Shashank Text

Technology Consulting in the Community

Spring 2014

Shashank Sharma Pittsburgh Parks Conservatory Final Consulting Report

Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania www.cmu.edu/tcinc

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Executive Summary Student Consultant, Shashank Sharma Community Partner, Meg Cheever Community Partner, Lauryn Salter

I. About the Organization

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy (PPC) was founded in 1996 by a group of citizens concerned with the deteriorating conditions of Pittsburgh’s parks. The Conservancy strives to restore all of the major parks in the region, with an objective to provide better quality of lifestyle to the people of Pittsburgh. The mission is stated as follows:

“Improving quality of life for the people of Pittsburgh by restoring the park system to excellence in partnership with government and the community. Projects and programs are conducted with respect for the environment, historic design, and the needs of our diverse region”

Meg Cheever, CEO and Lauryn Salter, Online Engagement Coordinator, are the points of contact for this consulting project. Ms Salter handles all the IT related activity including updating the website and keeping track of donations or donor data.

II. Consulting Tasks and Outcomes

Task 1: Standardizing Databases to Streamline Business Process

The disparate databases which included Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge, Constant Contact and Savvior CMS backend were analysed to look for an integrated solution. Since the different business processes required different database capabilities, none of the systems could be phased out. The outcome was the need for a holistic solution moving forward in terms of a custom built solution or Salesforce cloud CRM.

Task 2: Payment Strategies for Expanding Donor Base

The Student Consultant and the Community Partner explored different strategies of donations to expand donor database. Initially, potential donors could donate through credit cards, debit cards or cash payments. PayPal was considered and implemented as a quick, easy donation option

Outcome PayPal for non-profits has low transaction fees and is very easy to integrate. Implementation involved adding a PayPal plugin inclusion to Constant Contact event forms. Including PayPal is expected to broaden the donor base by providing donors an easier and quicker way of donation.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 1 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014

Task 3: Standardize Event Forms to Eliminate Data Dead Ends

The initial design of the webpage consisted of events form stretching up to five pages long. This was a pain point for the donor or volunteer who wanted to donate for these events.

Outcome: Some of the forms were changed to Constant Contact forms in an attempt to discontinue Savvior CMS. One drawback was that, not all forms could be modelled with Constant Contact such as volunteer sign-up form for multiple events. As such Savvior backend could not be completely phased out.

Additional Task: Financial Analysis of Current IT Spend

IT Spend analysis is critical to PPC to make sound decisions on short term and long term IT planning. It was necessary to evaluate IT spend on Raiser’s Edge, Constant Contact and assess the need for new systems based on financial allotment.

Outcome: An excel sheet which documents the spending on all IT related activity, compares its pros and cons and keeps a track on miscellaneous expenses.

III. Recommendations

Recommendation 1: To ensure successful transformation from disparate systems to a holistic customer relationship management suite.

At PPC, many heterogeneous systems are in place, which do not mesh well with each other. The systems, all powerful in their own right, serve vastly different business capabilities and many attempts to consolidate these systems did not yield positive results. These varied systems increase IT Spendi and as such it is advisable to choose a less expensive cloud based solution. The student consultant recommends considering Salesforce Foundation CRM suite along with Salesforce1 Platform.

Recommendation 2: To Set up a Captive Portal for existing free WiFi.

PPC operates free wifi for the public at Schenley park plaza and Schenley visitor center. Any user can log into this free wifi and access the internet without any network interference. This potential security risk can also be viewed as a missed opportunity towards park usage tracking and donor management. The student consultant recommends setting up a captive portal on the HP ProCurve MSM313Router by configuring it on the router or purchasing an off the shelf cloud based captive portal solution. Such a move could mitigate security issues and also aid in park usage tracking.

Community Partner Student Consultant Meg Cheever Shashank Sharma [email protected] [email protected]

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Shashank is a Graduate Student studying Information Systems 2000 Technology Dr #200, Management at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 1521

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 2 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Final Consulting Report Student Consultant, Shashank Sharma Community Partner, Meg Cheever Community Partner, Lauryn Salter

I. About the Organization

Organization

Founded in 1996 by a group of citizens concerned with the deteriorating conditions of Pittsburgh’s parks, the Conservancy strives to restore all of the major parks in the region, thus providing a better quality of life for the citizens of Pittsburgh. Their mission is quoted as follows:

Meg Cheever, CEO, also the consulting partner for this project, founded this organization 17 years ago and continues to have amazing ideas on how best the park system should function to provide a sustainable life to Pittsburgh denizens. Lauryn Salter is the primary contact person for this consulting project. She handles all the IT related activity including updating the website, mobile app, mailing lists, and keeping track of donations and donor data.

As of today, PPC has raised over $66 million towards park improvements. Their goal is to permanently restore the park system (171 parks) to excellence for the people of Pittsburgh by partnering with government and the community.

Facilities

The office is located at 2000 Technology Drive, Pittsburgh, PA and uses half a floor space. They have twenty cubicles with a reception desk, a server room and a conference room. About twenty full time employees work with Pittsburgh Park Conservancy and each employee shares responsibility for more than one functional vertical.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 3 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Programs

They undertake many restoration projects funded by government agencies and donations, organize volunteer events and focus on donation campaigns which involve sending mails, invitations, and event notifications to members and donors.

PPC handles various ecological restoration and showcase projects at locations including Schenley Park Visitors Center, Highland Park, Frick Gatehouse and Mellon Park Walled Gardens.

Staff

Meg Cheever, CEO

She approves all the projects coming in and going out of Pittsburgh Park Conservancy. A visionary, she founded this organization 17 years ago and continues to have ideas on how best the park system should function to provide a sustainable life to Pittsburgh denizens. She also keeps herself updated on technology which would help her make the organization to be better prepared for the times to come. She is the main point of contact for Vendor Selection, strategic website and app planning and design.

Lauryn Salter, IT Department Lauryn is the main contact person for this consulting project. Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy has no IT department. She handles all the IT related activity including updating the website, mobile-app, mailing lists, and keeping track of donations and donor data.

Heather Sage, Director of Community Projects Heather has experience with managing Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge, Luminate and Constant Contact database. She takes an active part in Vendor selection for Pittsburgh Park Conservancy’s social media strategy.

Technology Infrastructure

Every employee has a work station with internet connection. The server hosts Raiser’s Edge and is currently seven years old and due for replacement. New Server was ordered and migration activity took place during the third week of March. Most of the IT infrastructure maintenance is outsourced to Wolf Consulting.

Technology Management

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy has no dedicated IT team and all IT operations are managed by their employees or handled by Wolf Consulting. The Organization outsources most if its IT. They outsourced Website Management to Savvior, App development and management to DeepLocal, and had hired Ambersand Consulting to look into streamlining their IT and business processes. Donor data management including keeping a track of donations received through Raiser’s Edge, information update/retrieval through Constant Contact, managing, and sending out newsletters and mails is managed by Lauryn and Joyce. A service request to the respective organizations is raised by them in case of any issues. Blackbaud’s relationship manager is the primary point of contact for all Raiser’s Edge related issues or service requests.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 4 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Website: Contract was given to Savvior over 7 years ago. The website is under a maintenance contact of 25 billed hours per week. Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy deems it necessary to move away from this vendor due to archaic nature of the website and high maintenance costs. Any service request must be raised through a request and they do not have in house expertise to manage the website or have the access to the code. The website built by Savvior and is hosted on the servers owned by Pittsburgh Park Conservancy within their office space. Mobile App: The ‘Park App’ was built by DeepLocal two years ago which is now in a similar maintenance contract. The application is available both in iOS and Android market. Community Partners have a wish list of changes associated with the app. DeepLocal has provided them with an admin rights page which is essentially a CMS where they can log and update events, activities, photos and data for it to reflect within the application. Donor Data Management: The organization lacks a streamlined approach towards database management. They use disparate databases systems from different vendors that do not mesh well in most scenarios. They use Raiser’s Edge donor management system for fundraising events and online donations whereas the Constant Contact is used for storing information collected form static web signups, volunteer events, and public meeting signups. Some business processes involving volunteer events sign up could not be modeled using Constant Contact and as such use Savvior CMS to create web forms. A part of volunteer signup data is stored in the form of excel sheets which adds to the data dead ends this process involves.

Technology Planning

Meg Cheever, CEO, and Heather Sage, Director of Community Projects, are responsible for budgeting and planning their technology infrastructure. They intend to have a technology plan in place for the short term and long term.

Internal Communication

All employees have email accounts and have their Outlook accounts set up as well. Email is the primary method of communication externally but since the staff is in close proximity to each other, they have frequent meetings at the conference room for internal communication. Website is the primary form of communication. The website is frequently updated source of information for all denizens. All volunteer events, fundraisers, clean up drives and restoration events and communicated to the general public through their website. The Park-App is available for iOS and Android users. General public can get the same information from the app as communicated through the website. The organization is not aware of their security risks and subsequently do not have login credentials to their Park App. Raiser’s Edge provided them with a CMS through with they can view their donor data. Donor Information including credit card information security is built in with Raiser’s Edge and Authorize. The organization has 24x7 internet access and they make sure their website and app are regularly updated. Pittsburgh Parks have a social presence through their Facebook Page. All the events created on the website are also created through the Facebook Page. Sign up forms and business cards at volunteer sign up events are still paper based and are inefficient to manage as not all data makes it to Raiser’s Edge or Constant Contact and results in data dead ends.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 5 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Information Management

The donor information critical to Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy comes from the following sources.  Fundraising Events

 Static Web Signups

 Online donations

 Public Meeting Signups

 Social Media posts

 Emails to volunteers

 Facilities request

 Business Cards

Part of the data is stored in Raiser’s Edge while the other part is with Constant Contact database. Most of the business card and public meetings signups data gets stored in Excel Sheets which rarely finds its way to either of the two databases resulting in data dead ends

They need to employ the following tactics to manage information better:  Standardize collection of data

 Eliminate data dead ends

 Deploy a database standard or a warehousing technique.

 Eliminate duplications

Business Systems

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy use services provided by Authorize to authorize the payment made by donors. This process often takes a day and delays the response which has to be sent to the donor.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 6 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Consulting Tasks

I. Standardizing Databases to Streamline Business Process

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy currently houses three different database systems which are used for different business functions. Raiser’s Edge was used to capture and store donor information, Constant Contact stored the same information but those through the events module. Some events were modelled through Savvior CMS and as such needed manual integration for the databases to be standardized. Motivation Initially we analysed Raiser’s Edge and understood all its capabilities. Although the CRM is extremely powerful, it’s not user friendly and cannot be easily be integrated with third party systems like Authorise. Moreover the software and its components are very. Constant Contact was used to model events module and this capability was unavailable with Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge. As a result, Constant Contact could not be phased out. In an attempt to phase out Savvior Systems database, most of the event forms were modelled as Constant Contact forms. Some business processes including volunteer signup for multiple events could not be created through Constant Contact. As a result, the disparate systems became a necessity and an operational burden. Outcomes

To prevent this spaghetti like architecture and manual integration, a need for a holistic system arose. Architecture limitations of these various systems are not helpful for a streamlined business function. The need for a custom built holistic solution or Salesforce Platform has been thoroughly explained in the Recommendation Section below. The data model to be used as an input to Salesforce must not contain duplicate data or data with dead ends. Due to this our next task was to standardize data collection forms.

II. Standardize Event Forms to Eliminate Data Dead Ends

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy organizes a variety of events and posts a sign up form for their events on their webpage. More importantly these events attract both donors and volunteers. The form has a dual purpose of data collection and donation management depending on the form pertaining to an event sign up or volunteering activity.

Motivation

The initial design of the webpage consisted of events form stretching up to five pages long. This was communicated to the consultant as a pain point for the donor or volunteer who wanted to participate for this event. The existing forms were built by Savvior and a CMS was provided by which fields could be manipulated to change the content of the forms. The Community Partner was more interested in refurbishing the form itself rather than the content.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 7 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Outcomes

After exploring Constant Contact CMS, Community Partner and the consultant found out that Constant Contact provides frontend services to completely build out forms in the form of events, which could be completely customisable in terms of both content and layout.

Other options were not considered since Raiser’s Edge didn’t have the capability to build out frontend nor we wanted to use a new technology to build out a small section of the webpage. Constant Contact provided excellent options of creating events page with glossy interfaces. The layout was completely customisable and also supported integration with PayPal and Authorize for transaction processing. Moreover the signups directly got populated within Constant Contact database and was easily tagged as a mail list. This interoperability and ease of use made Constant Contact a bold choice for phasing out old forms to these new Constant Contact ones.

One drawback as a result of Events form modification was that not all forms could be modelled with Constant Contact. One such scenario where a volunteer could sign-up for multiple events could not be modelled with Constant Contact forms. As such Savvior backend could not be completely phased out.

The Consultant recommends Community Partner to contact Constant Contact for providing a feature fix to this bug within their system.

III. Payment Strategies for Expanding Donor Base

Potential donors could donate through credit cards, debit cards or cash payments. The turn-around time with such a system did not allow Pittsburgh Parks to send instant appreciation response to donors as the donation went through a third-party ‘Authorize’ gateway and then reflected in the system. After considering other payment options, PayPal was implemented as a quick, easy payment option. The approach was to explore all the different ways a donor could interact with the website and eventually figure out the easiest way to donate to Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. This outcome is easy to sustain since there is help and support through the PayPal site, and since most of the maintenance is handled on the respective site instead of a custom solution which can get confusing.

Motivation

There are various ways through which donors could get involved with Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy including but not limited to ‘Donate Now’, ‘Email Sign up’ and Register for events. The approach was to explore all the different ways a donor could interact with the website and eventually figure out the easiest way to donate to Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.

The initial state of system allowed donors to donate using credit/debit cards. The turn-around time with such a system did not allow Pittsburgh Parks to send instant ‘Thank you’ or Appreciation response to donors as the donations went through a third-party ‘Authorize’ gateway and then reflected at Pittsburgh Park’s end. Also, PPC lost donors who were uncomfortable using credit cards or those who simply did not own one.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 8 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Benefits and Justifications

Multiple vendors were considered and PayPal was chosen. The consultant suggested using ‘PayPal for Non- Profits’ as another payment strategy along with the existing credit/debit payment method. Statistics of PayPal usage (over 200,000 non-profits) and ease of use was communicated to the Community Partner. PayPal for non-profits is easy to set up, required no programming skills and charged minimum transaction fees. The Community Partner was advised to leverage its 501(c)(3) status for claiming non-profit benefits which included no monthly or cancellation fees for using PayPal.

Outcomes

The Community Partner saw potential benefits and hence implemented this solution to all the events they host including the biggest fundraiser event of the summer ‘16th Annual PNC Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Hat Luncheon’. Implementation involved adding a PayPal plugin Inclusion to Constant Contact event forms. The Pay with PayPal option is streamlined and does not change any of the existing business processes. Pittsburgh Parks now has another login with the PayPal webpage where they can export a .csv file and import this information onto Raiser’s Edge. Inclusion of PayPal is expected to broaden the donor base by providing donors an easier, quicker and safer way of donation. The new event page is displayed below

Implementation of PayPal has successfully been completed only for events module. The consultant recommends all donor payment inflows be implemented with PayPal as well.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 9 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Areas of Impact Outcome Organization Positive  Cost Effective solution  In depth understanding by Community Partnerof new Solution Positive Technical Environment  New Look and feel towards payment. Adds a Pay through PayPal option  Very widely used in the non-profit community Technology Planning Neutral  Easy donor engagement model  Could act as a plugin to any event, form or donate options Donor Management Positive  Attracts a donor base inclined towards PayPal  Easy and faster one click payment approach

Additional Task: Financial Analysis of Current IT Spend

IT spend analysis is critical to Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy to make sound decisions on IT planning, short term and long term vision. It is necessary to evaluate spend on Raiser’s Edge, Constant Contact and assess the need for new systems based on financial allotment. Individual component of IT should be analysed in terms of yearly payment, pros and cons and better replacement, if any. Such a chart also reveals hidden IT costs and rethinks financial position on various components.

Motivation

IT spend analysis was critical to Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy to make sound decisions on IT planning and long term vision. Individual component of IT spend was analysed in terms of yearly payment, pros and cons and better replacement.

Benefits and Justifications:

IT spend analysis is often a reflection moment for an organization and with Pittsburgh Parks as well, it made us ask the questions, ‘Is this required’ and ‘Is this really worth it’ All the requirements were gathered and documented in a excel report (see appendix). We realised that Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge is an expensive option and coupled with Constant Contact, it yields to high monthly investments. The idea was then to explore holistic and cheaper alternatives.

The Community partner consulted with various third parties including Raiser’s Edge account manager, Constant Contact Account manager, Savvior Contract, Wolf Consulting invoice, Schenley Park free Wi-Fi Service and consolidated all the yearly IT spends. These results act as a substantial baseline for re-evaluating the existing IT of Pittsburgh Parks.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 10 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Outcome:

The IT spend chart is an extremely helpful tool for long term vision of the organization. Transition to Salesforce Cloud with Force.com could be well supported with this report. Please refer appendix for the complete IT Spend analysis chart.

VI. Recommendations

Vision

The future of Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy should be the one that continuously harnesses and enhances technology to complement its administration and effective communication with its employees, donors, volunteers and the public at large. Effective communication further improves the organization’s responsiveness to opportunities and service quality to its members and community, with a greater outreach to those who support and benefit from its mission.

The attainment and sustainability of quality of life for the people of Pittsburgh by restoring the park system to excellence requires a continuous effort in the implementation, maintenance and investment in technology. Right choice of technology could spur changes ranging from operational efficiency to new business opportunities and even the transformation of the whole organization. These goals are forward-looking of what the organization should do to prepare itself and its employees to embrace new technological innovations in the short term. They have to be re-evaluated periodically as technology, organization, and expectations of community and members change. In the long term, the organization should have visions of its future technological capabilities due to the dynamic nature of the environment.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 11 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Recommendation 1: To ensure successful transformation from disparate systems to a holistic customer relationship management suite.

As experienced and described by the staff of PPC, many heterogeneous systems are in place today which do not mesh well with each other. The systems, all powerful in their own right, serve vastly different business capabilities and many attempts to consolidate these systems did not yield positive results.

The existing scenario of Customer Relationship Management is as follows:

Blackbaud Constant Savvior Raiser’s Contact CMS Edge Manual Integration Manual Integration Export and Import csv files Export and Import csv files

Authorise

PayPal

As discussed with Lauryn and Joyce, Raiser’s Edge, even with its nifty capabilities is unable to provide solutions to numerous existing business processes. Operations on Raiser’s Edge are not easily comprehensible and requires a hours of training and process discovery to learn new capabilities. Many business functions such as events and volunteer forms, email templates, analytics and donor tracking are not capable of being modelled through Raiser’s Edge without upgrading or purchasing new components such as NETCommunity or Luminate. These missing capabilities are overcome by using Constant Contact which provides solutions for events and email templates. Business process which involves creating Volunteer signup forms works best with Savvior CMS. Integration between these systems including Authorise and PayPal is manual which typically involves exporting and importing xls files to Raiser’s Edge.

The management should focus for need of standardization and integration of various business processes, reduce manual data integration, redesign web landing pages and provide seamless mobile compatible functionality.

This can be done by ensuring its implementation of Salesforce CRM adoption strategy with Force.com as a cloud computing platform that can be used to build multitenant applications.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 12 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Benefits and Justifications

As mentioned in the previous section, IT has brought forth many improvements over years for organizations in various industries. For PPC, the successful adoption of a cloud based solution such as Salesforce CRM will greatly improve operational and program administration by eliminating CRM redundancy, data redundancy, streamline business processes and minimise manual interference.

Information update is done only once into a single database on the cloud and easy retrieval from the same location.

The following improvements will be observed:

1. Phasing out disparate existing systems. 2. Mitigate extra costs due to many players. 3. Streamlined business processes along with newly designed landing pages with Force.com. 4. Integrated donor management suite. 5. Customisable forms and landing pages along with reports and analytics dashboard. Ability to custom build email template for various promotional campaigns and mass donor emails. 6. Completely mobile compatible. 7. Rethink server strategy since Salesforce will live on the cloud. 8. Reducing manual intervention and hence eliminating risk of data duplicity and redundancy. 9. Special offers for Non-Profits.

Implementation Strategies

The achievement of this goal is dependent on how well the organization is able to continue the efforts initiated during the consulting engagement. It focuses on ensuring that the organization is successful in the revamping its website and implementing the selected CRM system. The detail implementation steps for these strategies are presented in a timeline, together with the resources required at each stage.

Date Tasks Resources

July-Aug Salesforce Database: Lauryn (Internal) • Sign up for Trial to Salesforce Non-Profit Joyce (Internal) CRM and obtain free license (fax 501c3 document) Salesforce User training manual • Standardize Data Inflows as per Ampersand Consulting report • Create a data model to work with for future Salesforce Curtomer integration Relationship Manager

• Plan licences and partner licences usage Salesforce Expert or a freelancer

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 13 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 • Plan data migration from Raiser’s Edge and Constant to Salesforce CRM

• Test the new system in a parallel manner. Run and operate on both systems at the same time.

Aug - Sep Salesforce Database: • Begin Data Migration from Raiser’s Edge and Lauryn (Internal) Constant Contact to Salesforce Foundation Joyce (Internal)

• On system migration and integration Salesforce Expert or training on how to use the new system. Old Freelancer system still runs in parallel with the new CRM during this phase

• Document all the migration steps and learn salesforce functionality

Website: Force.com programmer or • Force.com website mockups Salesforce freelancer

• Implement landing pages: Replicate old content to new webpage.

• User Testing. Mockups and test payments with Authorise and Paypal gateways.

Mobile: Force.com programmer or • Force1 mobile compatible mockups Salesforce freelancer

• Implement landing pages: Replicate old content to new webpage.

• User Testing. Mockups and test payments with Authorise and Paypal gateways

Nov - Dec Database: Lauryn (Internal) • Complete switch to Salesforce CRM and Heather (Internal) evaluate the need for partner licenses

• Create workflows for business processes and run test analytics to test dashboard and reports. Prepare documentation for the operating on the new system, to be added to the technical documentation.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 14 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014

Website: • Manage content and verify all functional Lauryn (Internal) links with the website.

• Create workflow documentation for Force.com programmer or maintaining the new website, to be added to Salesforce freelancer the technical documentation.

• Integration with social networks

Mobile: Force.com programmer or •Content and CRM testing with Mobile. Salesforce freelancer

Expected Outcomes:

Areas of Impact Outcome Organization Positive  Eliminates disparate systems and streamlines business processes  Cost Effective solution  Greater control over data and landing pages  In depth understanding of new Solution Staff Positive / Negative  Easier information sharing, storage and retrieval  Reduction in project man-hours for manual integration of csv files  Learn new technology from the very beginning Positive Technical Environment  New Look and feel towards website and landing pages. ‘In –trend and Blog like’ solution  Many success stories with new Salesforce solution Technology Planning Positive  Easy customer engagement model  Third Party (Volunteer) partner licenses available  Platform to extend analytic tools through Salesforce CRM  More pro-active technological planning and updates Internal and external Positive Communication  Cloud based mail service through CRM suite  Custom built email templates for mass donor email or volunteer emails.  Custom built ‘Appreciation’ response email

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 15 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014  Targeted mailing efforts through reporting and dashboards Donor Management Neutral  Free Donor Management solution for Non Profits  Includes analytics and reporting for market segment targeting

Recommendation 2: To Set up a Captive Portal1 for existing free Wi-Fi.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy operates free wifi for the public at Schenley park plaza and Schenley visitor center. Any user can log into this free wifi and access the internet without any network interference. This potential security risk can also be viewed as a missed opportunity towards park usage tracking and donor management.

Benefits and Justifications:

A captive portal is a landing page that the user of a public-access network is obliged to view and interact with before access to the internet is granted. Captive portals has been successfully deployed and used both in large businesses like airports, hotels and small organizations like cafes with different strategic objectives. If PPC is going through the effort of providing a free wireless service, the users should be made aware about PPC and its mission. Easiest way to do this is to display page that has Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy logo or the signup/donation page and maybe even advertise events or fundraisers to attract donors. Several reasons why such a captive portal should be considered are:

1. Park Usage Tracking

The database of the authenticated users is stored locally on the WAP device or on the server. This strategy could provide PPC a rough idea of how many users use the parks at a given point in time or how frequent the park is used in different days of the week. A pattern of business activity could be established and used by the organization.

2. Maintaining relationship with Park users.

Redirecting the free wifi users to PPC landing page could help in making the users aware of the community service being provided by the Pittsburgh parks Conservancy. Upcoming events could serve as the redirection landing page. Users could be requested to signup with PPC by redirecting the users to the signup page.

1 Refer Wikipedia Definition, Captive Portal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_portal

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 16 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 3. Potential Security Risk for both user and PPC

- Open guest access results in unauthenticated users. The resulting information sent over the internet is not secure. It may seem logical and one may not think you have to tell the user not to send their credit card information over a unsecured wireless or use their social security number anywhere, but often, we might have to give them a warning, and might want the user check a box that says they understand that PPC isn’t liable if they do send sensitive information over an unsecure network.

- The Wifi user might be doing something illegal for which PPC should not be held liable. If someone is pirating music or movies from your network the companies looking to sue look for the “Source IP” which would correspond to your IP address. Captive portals can help in making the user sign the internet usage policy or just help in blocking to certain websites.

A Captive Portal lets you include your rules into the terms of use policy, force your wireless guest to accept it, and that will help you limit your liability

4. Bandwidth Throttling and Traffic Shaping

Even when a simple captive portal is used in a free public-access network, certain people may repeatedly connect, using the network on an almost continuous basis to download music, videos, or other large files. This activity, called bandwidth hogging, can be minimized by additional programming in the captive portal. Such programming can control the speed at which large files are downloaded, limit the size (in kilobytes or megabytes) of files that can be downloaded, restrict the number of downloads that can occur in a single session, or block connection to Web sites commonly used for downloading large files. This is called bandwidth throttling or traffic shaping.

Implementation Strategies

Setting up a captive portal is not a time consuming or laborious task. Although being unfeasible to develop in-house capability to build such a portal, plenty of open source or cloud based vendors are available on the market. The Router at Schenley Plaza could be configured to set up a captive portal but the personalized front end needs to be designed. If analytical tools are required with the captive portal then many cloud based vendors are available who provide such solutions. A list of all the vendors and open source solutions can be found in the appendix.

Expected Outcome

After implementing a captive portal, the new wifi system sould look similar to this:

Source: www.peplink.com

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 17 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Areas of Impact Outcome Organization Positive  Breaching the gap in major Security Risk  Opportunity to spread awareness about Pittsburgh parks Conservancy, advertise its events and attract a larger donor base.  Rethink IT spend on free Wifi at Schenley plaza. Advisable to compare current costs with a new solution with an in built captive portal. IT Spending Negative  Needs investment for a one time software development or pay on usage basis for a metered service.  Appropriate spend analysis on free internet setup and usage over Schenley park and visitors center would provide accurate data on cost delta.

Staff No Effect

Positive Technical Environment  Would provide greater control over wifi usage  Website blocking and bandwidth hogging could be prevented Technology Planning Positive  This solution, if implemented with repeaters over different regions of different parks, could be used to accurately determine park usage at various locations, days and times. Internal and external Positive Communication  Users made aware of the efforts put in by PPC to conserve the environment and restore parks for civil usage. Donor Management Positive  Could attract more donors by redirecting the users to the ‘Donate Now’ page or events signup page.

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 18 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 About The Consultant:

Shashank Sharma is a Graduate Student studying Information Systems Management program at Carnegie Mellon University. He comes with a three year experience in the Android Smartphone development industry and aspires to pursue his career in the consulting industry.

References:

Salesforce:

 Salesforce for Non Profits, Free Trial Download: http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/nonprofit/  Getting started with Salesforce: http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/help/nonprofitstarterpack/  Introduction to Salesforce for Non Profits: http://www.slideshare.net/mbaizman/intro-to-salesforce-for-nonprofits  Salesforce1 : http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2014/01/salesforce1.html  Benefits of moving to the Cloud: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2013/10/07/why- salesforce-is-winning-the-cloud-platform-war/ Captive Portals:

 General information on captive Portals: http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/captive-portal  Security and Information Gathering with Captive Portals: http://www.securedgenetworks.com/secure- edge-networks-blog/bid/73904/Why-is-captive-portal-important-for-wireless-guest-access

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 19 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Appendix A

CONTRACT PRODUCT/SERVICE COST ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES

Constant Contact $195.00 User friendly Only manual Clean, designed communication templates between CC and RE Works into our (need to explore) website to collect Doesn't work with STANDARD data all event needs CONTRACT (Includes Builds contact profiles (one form does not email marketing, (tags, email lists, fit all) EventSpot, social 195/month personal info) An additional tool, campaigns, surveys, Connects to social so extra SaveLocal, MyLibrary media cost/training Plus, email archive) Tracks click-through Too user friendly -- and open rates we're sometimes Takes donations limited by their (PayPal, Authorize) templates and Events registration forms

Raiser's Edge $9,502.00 ANALYTIC SOLUTION 3605/year Not user friendly

Functions are Extensive build-out of limited to donors/contacts purchased modules information -- additional tools Capable of targeting require additonal specific contacts for $$ asks FUNDRAISING Limit of five 5897/year Long-term storage of SOLUTION licenses participant Not currently information automatically Extensive connected to our outreach/marketing other data systems capabilities (Savvior, Authorize, CC)

Wolf $25,301.00 MICROSOFT Less costly than hiring WINDOWS SERVER Some staffers have $288.00 staffer 2012 issues with service? Crew of experts can MICROSOFT $100.00 Wolf pushes use of work on one issue, WINDOWS SERVER (50 at in-house servers saving us time CLIENT ACCESS $2.00/license)

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 20 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 LICENSES

DELL POWEREDGE

SERVER $8,449.00

SMART-UPS $917.00

ETHERNET SWITCH $545.00

MISC INSTALLATION $115.00 MICROSOFT SERVER

STANDARD EDITION $42.00 EXCHANGE SERVER $350.00 CLIENT ACCESS (50 at LICENSES $7.00/license)

SONICWALL VPN $370.00

SSL CERTIFICATE $360.00 CONSULTING $11,890 -

SERVICE RETAINER $13,730 Savvior

History of working

WEBSITE HOSTING on our website $650.00 (antiquated) Control of major portions of the History of working on website -- minor our website (7 years) changes have to go Help with small issues through them RETAINER (25 free of charge Very small retainer ?? hours/year) 24-hour support for the amount of work that needs done Projected work estimates seem overestimated

GoDaddy $120.00 DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION $120.00 Currently no Salesforce contract Currently no Deeplocal contract

TOTAL: $35,768

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 21 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014 Appendix B

1. ChilliSpot – http://www.chillispot.info 2. Wifidog – http://dev.wifidog.org 3. PacketFence – http://www.packetfence.org 4. HotSpotPA – http://www.hotspotpa.com 5. NoCat – http://nocat.net 6. CoovaChilli – http://coova.org 7. Utangle – http://www.untangle.com 8. pfSense – http://www.pfsense.org 9. PepperSpot – http://pepperspot.sourceforge.net 10. Zeroshell – http://www.zeroshell.net/eng/ 11. m0n0wall – http://m0n0.ch 12. Kattive – http://www.kattive.it 13. EasyHotSpot – http://easyhotspot.inov.asia/ 14. GRASE Hotspot – http://grasehotspot.org 15. BrazilFW – http://www.brazilfw.com.br 16. FirstSpot - http://patronsoft.com/firstspot/ (for Windows) 17. antamedia – http://www.antamedia.com (hotspot manager for windows) 18. facebookwifi – http://www.facebookwifi.me.uk 19. polkaspots – http://polkaspots.com/

Source : Mohamad Thalib, http://mohammadthalif.wordpress.com/

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Page 22 of 22 Shashank Sharma, Student Consultant April 30, 2014