These applications permit enterprises — businesses and nonprofits alike — to improve service, streamline operations, retain and build relationships with customers and donors, and generate cost savings whose freed-up resources can help expand their missions.

 

Susan G. Komen for the Cure® is the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists that are fighting to save lives, empower people, ensure quality care for all, and energize science to find the cures.

 

Komen for the Cure is also the largest source of nonprofit funds dedicated to the fight against breast cancer, which is being replenished thanks to events such as the Komen Race for the Cure, with nearly $1 billion being invested in the battle. Founder Nancy G. Brinker entered the fray in 1982 when she promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, that she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever, and launched the global breast cancer movement.

 

The foe is dangerous, deadly, and everywhere, whose terror has been felt by nearly all of us both directly as victims and indirectly as their loved ones.

 

Breast cancer is the second most common type of this disease in U.S. women reports the American Cancer Society. Over 182,000 females are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008. Breast cancer is also the second biggest killer of this disease type in women, with nearly 41,000 deaths projected by year end.

 

Breast cancer knows no gender boundaries. Nearly 2,000 men will become afflicted with it in 2008, and 450 others will die from the disease.

 

Such a major battle with massive numbers of lives at stake requires efficient resource mobilization. To that end Komen for the Cure has turned to Convio’s integrated suite of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) CRM applications to more effectively communicate with and empower constituents, raise funds, influence public policy and support its mission.

 

Komen is standardizing on Convio’s solution for fundraising, advocacy, event fundraising, e-commerce, Web content management, and e-mail communication, which will replace existing customer premises-based donor database management. The product, code-named Aikido, and which has been built on Salesforce.com’s (News - Alert) Force.com platform and designed specifically for nonprofits, tracks all constituent interactions across multiple channels, online and offline.

 

This move will enable Komen to better leverage and more efficiently integrate offline and online campaigns and programs to build stronger relationships and interactions with constituents.

 

Equally if not more importantly, Komen may also experience more than $1.7 million in annual savings, based Forrester Research (News - Alert) on Salesforce.com in the for-profit market. That is money that can go into research to find a cure and into education to help women, and men, detect breast cancer early so they do not have to suffer and die from the disease.

 

 “Standardizing on Convio and the SaaS model [will enable offline and online program integration] that will provide us with incredible insight into our organization’s most important constituent information, regardless of the channel in which the interaction occurs,” says Justin Ricketts, vice president of information technology, Susan G. Komen for the Cure. “It also will provide us with access to new and emerging technologies that empower people anytime, anywhere to be more active and engaged in our promise to save lives and end breast cancer forever.”