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CiviCore Gets GivingFirst.org Ready for Colorado Gives Day

Recently we met up with Charles “Chic” Naumer, co-founder of CiviCore, the company that programs the online giving technology for GivingFirst.org. We appreciate the ideas they share to help us enhance the site. Their work and dedication to GivingFirst is indispensable, and we are grateful to them for being the technology sponsor of Colorado Gives Day this year.

What is CiviCore?
Our company builds web-based database applications for the social sector. This includes databases for managing volunteers, donors and client outcomes. Our products are customized for each client’s particular need.

When did CiviCore start and where are you located?
My business partner, Rich Rainaldi, and I co-founded CiviCore in 2000. Our office is in the heart of downtown Denver and we have over 350 clients in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America and Australia.

How did you get involved with Community First Foundation?
Community First Foundation hired us four years ago to build the GivingFirst platform. It has been a great experience to see the success of the GivingFirst website in terms of both the enthusiasm it has created for online giving in our community and the benefit to all the nonprofits we care about in our community.

What do you do to prepare for Colorado Gives Day?
Our biggest focus is to prep for the amount of transactions per second that will come through GivingFirst in a 24-hour period. Last Colorado Gives Day we had up to 6 transactions per second and more than 20,000 donations in one day. We are prepared for t these bursts of activity in a short amount of time. Also, we recently migrated GivingFirst to a new “cloud based” environment that will make the site more efficient and cost effective.

What will your team be doing on the big day—December 6?
Our entire team is very excited to be a part of the great success of Colorado Gives Day.  We won’t be getting a lot of sleep on December 6th.  We will be monitoring everything for all 24 hours —transactions coming in, payments being processed, system performance and general traffic metrics. Last year Community First Foundation met its goal of $1 million very early in the morning. We were thrilled to see the donations coming in and our system handling eight times the expected volume so well. We were really prepared last year, so we have a leg up this year.

How do you help ensure the site is secure?
Security is a very important. We have considered security throughout development of the GivingFirst system. To ensure our systems are secure the Giving First system was recently tested by an outside, third-party security firm. It is always nice to have an outside opinion when it comes to security and this audit gives us added confidence our systems are secure.  Additionally, all of CiviCore applications are hosted at a top tier hosting facility with state-of-the-art physical and software security mechanisms in place. 

Do you have a favorite GivingFirst feature?
I am very excited by Fundraising Pages--the individual campaign pages. Last year, I setup a campaign page for my favorite nonprofit, The Anchor Center for Blind Children, and raised more than $2,000. It is very gratifying to be able to utilize this functionality to generate an even bigger benefit for the organizations you care about.

What do you like about GivingFirst?
It’s made a big impact in Colorado. We’ve been really excited by its value—making online giving available 24 hours a day, every day in Colorado. It gives nonprofits in our community infrastructure that they otherwise would have had to build themselves. Now when our Colorado clients need an online donation system, we can direct them to GivingFirst. We love to be able to support our Colorado-based clients so cost effectively! Clients in other states just don’t have this option.

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