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CharityVillage Transforms Their Online Presence Into Community Supersite with DotNetNuke

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  • 5/30/2012
  • 1488 Views

Combination of robust commercial WCMS with advanced social capabilities enables powerful new social engagement model while simplifying management of all online content

San Mateo, CA – May 30, 2012 – DotNetNuke Corp. today announced that CharityVillage, Canada's supersite for the non-profit sector, has launched a new community website based on the DotNetNuke Web Content Management System (WCMS). The new site offers a modern social community engagement model that is fully integrated with robust content management and eCommerce capabilities. With the new site, CharityVillage can now extend its online community of 70,000 non-profit professionals and build its commercial business in a scalable, affordable and engaging model.

CharityVillage is Canada’s largest online community for staff and volunteers in the non-profit space. Initially started in 1995 as a resource website that allowed non-profits to connect with peers that share the same passions and interests, the community quickly grew to 70,000 registered users. CharityVillage set its sights on the nearly two million other people working in non profits and realized that the existing site was not going to allow the business to scale. They invested in a whole new site based on DotNetNuke and Active Social, the leading social engagement extension in the DotNetNuke Store. In addition to a new social interaction model that includes activity feeds, profiles, messages, groups and ‘friend’ capabilities, the new site offers tools for job seekers and employers, eLearning courses and premium memberships.

“We needed to transform our online presence to a modern, engaging, social community site complete with eCommerce,” said Maggie Leithead, CEO of CharityVillage. “The new site gives our members a better social experience that is more inviting and engaging, which will improve communication and collaboration. We now also have the ability to launch new products for our community like premium memberships and eLearning that offer valuable new tools for our members.”

With a strong preference for DotNetNuke, CharityVillage began the search for a firm who could assist with the design, business, and technical aspects of the project. After a thorough international search, CharityVillage chose R2integrated (r2i), a U.S.-based digital marketing and technology firm and DNN Gold Partner. “Being an older site, CharityVillage was overdue for a redesign, but the larger challenge was migrating its complex system of legacy business operations to DNN,” said Bill Geibler, senior project manager at r2i. “The CharityVillage site is like CNN.com, LinkedIn, and Monster.com wrapped into one, plus a paywall, Canadian French localization, and an interactive e-learning site. And that's all tied to their custom e-commerce system with page content, users, and account data dating back to the mid-1990s. The site is a real testament to the capabilities of R2i and DNN.”

CharityVillage will soon be upgrading their site to the just announced DotNetNuke 6.2 release, which adds tools to easily deploy internal social collaboration solutions and external communities for customers, partners and employees. The latest version of DotNetNuke builds on its already strong WCMS capabilities by integrating powerful new social features like activity feeds, messaging, enhanced profiles, groups and Facebook authentication for fast login.

“We chose DotNetNuke because the social software on the market today wasn’t good enough on its own,” continued Leithead. “We would have had to bolt on point solutions to get the integrated community experience we now have for our members, combined with an easy-to-use content management system for our staff. DotNetNuke is making us more efficient and allowing us to adapt faster to the needs of our community.”

By adopting an integrated WCMS with social capabilities, CharityVillage can dramatically scale content creation and updating. The advanced content control, permissions and workflow in the fully supported Professional Edition of DotNetNuke gives CharityVillage staff ultimate control of content updates without having to wait for IT staff.

“By making it easier for our members to collaborate and share information, ideas and content we’re fueling the growth of the overall community and, as a result, making it a richer more rewarding experience,” said Shawn Mitchell, Director of Content of CharityVillage. “The more engaged our customers are, the better the opportunity to scale the business to include more members.”

“Building social communities in a silo simply isn’t the right answer,” said Mitch Bishop, CMO for DotNetNuke. “CharityVillage is typical of many thousands of organizations that want their online social communities fully integrated with powerful content management out of the box, without a ton of expensive customization to get it all to work. DotNetNuke 6.2 offers just such an integrated platform.”

To view a before and after look of CharityVillage’s new site, click here

Read the Charity Village Case Study

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About DotNetNuke Corp.
DotNetNuke software is used by developers, designers and business people to quickly build and easily maintain websites and social properties of all kinds. DotNetNuke is the number one social Web content management solution and adaptive web platform in the Microsoft ecosystem – more than 700,000 websites have been deployed worldwide are based on DNN. The online store speeds up this process by offering thousands of apps and add-ons that quickly and easily extend the DNN product. Thousands of organizations, including True Value, Bose, Cornell University, Glacier Water, Dannon, Delphi, USAA, NASCAR, Northern Health, and the City of Denver have leveraged DNN to deploy highly engaging, business critical websites. The DotNetNuke open source project has exceeded 7 million downloads, fueling an active global community one million strong. DNN Corp. was named as one of the fastest growing private companies in America on the 2011 Inc. 500 list. Founded in 2006 and funded by Sierra Ventures, August Capital and Pelion Venture Partners, DotNetNuke Corp. is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices in Vancouver and Amsterdam.

DotNetNuke® and DNN® are registered trademarks of DNN Corp. All other registered and unregistered trademarks in this document are the sole property of their respective owners.

Press Contacts:
DotNetNuke Corp. Marketing
650-288-3150
pr@dnncorp.com

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