Upic starts a Twibe

You may know that I went to the College at William & Mary, whose nickname is the Tribe. So, when I saw the opportunity to start a Upic Twibe, I couldn't resist the play on words.

What's a Twibe? A twibe is a group of Twitter users interested in a common topic who would like to be able to communicate with each other. On each twibe's page, there is a list of twibe members. There is also a tweet stream that lists tweets from twibe members which contain key word tags. Tags are set by the twibe founder and are listed just above the tweet stream. You can browse through twibes that have already been created by going to www.twibes.com/twitter-groups.

In our case, the Upic Twibe will include member's tweets that include the keyword upic somewhere in the text. For the growing number of Upic members and United Ways on Twitter, we can filter down to just our comments.

To join the Upic Twibe, first make sure you are on Twitter and then click on this link: http://twibes.com/upic

Upic bids on 2010 Andar conference

It's been a month since the last post. We've been working on many new projects, including bringing affordable training opportunities to our members.

Upic selected Andar 360 as our standard campaign management application in 2001 and was one of the early adopters of this platform. Today, Andar has nearly 70% market share of the United Way in the U.S. Each year, Andar's United Way user community meets to review and propose product enhancements.

Upic's headquarters location in Cincinnati, OH is one of five finalists to host the Andar 2010 conference. We have secured the region's premiere technology conference center and several hotel options at $99/less per night to bring this conference to Cincinnati next April.

For more information on the Cincinnati 2010 Andar Conference, please visit www.upicsolutions.org/2010andar. Voting begins soon, so when you or your organization receives a ballot, please select Cincinnati.

Upic Caravan 2: Tuesday noon

Greetings from snowy North Carolina (unfortunately, no snow pics here).

Last night, we arrived at the hotel around 8:00 pm (just in time for the reception that ended an hour earlier). Our US Airways flight (our third of the day) arrived at the Charlotte airport on time, but we were delayed 45 minutes because there was no arrival gates available.

We planned on spending Monday visiting with all of the Andar User Group attendees, but ended up just seeing a few of our friends. The "buzz" at day one of the conference surrounded many of the new Andar features in the most recent release. Many of our members are anxious to start playing with the new content management options built into Andar.

This morning, we met with the IT team from Charlotte. This team has managed to keep their United Way running during a very difficult campaign season with 50% fewer technology staff than a year ago. We presented the Upic story in hopes that we may be able to supplement their team sometime in the future.

Our next stop is Greensboro, which is slated to be the newest Andar customer very soon. We're going to discuss e-pledge and paper processing services today with their IT committee.

Upic Caravan 2: Monday am

Greetings from Cincinnati: During our last caravan trip we were able to dodge the snow, but not this time. Charlotte was snowed in this morning, so our noon flight is cancelled.

Upic's job fair for potential members of our Andar Service Bureau is also cancelled today.

We're trying to rebook flights for later today. Tonight's post will recap Monday's travel adventure. (I guess this will teach me not to brag about higher temperatures in a blog post).

"Carolina on my mind"- Upic Caravan 2

This week, the Upic management team is off to North Carolina to visit several current and prospective Upic members.

North Carolina is the state with the largest number of Upic members and the host of the Andar User Group conference this year. Here is our schedule for the week:

Monday: Andar User Group
Tuesday: Charlotte & Greensboro
Wednesday: Greensboro & High Point
Thursday: Asheville & Burlington
Friday: Research Triangle & State Campaign

Fortunately, the distance between locations is somewhat shorter and we're expecting temperatures about 30-40 degrees warmer than the last caravan trip about a month ago. We will keep you posted from the road on all that we learn from our members.

Andar User Group survey results

The results are in for last week's Andar User Group survey. Twenty three people responded. Upic staff will attend the following sessions, based upon the survey results and other sessions of note:

Community Building Track: Speakers, Tours & Fairs Management (M-9:45a); MIG General Features (M-2:30p); Volunteer Management (M-4:00p); Subscriptions, Mass Email & Tracking (T-8:00a); Agency Training Best Practices (T-(9:45a); Andar Standards & Protocols (T-1:45p); Andar Surveys (T-3:00p); MIG Prospect Plans, Communications & Surveys (W-9:45a); Communications Log & Andar Connector (W-1:00p); Event Management (W-2:15p)

Resource Development Track: Intro to Campaign (M-9:45a); MIG Special Campaigns & Gift Relationships (M-12:45p); Intro to Campaign Reporting (M-2:30p); Hot Topics for Campaigners (M-4:00p); Campaign Reporting (T-8am); MIG Prospecting (T-9:45a); DB2 (T-1:15p); Campaign Rollover (T-3:00p); Leadership Functionality (W-8:00a); Demographics vs. Techniques (W-1:00p); Andar Connector (W-4:00p)

IT/Other Track: Core Enhancements (M-9:45a); CB Enhancements (M-12:45p); Andar 2020 (M-4:00p); IT-Training Best Practices (W-8:00a); Leadership Best Practices (W-2:15p); CB-Best Practices, Standards & Protocols (W-4:00p)

Modules Track: Content Management (M-12:45p); MIG Module (T-1:15p); CRM New Features (T-3:00p)

Training Lab Track: Data Mining Basics (T-8:00a); Mailing Lists (T-9:45a); CB Data Mining (T-1:45p)

Finance Track: Intro to Finance (M-8:45a); Processing (M-10:00a); Credit Card/ACH Module (M-2:30p); Patriot Act Compliance Tracking (M-4:00p); DC Master Accounts (T-9:45a)

ePledge/eCommunity Track: CB Budgets & Demographics (M-21:30p); Logic Module & Outcomes (T-8:00a); epledge Notes & Options (W-8:00a); ePledge Training for Companies (W-1:00p); CB Dashboard & Custom Bio Tabs (T-3:00p); Campaign Managers Online review (W-4:00p)

See this link for the full survey results: http://tinyurl.com/dgbml9

Andar Users Group survey

With the tough economic conditions, many Upic members have reduced the number of staff travelling to the Andar User group next month in Charlotte, NC.

Upic is sending several of our staff to the conference to obtain training information/materials from the most important sessions. We are committed to attending the top 2 sessions per time slot as voted by our members in this survey. We will develop future Upic web-based training options from the information we gather via this survey.

Please use this schedule to determine your priority sessions as the survey does not list individual sessions, just time slots and categories.

This survey will close at 5:00 pm Eastern time on Friday, February 20th and is limited to the first 100 responses.

Click here for the one page survey: http://tinyurl.com/as5bf7

Upic Caravan Day 5: Columbus

Jim, David & Winston are now heading down I-71 now that we have completed our fifth site visit in five days.

Our day five location is the "Arch City", the relatively obscure nickname for Columbus, OH! The United Way of Central Ohio (UWCO) hosted us for a recap of 2008 and a look ahead to the upcoming year.

The primary topic of discussion was the pending implementation of Microsoft CRM 4.0 later this year. UWCO is one of a dozen United Ways in the country who are preparing their culture and processes for a successful implementation of this solution.

Upic is contributing to the national CRM pilot by providing the hosting for the learning circle's test of the UW-CRM prototype later this spring. Upic is well positioned as a hosting provider for United Ways with our commercial grade, SAS70 audited data center. Our staff recently attended MS CRM 4.0 training so that we can begin to understand the potential of this tool for our members.

It's been a long and rewarding week...probably one of the best weeks of my career. More to follow.

Upic Caravan Day 4: Toledo

Day four of our five day, five city, 1200 mile road trip brought us to the "Glass City" otherwise known as Toledo, OH!

There is much excitement at the United Way of Greater Toledo (UWGT) these days. As we pulled up to their building, we saw a massive construction crane signalling the beginning of work on UWGT's new headquarters adjacent to their current location. I'm looking forward to joining Upic's Board at our December meeting to see the finished product in person.

There were a number of very good discussions today with the staff members at UWGT. My overall impression: there is a deep desire by the UWGT staff to have the ability to share and obtain best practices from other Upic member United Ways. We discussed several examples of sharing Upic's community knowledge: USL reports & tips, paper processing pre-audit steps, CBDB training & agency support, resource development reports, etc.

Later this year, Upic will launch our new member's only web community that will facilitate the sharing and searching for best practices within our membership. Our discussions today certainly got my wheels turning on lots of different ways we can provide even more value to our membership.

After three plus days on the road, it certainly was nice to have some "home cooking" during our visit. The staff at UWGT hosted a pot luck lunch for us and the UWGT participants--hopefully we will get that recipe for crock pot cake. The lunch was a powerful symbol that even during tough times the best ideals remain-- hospitality, team work, and cooperation always produces wonderful results.

So, we have made the turn and are heading towards home. Friday is day five of our tour. We are heading to the "Arch City" for our final stop on this week's tour. (And no, we're not circling back to our Day 2 tour stop). Where are we?

Upic Caravan Day 3: Indianapolis

It's Day 3 of the Upic customer caravan-- a five day, five city, 1200 mile road trip visiting Upic's customers here in the Midwest. Today, we're in the "Crossroads of America"--Indianapolis, IN.

United Way of Central Indiana (UWCI) has a "Upic/Andar team" which is includes cross-functional representation from the various departments. This team serves as Upic advocates and ambassadors providing early intelligence about service issues and potential future needs. Among our Upic members, UWCI raises the largest dollar amount using electronic pledging hosted/supported by Upic...nearly $27 million.

Overall, our conversations focused on improving the speed and reliability of the Virtual Office platform within the UWCI offices. Our customer satisfaction survey from December reported higher satisfaction results outside the office with our platform. We are going to engage a local networking company to repair their issues as we prepare for an expansion of Internet bandwidth.

On our drive to our next caravan stop, the three of us (Jim, David and I) started rethinking our approach to membership relationship management. With two lines of business (infrastructure & application support) we are not as proactive as we need to be especially with projects that cross business lines. Having the ability to look holistically at our response to an individual member across all of our interactions would be a great benefit to Upic. Hmmm...I see an internal Upic CRM project on the horizon.

Our next caravan stop will be "transparent" shortly...can you guess where we will be?

Upic Caravan Day 2: St. Louis

It's day two of our five day, five city, 1200 mile road trip visiting Upic customers in the mid-West.

Yesterday, we started the caravan in Louisville. Today, we are in the "Gateway to the West"--St. Louis.

The United Way here joined Upic as a full service customer during 2008. We provide hosting for Andar and MS Office/Email, help desks for technical and application support, along with Andar e-pledge configuration and custom reporting services.

We had great sessions with resource development, community investment and with members of the management team. It was wonderful to hear direct customer feedback and ideas to improve Upic services. There were times I wished we had recorded some of the positive comments for prospective members.

We're learning that we need to blend the use of our on-site staff with the specific expertise of the staff at Upic headquarters. This blended approach could be especially helpful in delivering training and for requirements gathering, for example. We're also seeing an increasing need for import/export functionality using Upic staff resources.

We're now on the road to our next "pit stop" where checkered flags salute the winners. That's our hint to our next location...

Upic Caravan Day 1: Louisville

Upic's management team (Winston, Jim & David) are on a 5 day, 5 city, 1200 mile customer caravan this week visiting some of our major United Way customers in the mid-West.

Our first stop: Louisville, home of Metro United Way. I began my United Way career here in 1982. Those first two years, we did not have any personal computers in the office. Our 1984 campaign chair donated the first two PC's ever used by this United Way to help prototype a company campaign tracking system they had developed in-house.

Times have really changed. I'm writing this blog post in the back seat of our rental car going 70 mph using a laptop with wireless Internet connection. Amazing!

We had a great visit today with about a dozen Metro United Way staff from a variety of departments. Louisville, along with High Point, were the original Virtual Office customers almost four years ago. We will be back in Louisville in a few weeks to replace the original site server which will significantly improve system speed and reliability.

Among the topics discussed: CRM, Qbase, USL-Andar integration, Internet filters, agency designation reporting portal, and the need for more advance planning/communication. We heard rave reviews for the Upic help desk and of our local CSR, Charlene at nearly every session.

Today was also the launch of our newest service, the live Andar help desk. Members calling our toll free help desk number now have the option of selecting 1 for Andar help which routes the call into Andar services group to quickly respond to Andar reporting and performance issues.

We're now on the road to our 2nd destination. Any guesses?

Hint: Meet me in ____ _______!

Welcome to Live United Y'All

As a person born and raised in the south, when I saw the title of Louisville United Way's new blog Live United Y'All, I couldn't resist checking it out. I encourage you to do the same. It's well written and engaging.

Speaking of Louisville, the Derby City is also the feature on tonight's American Idol. I hope there is a Metro United Way connection on the show tonight.

Upic team gathers in Cincinnati

Earlier this week, Upic's customer service team gathered in Cincinnati to review our progress over 2008 and to initiate new service improvements for the upcoming year. Watch this blog for exciting new services over the next few weeks from ideas generated at this meeting.

Upic staff members pictured above (left to right):
Front: Dan Zix, Jim Mead, Pat Daugherty, Charlene Hoffman, Winston Faircloth.
Middle: Craig Irvin, Tim Witham, Jan Atterson, Patti Sperry, Debbie Jacob, Brian Miller.
Back: Kyle Sweeney, Andrew Woten, David Poe, Lisa Cotton, Nancy Abbott.

Upic assists winner of Truist promotion

Upic congratulates the United Way of Central Maryland (Baltimore) in winning the recent Truist promotion for the greatest increase in transactions for the 2008 calendar year among all United Way affiliates.

Upic is pleased to have played a small part in their victory. When UWCM faced a need for experienced Truist configuration resources, they turned to Upic to supplement their staff. Over a few short weeks, Upic executed 18 campaign accounts raising over $660,000 in employee donations.

We see this as a growing opportunity for United Ways who need to supplement their existing staff with experienced, certified Upic resources. If your United Way could use this help, or if you are an experienced Truist configuration resource, please contact Winston Faircloth.

7 steps to managing in tough times

With a New Year and a new administration in Washington, our fellow United Ways are facing the perfect storm of uncertain contributions and unprecedented demands for basic human care services.

My friend and Upic Board member, Joe Tolan at Metro United Way (Louisville) shared this recent article from www.Bridgespan.org titled "Managing in Tough Times: 7 Steps" which contains several timely reminders about what is important in our current economic situation.

1. Act quickly, but not reflexively and plan contingencies
2. Protect the core
3. Identify the people who matter most and keep that group strong
4. Stay very close to your key funders
5. Shape up your organization
6. Involve your board
7. Communicate openly and often

Over the upcoming holiday weekend, let's all make a resolution to reconsider these seven steps to be prepared for the New Year.

Best United Way blogs?

I'm on the lookout for the best United Way blogs around the nation.

I currently follow a dozen or so blogs created in the field. Here are three that I've been reading lately.

Boston, MA

Denver, CO

Austin, TX

If you have some United Way blogs you'd recommend, please comment below.

Upic Holiday Hours

Upic Solutions will be closed on December 24th & 25th for the Christmas holiday and on January 1st for New Years Day.

Upic's help desk will be open on December 24th until 4:00 pm Eastern.

We will monitor all Upic hosted systems on a 24x7 basis for any system-wide issue.

For the complete Upic Holiday schedule, please go to www.upicsolutions.org/holiday.

United Ways responding to the economy

United Ways are responding in new and creative ways to drive more assistance to families in need throughout the nation, by increasing fundraising, decreasing costs and providing more direct assistance.

In previous posts we've introduced new micro-campaigns which ask for small gifts from residents and their friends via social media like You Tube.

Yesterday, the United Way of the National Capital Area (Washington, DC region) announced that they were cutting their fundraising fees by 50% to recipient organizations who participate in their fundraising campaign. The net effect of this move is an immediate $1.5 million in program funding for their region.

Interim CEO, Angela Woods reports that these fees will be offset by a prudent use of reserves, increased organizational efficiencies and aggressive expansion into new campaign markets. UWNCA is looking to Upic as a possible strategic partner to assist in this endeavor for 2009 and beyond.

Finally, the United Way of Greater Cincinnati updated their "Where to Turn Guide" with a focus on resources people need when facing unemployment, including legal services, consumer credit counseling and public assistance.

Tough times call for bold action in all three areas. As we discover more of these innovative ideas, we will share them with you.

Gift card winners announced

Announcing to our $25 gift card winners for participating in our December 2008 customer satisfaction survey:

Darris Ely (Cincinnati)
Guy Hayes (Indianapolis)
Hilda Burkhead (Louisville)
Kevin Montgomery (Asheville)
Janet Ravneberg (Columbus)
Jessica Stoner (Toledo)
LaTonya Springs (HOME)
Linda Todd (Cincinnati)
Michelle Patterson (St. Louis)
Phyllis Bowser (Indianapolis)
Sarah Barker (High Point)
Shelle Austin (Sarasota)
Susan Grosse (Cincinnati)
Tyler Benack (Columbus)

THANK YOU to everyone who participated. We'll post the survey results in an upcoming article.