Major Nonprofit Organizations Re-define Their Web Strategy with Ektron CMS400.NET

Ektron Inc., a technology and market leader in Web content management software has made an impact on the nonprofit industry with a recent number of large organizations looking to Ektron’s Web content management platform to re-define and re-energize their online presence.

Nonprofit organizations have a unique set of needs when it comes to their online strategies. They have to take into consideration more than adding and managing content on their site. Requirements often include social computing tools to build membership communities, online donation platforms and easy integration with third party applications.

“Nonprofits are continuing to rethink their online strategies and the tools they need to execute and achieve their goals,” stated David Maffei, director of sales at Ektron. “We are seeing more and more organizations turning to Ektron because they require a solution that can offer the tools that they need out-of-the-box but also have the flexibility to integrate with their existing third party systems that are core to their business.”

Maffei pointed to the United Service Organization (USO) and C-SPAN as nonprofits which recently selected Ektron CMS400.NET to build their new sites for the reason noted above. Maffei continued, “The USO and C-SPAN are both examples of nonprofits looking for a single solution to build and manage their Web strategies.”

The USO provides morale, welfare and recreation-type services to service members and their families and wanted to incorporate social networking and Web content management as well as an online donation platform without having to implement multiple applications. C-SPAN needed the ability to immediately change content on their site as news stories break and ensure that separation is maintained between content being updated and the Web site’s style and display.

In addition to providing the tools nonprofits need to build their online strategies, Ektron has also considered the importance for nonprofits to be able to integrate with the existing systems they may already have in place. For Ektron customer, The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), it was critical that they could seamlessly integrate with TMA Resources’ Personify, their existing AMS (Association Management Software) package with their content management application. JDRF selected CMS400.NET-based on its open API that allowed them to easily access
& integrate with Personify.

“Ektron has witnessed a growing trend in the number of requests by nonprofit organizations for CMS400.NET,” said Maffei. “Not only do we expect this trend to continue but we also expect to see a rise in requests for Ektron’s Best Practices Services and Professional Services as nonprofit’s Web presence becomes more important to their success.”

Other nonprofit organizations and associations that have built their online strategies using Ektron CMS400.NET include: Special Olympics , The United Way of Canada – Centraide Canada (UWC-CC) and Art’s Every Day which was recently honored with a Webby Award by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences .