprofit fundraising is the acute shortage of volunteer leaders who have the wherewithal to assist with fundraising in substantive ways. We hope to make the process easier by providing nonprofits with tools to build high affinity and high capacity prospect lists. However, the nonprofit industry as a whole has a long way to go in terms of strengthening major gift cultivation and solicitation capacity.
NPTech News:How are you helping your customers address these challenges?
Harris:Over the coming year NOZA is implementing a strategy to help nonprofits strengthen their effectiveness in creating and sustaining major gift campaigns. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach. We are in contact every day with nonprofits of all shapes and sizes, and at all stages of the nonprofit organization lifecycle. The needs of a mom & pop startup nonprofit are different than those of an organization that has been seeded by foundation support and now needs to transition to independence from foundation-centric support. And this is altogether different than the needs of an established nonprofit gearing up for a major capital campaign. Our approach to addressing these challenges is twofold: (1) Educate and train our customers through phone support, workshops, and by providing best practice guides free of charge from our website, and (2) Connect our customers to the bounty of organizations and resources that already exist such as BoardSource and regional nonprofit resource centers.
NPTech News:Describe your company's position in the industry with regard to the solutions you deliver.
Harris:First and foremost we are a technology company. There was no off-the-shelf technology available to accomplish our goal of creating the world's largest philanthropy research database. We built our technology platform from the ground up and are now part of the emerging ecosystem of vertical search and semantic search. It is conceivable that someone could build a comparable database by manually keying in 26,000,000 million records some have tried. The only way to build something of this scale and still keep it affordable for all nonprofits was to invest heavily in a technological approach. Our company is very fortunate in that all the pieces aligned perfectly for us: visionary investors, world-class engineers, an amazing team, and a huge unmet need in the marketplace. This is our edge.
NPTech News:What do you believe to be the state of the industry in terms of growth, maturity, and availability of viable products to address the technology needs of the nonprofit community?
Harris:I'm amazed at the rate of innovation and the flood of new products and services available in the marketplace, especially with regard to customer relationship management and software-as-a-service models. At the same time, it seems like technology is outpacing the growth of core competencies such as efficient donor acquisition and effective major gift programs.
NPTech News:What advice would you offer to organizations attempting to implement any technology projects.
Harris:Technology can be a double edged sword for nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits need to be very careful to integrate technology that is appropriate for the scale of the nonprofit. I'm excited about the promise that much of the new technology holds to allow nonprofits to identify prospects, communicate with supporters and manage and organize the information that underlies these relationships. However, all the technology in the world will not replace the most important aspect of sustaining organizations, which is developing personal relationships with those aligned with the mission. We caution nonprofits to employ technologies that can streamline operations and improve backend capacity, but don't let a website or email blast completely replace the need for personal contact and cultivation.
CRAIG HARRIS NOZA Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Craig Harris is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NOZA, Inc. Craig's passion for nonprofit service began in 1995 when he joined the Peace Corps as an Agroforestry Extensionist. Craig spent two years in Paraguay assisting small village communities in their reforestation and alternative agriculture efforts, and also received special commendation from the U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay and the Spanish Red Cross for his leadership efforts following a natural disaster near his village. Following the Peace Corps, Craig spearheaded a group of 10 fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in the creation of SEPA (Servicios Ecoforestales para Agricultores), a large agroforestry demonstration farm in Eastern Paraguay. As the first Executive Director, Craig led the efforts to secure a land-grant and multi-year seed funding, and oversaw the development of the farm including the construction of classrooms and dormitories. The farm remains a focal point for agroforestry development in Eastern Paraguay and is used by numerous institutions for the training of farmers and agricultural extensionists. Upon his return to the United States, Craig spent two years as the Development Director for the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, and later formed South Coast Strategies, a consulting firm offering fundraising and strategic planning services to nonprofit organizations. Following a merger between South Coast Strategies and VisionWork Associates, Craig became a Senior Consultant and Partner of VisionWork and managed the firm's prospect research and capital campaign planning division. During this time Craig also served as fundraising counsel for several capital campaigns including Habitat for Humanity of Santa Barbara County, Casa Esperanza Homeless Center, and the St. Vincent's Affordable Housing Campaign, a $50 Million project to build the largest affordable housing development in the history of Santa Barbara County.
