Trail Blazer team has been working hard the past few months on completeing the approval process for the Fair Poltical Practices Commission's, or FPPC for short, Form 460 (F460). this is the most used Form for the FPPC, candidates (and candidate committees) use this form for quarterly and semi annual reports. We have been working closly with the California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's (CA SOS) politcal reform division to gain the approval needed to become listed on the SOS list "Vendors/Service Providers Approved for Electronic Filing in California". I hope to announce soon that we have been approved and added to that list.

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This weblog is sponsored by Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc.

I thought I would share an email , my father sent to me, this joke really made me laugh.

 

You have to be old enough to remember Abbott and Costello, and too old to REALLY understand computers, to fully appreciate this.  
 
For those of us who sometimes get flustered by our computers, please read on...

If Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive today, their infamous sketch, 'Who's on First?' might have turned out something like this:

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT  
               
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO : Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT : Mac?

COSTELLO : No, the name's Lou .

ABBOTT : Your computer?

COSTELLO : I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT : Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou .

ABBOTT : What about Windows?

COSTELLO : Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT : Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO : I don't know. What will I see when I look at  the
windows?

ABBOTT : Wallpaper.

COSTELLO : Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT : Software for Windows?

COSTELLO : No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?

ABBOTT : Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT : I just did.

COSTELLO : You just did what?

ABBOTT : Recommend something.

COSTELLO : You recommended something?

ABBOTT : Yes.

COSTELLO : For my office?

ABBOTT : Yes.

COSTELLO : OK, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOTT : Office.

COSTELLO : Yes, for my office!

ABBOTT : I recommend Office with Windows.

COSTELLO : I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal.  What do I need?

ABBOTT :  Word.

COSTELLO : What word?

ABBOTT : Word in Office.

COSTELLO : The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT : The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO : Which word in office for windows?

ABBOTT : The Word you get when you click the blue 'W'.

COSTELLO : I'm going to click your blue 'w' if you don't start with some straight answers. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO : That's right. What do you have?

ABBOTT : Money.

COSTELLO : I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT : It comes bundled with your computer.

COSTELLO : What's bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT : Money.

COSTELLO : Money comes with my computer?

ABBOTT : Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO : I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOTT : One copy.

COSTELLO : Isn't it illegal to copy money?  

ABBOTT : Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.

COSTELLO : They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOTT : Why not? THEY OWN IT!

(A few days later)

ABBOTT : Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO : How do I turn my computer off?
 
ABBOTT : Click on 'START'.............

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This weblog is sponsored by Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc.

Got this Great email from our mail house friends at do-good.biz  Thought it was something to save and spread the news about.
July 6, 2009



   
 
      At least once a week a mailing fails to go through here not because it was improperly prepared or because it was printed incorrectly. It's because there were "insufficient funds" in the customer's permit account.
 
      This problem can often delay a mailing for several days and may cause undue alarm about when the mail will get delivered. If you own your permit, it is necessary for you to make sure that you have enough money to cover the cost of postage for any particular mailing.
 
      If you are using our permit, we will call you a day or two in advance of the mailing requesting that a check be cut within a day or two. Mailers like us do not cover postage costs. That is not a good business model because of the large sums involved and the danger of default. However, if you are an established customer, we will usually take your word that the "check is in the mail that day", especially when the schedule tightens and the mail must go out.
 
      For those of you who own your own permit, you must abide by the following rules when writing and depositing your postage check at the clerk's window. (1) Put your permit number in the memo field. (2) Your check must be preprinted with name of organization/business AND address. (3) Whoever deposits the check must add their phone number and license number to the check itself.
 
      Whether you send your check to the deposit window or personally give it to the clerk, all three conditions must be met. These three conditions are relatively new so it is good to be aware of them. Once again, you will notice that this procedure is fraught with rules, typical of the post office.
 
      Follow these rules and plan ahead. Your mailing will sail through like a breeze.If you have questions about any of this, give us a call.

     Thanks for your interest in Do-Good.biz!
 
  Sincerely,
 
Thad Ludwiczak, CEO
Do-Good.biz  612-789-7226

 

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This weblog is sponsored by Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc.

Recently Trail Blazer clients have been signing up for online donations at an increased rate. But does having a web page for donations mean your work is done? Not by a long shot!

But with some preplanning and promotion you can increase your fundraising success.

Hint: Make the donation page a simple URL, like http://www.mysite.org/donate or http://www.mysite.org/donate.htm

Set some simple goals.  What do you want your online donation collections to do for you?

Because an online donation page is not a magic pill, we should look at what we did in the past.  From that we identified three areas that if you were just doing offline, you might change or make more effective.

Goals

1. Reduce paperwork and hours.

2. Increase sizes of gifts.

3. Increase number of gifts, both from existing donors and new donors (fourth goal).

So how does setting up an online donation collection help accomplish those goals?

1. Reduced paper work - Transfer the collection to the website – donors self input their data reducing paper work and hours.

2. Increase size of gifts – Once directed to your web site make up-sizing to slightly higher than average a real choice.  We recommend a small, medium, and large donation.  We have heard disagreement on whether to include an ‘open’ amount (fill in your own $) but I say go for it.  By making the Medium level on the website be 10-20% more than the average donation last year, many people will see that medium level as the default, causing some to donate more than last year’s average.

3. Increase number of gifts – Spontaneous gifts!  A well planned web site and email newsletters can have links to donation web pages for spontaneous gifts.  Email newsletters can track open and click rates that let you know what part of your mission people get excited about.  Web site analytic tools can give you information about your web site.  By looking at response rates, and adding forward to friend appeals you can increase the effectiveness of your email newsletters.  Printed newsletters still have a place – but are rarely forward and don’t have links to donation web pages for spontaneous gifts.

Don’t forget you need to promote!

Be sure a “donate now” button and links are on every page of your website – make them easy to find.  Make it clear that gifts make the mission happen; everyone knows it, nothing good happens by being shy.

Email – Every email should have a link to the donation page.  Depending on your message 3-4 links to the donation page would not be unusual in a newsletter.

Offline communications include not only the home page (and other contact information) but a link to the donation page.  See the hint about simple URLs above.  Even your stationary should have the simple donate URL, top and bottom if possible.

Most importantly measure your results.

Once your online donation page is setup to track donors, see who gives online vs. offline.  Do this for each of your fundraising appeals.  Include tracking for gifts that were outside of your appeals process.  Over time this will help you to understand and even target direct mail and email appeals with the best use of resources.

Although Trail Blazer's software won’t do the work for you, it makes the job of cultivating donors easier.  Your mission, your story, still needs to compel the donor to give their gift.

To learn more about setting up an online donation program, call Brian at 800-446-1375 or email him at

bhanf@trailblz.com

The online donation tools are included in your Trail Blazer annual subscription. 

Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc. has 3 approved credit card gateways.  To learn more about each gateway and which has the best value for you, call Brian today 800-446-1375.

We never handle your money we simply facilitate the transaction between the donor and you.

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This weblog is sponsored by Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc.

We are beginning the process of upgrading our customer databases to the new multiple addresses per person capability.  This will also allow us to release the enhanced householding feature and query save feature.

What does this mean to you?

Sometime between now and May 15, we expect to complete the upgrade to your database.  You do not need to do anything to facilitate this.

IMPORTANT - for use to ensure data integrity while your database is in use, we will rename the old address fields to prevent access.  If you are in the database when this occurs, you will receive an error when attempting to open a search panel.  You should exit Trail Blazer.  Depending on the size of your database, the upgrade may require a few minutes up to couple of hours to complete.

After your database has been upgraded, your Trail Blazer look will change in a few ways.  This article details some of those changes:  http://www.trailblz.com/kb/?action=view&kb=91&cat=10.

This article provides information regarding address management:  http://www.trailblz.com/kb/?action=view&kb=94&cat=1

Thanks,

Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc

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This weblog is sponsored by Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc.

Check out the Trail Blazer Page on Facebook!!!

We need people to sign up as fans, so hop to it!

or paste www.facebook.com/pages/Trail-Blazer-Software/64872951180

 

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This weblog is sponsored by Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc.

Time keeps on flying by for us here at Trail Blazer.  We try to update this blog on a regular basis but that is not happening as often as we like.  It's because of the bears; ok that is just an excuse.  But the reason is - we are busy working overtime for you.  Building some new tools and making some current tools more powerful and easier to use.

I will give you a preview of one item getting a makeover, Search.

We are Building some cool new designs for the search panels, to add functions to your searches.  BTW where you enter search criteria, with a name like Name, Address, Profile, or Contribution, is what we call a search panel.

Changed the positioning and layout (hope you like it) so some buttons are getting moved around, so you might get a little vertigo at first.  We didn't do it to make you dizzy.

What am I talking about?  Some thing like the button I hope you click very often - the [Search] button.  The [Search] button is now on the left instead of the right.  We did this because many of our clients are getting bigger screens and the button was very far away from the search panels and we were adding more buttons so those clients with smaller screens were getting the button cut off the screen.  Presto Change-o and both problems solved with one move of the button.

Current View:

 

Notice the red circles, [Search] is on the left most position of the new view:

In addition we added a few icons to the search panels and moved some icons and functions to what is called a tool strip.  By default you see the icon for [Include] it looks like two extension cords getting plugged together (more about [Include] later) and the icon for [more tools].  The [more tools] icon kind of looks like the play symbol on your VCR (CD, DVD, DVR, TIVO, etc).

More Tools Button:

 

We will have a bunch of stuff (emails, blog entries, KB updates) coming out with additional details on everything that is in the [more tools] area.  Just to get you stated though.  We moved the panel level [And/Or] button from the right hand side to the [more tools] area, the [not] check box is button in the [move tools] area also.  See image below.

Above image shows the expanded view, when you click the [more tools].

The red circles from left to right:

1. [Include] button, new to most panels - was on Contribution as a check box.

2. [Reset] button, moved from the bottom left.

3. [Not] button was a check box on the middle left side.

4. [And] and [Or] buttons, were on the middle right hand side.

One of the coolest items that we added was a tool to show the active panels, it is not in the pictures I am providing because it was in early production as I began writing this.  When you click this new functions button all the panels get hidden except for the ones that have search stuff filled out.  So if you can not figure out why a search is not working you can limit the view to what you have and use that to double check your work.  So, once limited you can use that new [Include] (told you I would talk more about it) tool to turn off panels to see how that might affect your search results. It is pretty neat!!

I think that might be enough of a preview for one day.

Oh ok you got me to talk a little more.  The coolest stuff coming out very soon is: Dashboard, Address Normalization, Tasks (expansion of reminders), and View Specific Online Help.

Dashboard: add a note to your screen, keep a voter list in view, open RSS feeds, and more.

Address Normalization:  Instead of just home, mailing, work - you now will have ability to add multiple homes, works, assign them as mailing address and much more.

Task/Reminder:  Some people are using log notes and reminders now, we are enhancing that system to a 'heads up' style display so you can see your reminder items at all times.

View Specific Online Help:  Or as we call it V-SOP, yeah we don't really call it that, it's just the blue help button.  So if you have ever looked at a Trail Blazer screen and said what does this do, or what do I do with this - (Me neither, but some people do) we added a little [help] button.  It looks like a question mark in a blue circle that you can click and a help screen just for what you are looking at will appear (subject to us having built the help web page).

Ok with that said I will get back to actually making the changes, write to you later!!!

 

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This weblog is sponsored by Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc.

This past year Trail Blazer has joined several professional organizations including: Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (mncn.org), Midwest Political Science Association - MPSA (mpsanet.org), and American Association of Political Consultants and Public Affairs Professionals - AAPC (theaapc.org).  The AAPC sent me a certificate of membership, I like certificates.

The AAPC has a Code of Ethics, see that below.

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This weblog is sponsored by Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc.