July 5th: Contacted Sandeep Arora to get a proposal for the project. Rec’d a prompt response. Sent him the project brief and the link to Amazee. Waiting for response back.

July 6th: Signed up for a free trial of KickApps. This is a social networking platform. Will test it for a week. This requires some developers, it is beyond my programming skills. It is not a DIY app. for me.

July 6th: Will now experiment with Networkforgood.

July 6th: Sandeep’s feedback:

“looked at Amazee.

I would suggest you use WordPress MU(Multi User) for Pratham Blog.

WordPress (Mu) combined with Buddypress can become a full blow social networking platform where members can form their groups for sponsoring a village.

WordPress is stable – has a large pool of developers, large number of plugins, donation plugins, etc vs Amazee is a young company, untested platform.”

July 6th: Based on feedback from Sandeep Arora investigating  WordPress (MU) and Buddypress. Also, looking into Cloud Hosting services such as Laughing Squid

July 7th: WordPress (MU) and Buddypress appear to be robust and scalable platforms for Pratham’s Online Community. Received a preliminary proposal from Vizedu (Sandeep Arora) for developing the platform. A formal proposal expected shortly. We have completed a scan of the platform options and have now settled on a direction. This is a good milestone.

July 8th: Received list of deliverables from Sandeep Arora. The list is included here:

1) Installing and configuring WordPress MU.

2) Installing and configuring Buddypress

3) All Graphics

4) Install Plugins – like SEO plugin, Akismet plugin for spam, Twitter Plugin, Social Media plugin, others etc

5) Theme installation and customization.

6) All graphics needed.

7) Uses should be able to register and create profiles.

8) Users can create groups .

8a) Users can create their own blogs if they like. If you do not wan’t this functionality we can disable.

9) Users can donate for a event.

10) Donation functionality linked to Paypal.(other)

July 14th: Waiting on approval from Pratham. Pratham offices in Houston had a fire and then Leona was away on vacation.

July 21st: Heard from Leona. Scheduled a teleconf. with Leona for July 22nd at 1 PM (PST).

July 22nd: Had the telecon with Leona and got the go ahead to move forward.

July 23rd: Rec’d the following recap of the July 22nd meeting from Leona:

Hi Sunil,

I thought we had a very productive call yesterday. Thanks for taking the time to lead this project – it has been a great learning experience for me so far.

To recap our main points of discussion and agreement:

1. The five main project areas in a manner of speaking are a) the emails and/or other methods of communication that draw people to the wordpress site b) the message and content at the first point of user interface c) a platform that enables users to reach out to their networks to generate awareness and raise funds d) an online donation functionality that allows users to make a donation and processes payments and e) an online database functionality that captures relevant information about the users for Pratham’s purposes

2. In terms of roles, as of now, you and I (I might draw in some of our resources as well) will work on the creatives and the content at this stage, although we may look at bringing in more expert assistance at a later stage. Sandeep will provide technical assistance on the project.

3. As discussed, I am fine with the estimate provided for Sandeep’s fees. Please ask him to get in touch with me directly to work out the modalities of the payment

4. Regarding the payment portal, we currently use Your Pay (yourpay.com) as our online payment gateway. Again, other things being equal, I would prefer to use Your Pay since that will mean one less account to reconcile for our financials.

Let me know if you have any questions or if I have missed out on anything. As I understand it, the next step is for Sandeep to work out the technical elements and get back to us.

Thanks once again,

Leona

July 25th: Received the Deliverables/timeline doc from Sandeep Arora

Pratham-Project Vized deliverables

July 28th: Domain name mypratham selected. Pratham IT to register domain name, sign-up with bluehost.com and set up an account with Paypal.

August 4th: The domain name set up as mypratham.org and hosting account with bluehost.com.

August 7th: www.mypratham.org development started. The site can be accessed. There is no content on it yet.

August 14th: Project on hold because first payment to Sandeep not made yet.

August 20th: Received the first wireframe082009 submission from Sandeep. Wireframe approved by Leona Christy. She is in agreement with the direction and has given the go ahead to proceed, but she will check with others at Pratham on the specific funding options and will get back to us by Friday, August 29th.

Sept 22nd: Feedback to Sandeep from Leona

Dear Sandeep,

Thank you for all the work you have done on the website. I know Sunil has been in regular touch with you, but since I had some thoughts on the prototype, he suggested that I get in touch with you directly. I understand that this is work-in-progress, so these are just my impressions of things as they are right now. I am sure you have many improvements planned.

Overall, I must confess the wireframe that you originally sent was to me a lot more exciting than the prototype itself. The wireframe gave this vibe of being a community space where people were gathering, exchanging ideas, raising funds. It thus closely mirrored the initial objective of this project – to create an enabling mechanism for user driven content generation and fundraising. It would thus complement the exisiting website and not supplant it. The prototype, on the other hand, looks to me like any other website.

Also, the donation pages are to me incomprehensible. As someone who is visiting these pages for the first time, I am lost and confused. I don’t know what I am expected to do. Also, the key functionality of people using this site to raise funds from their friends is missing. All these donation pages seem to do is ask for donations – something our current website already does much better.

As far as the products go, I would put three for now:

1. Sponsor a Pratham book: $5000

2. Sponsor an urban learning center: $1500

3. Sponsor a pre-school: $400

In terms of the functionality, I would like to see it similar to firstgiving (where people raise funds towards a target), but am open to any other suggestions you have. The main feature would be to allow people to not just donate money, but raise funds for a program that they personally believe in.

Let me know what your thoughts are. If you want, we can speak by phone sometime over the next couple of days.

Thanks, once again for your efforts!

Create upto 5 email messages to test. Each message will have an attention grabbing headline, engaging story about what Pratham is doing, an invitation to become part of the Pratham community, a call to action. The call to action is to donate money for Pratham books (micro payment concept), one time or  monthly donations; invite friends to do the same; form a group of donors; compete against other groups of donors (?).

Variables to be tested are: headline, story, call to action.

Mailing list for the test:

A subset of the current Pratham list. 500 names per concept.

Timing:

Mailings to go out by end of July. Results tracking and analysis August. Ready for roll-out before Thanksgiving.

The chunks that are envisioned are:

1) Email campaign to the existing Pratham e-mail database, which is estimated to be approximately 9000 names.

2)FaceBook campaign

3)Twitter campaign

4)LinkedIn campaign

5)Youtube campaign

5)Slideshare campaign

6)Docstoc campaign.

Each of these campaigns require the following skill sets to execute:

a)Campaign concept design

b)Creative

b)Programming

c)Tracking and data analytics

d)Ongoing prospect/donor support

e)Software platform.

Though each chunk is a separate module all the chunks link together into a cohesive social networking platform for Pratham. Pictorially, the platform can be viewed as shown below:

Success metrics:
1. Reach out to 10,000 individuals through this email campaign.
2. Add at least 5,000 email ids to Pratham’s online database.
3. Raise $25000 of funds for Pratham Books

Benchmarks:

1. Revenue per dollar spent: For events, varies from $5 to $11 for every dollar spent. For our year-end mailer last year, we earned $19/dollar spent but that was skewed by a couple of large donations – once I remove them we get closer to $15. Our newsletter (which are typically more for keeping donors informed rather than directly raising funds) earn about $2 for every dollar spent. I don’t have a ready estimate for industry benchmarks, but can probably dig up something for you.
2. Overall revenues and cost: Again, wide variations. Our year-end campaign cost $5711 and raised about $110k.
3. New donors as a percentage of all donors: Depending on the event varies from 10% to 95%. We haven’t done a non-event donor acquisition campaign before this.
4. Average donation per donor: $1400 for Pratham as a whole. The mean for the year end campaign was $590, but the median was about $150.

Target audience:
This campaign will target a younger, more web-savvy donor who is interested in global development issues and perhaps has a specific interest in India and education. She is looking to support an organization with a reputation for effectiveness and transparency. She would like to be involved not just as a donor, but perhaps as a fundraiser and/or as a volunteer in India or the US; however, she would first like to test the waters with a small donation. Impact is important to her – she would like to see how her money is going to be used