Tag: Community Brands

Two acquisitions announced by Community Brands

In December 2017, Community Brands announced the “addition of 501 Auctions and Gesture to the company, and an agreement in principle to acquire GiveSmart.”

Community Brands announces Configio acquisition

Community Brands announced a new acquisition today, adding Configio, a cloud-based solution for event and activity-based organizations, to its family of companies. Configio allows organizations to “better manage members, clients, participants, marketing data, and more.” Configio counts Kampgrounds of America and the BolderBOULDER 10K as clients.

Dating back to 2012, Community Brands now counts the following companies in its portfolio.

  1. Abila
  2. Affiniscape
  3. Aptify
  4. Configio
  5. Digital Ignite
  6. Job Target
  7. NimbleUser
  8. YourMembership

Read the press release.

OPINION: What I’ve learned during the past 60 days

The following is an opinion piece from the EVP of Membership Solutions at Community Brands, Dan Gaertner. At AMS Fest (June 7-8, 2017 in Chicago) Dan will appear on a panel discussion about the M&A and investment activity in the NFP technology sector.

Since the inception of Community Brands and having met many Abila customers at the Abila User and Developer Conference (AUDC) in early April 2017, and rubbed elbows with hundreds of YourMembership (YM) customers at the Xperience annual user conference later the same month, it’s been validated for me that technology providers serving associations and associations partnering with technology providers need a boost to help the industry grow and better meet missions.

The past 60 days has authenticated for me one of the primary reasons a company like Community Brands is needed for both the association and nonprofit markets. And, it confirms why we’ve started to bring technology-leading companies together in this space.

In my past role as chief product officer at YourMembership and new role as executive vice president of membership solutions at Community Brands, I’ve spent much of the past couple of months traveling around the country getting to know the people, the challenges, the opportunities and the strategy behind each organization. And now we are bringing that collective wisdom together of Abila, Aptify, NimbleUser and YourMembership at Community Brands.

What have I learned?

  1. We all have similar challenges.
  2. We have a massive amount of combined experience and industry knowledge.
  3. We are all dedicated to serving an inspiring market.

Different companies, same challenges.

To no one’s surprise, we are saddled with similar challenges. We’re all trying to serve a customer base and market each brand has identified. And, while point solutions exist in the market, by combining these organizations, we’re creating a broad suite of products which can truly serve the market end-to-end.

Each brand has its challenges evolving their AMS product. The unique needs, change in staff, complex configurations and the customizations which come with large and small associations introduce unforeseen defects and make upgrades more challenging.

We now have an opportunity to come together to share best practices and perhaps educate both sides (the customer and Community Brands) about how to innovate and standardize in our market. We need to focus less on the technology and more on the strategy of how to increase membership and make content easier for members to consume.

It’s impossible to innovate without knowledge and skill.

By joining together these groups, it also allows us to bring innovation in a way we can’t do as well as individual companies. There’s no doubt there are some talented industry business leaders, thought leaders and engineers throughout these organizations. It’s a powerful balance when you combine long-time industry leaders, former association executives and outside technologists.

When I joined YM as chief product officer nearly two-and-a-half years ago, I had no previous experience in the association space. You ask: How could they bring in a guy with no experience with associations to lead the product strategy for one of the largest SaaS solutions in the industry? The answer is simple for me. Fresh eyes, different perspective collaborating with industry experts can make for a powerful combination.

A lot of the businesses, associations and products we’ve brought together have been doing the same things for years and innovation hasn’t kept up with challenges facing the industry. We’re now leading innovation with a lot of smart people who have fresh eyes and distinct perspectives, and I think this gives us an exceptional opportunity to build and evolve association management software products and technology solutions into something to better serve the association market.

Associations and nonprofits inspire us.

Before I arrived at YM, I had never seen a company—from top to bottom—work as hard as the employees at YourMembership. It’s amazing how much is accomplished with so little. I thought to myself: “This isn’t normal.” Well, now I’ve learned it’s normal throughout this industry, because the same approach is happening at Abila, Aptify and NimbleUser.

Employees care about the causes of their customers and believe in the value and impact we each bring to the industry. And, it’s easy to be inspired when, for example, we’re seeing associations and nonprofits use technology to provide a better life for underprivileged children and to help families cope and deal with terminal illnesses.

We believe we can serve the association and nonprofit markets by bringing together smart people who can help build better integrated products and help those markets achieve greater success. And, that’s what our customers are betting on.

OPINION: So far, it’s business as usual under Community Brands

The following is an opinion piece from Jim Gibson, Director of IT at the American Hospital Association, and a Community Brands customer. At AMS Fest (June 7-8, 2017 in Chicago) Jim will appear on a panel discussion about the M&A and investment activity in the NFP technology sector.

In an effort to stay somewhat on top of the recent Association Management System consolidation trend, I have been paying a bit more attention to some of the announcements and blog posts than I might have not otherwise. As an employee of perhaps a larger association with a long standing and heavily invested AMS system, I try to resist the “get off my lawn” mentality as I wonder what all the fuss is about the recent acquisitions that has spawned Community Brands.

What I mean by “fuss” is that I don’t feel like my day to day world has been affected. At least not yet. I am no stranger to change in organizations as I spent many years as a change management consultant. So while I understand there is change going on in the AMS market, I think it is more of a trial at the moment for the AMS vendors themselves and less so for their clients. After all there is still a lot of acquisitions, process improvements, and restructuring still going on not to mention how all the smaller vendors will compete that we must get through before we see much impact to the clients.

So where does that leave associations on the Community Brand platforms? In my opinion, in the same place as we were before. I am still worrying about keeping my AMS system upgraded properly while utilizing new features and functionality. I am still working with my team to keep integrations to our AMS running smoothly or add new ones. We still fret about data integrity, training and even more about data governance. One of our biggest concerns has always been how to get data out of our AMS system in an expeditious and user friendly manner so we can analyze member engagement and create data products for our members.

So while the AMS vendor world is changing around me, I don’t feel the impact in the near term. I would love for the things I worry about (see above) to magically be solved. One can dream can’t they? Perhaps the answer lies in shifting the center of our data universe from the AMS system to more of a data warehouse. Or perhaps new best of breed systems will emerge that can solve some of these challenges that many associations face. I eagerly await how the answer will emerge.

Peter Drucker said, “The best way to protect the future is to create it”. I for one hope the AMS vendors and their customers can create a future for our AMS systems that provide associations with easily integrated systems across multiple platforms that allow us to serve our members in the best way possible and with the ability to provide a great user experience and value added product offerings for our customers. Let’s see what happens next.

Does the Ministry Brands story foreshadow the Community Brands story?

This article on ChurchTechToday about the Ministry Brands consolidation could be viewed as a sign of things to come with Community Brands. If you really want to geek out on what Community Brands may have up their sleeve, read this article from October 2016 and the comments.

RUMOR: Community Brands is about to announce a new family member

I have it from a well-placed source that Community Brands will announce that it has added a new member to its family of customers. The YourMembership users conference wraps up tomorrow, and this deal could be seen as the big news to cap off this gathering of the lead company in the Community Brands consolidation.

ANALYSIS Part 4 of 4: YourMembership leads the Community Brands consolidation

In the time since the Community Brands deals were announced, I’ve spoken with senior executives at Abila, Aptify, YourMembership, and some of their competitors. I also attended the Abila Users & Developers Conference, speaking with their customers and consultants, and listened to a keynote presentation from JP Guilbault, Community Brands’ CEO.

I’ve been analyzing the implications of this deal from the standpoint of each company wrapped up in the transaction, based on the conversations I’ve had with my sources.

Today’s post is about YourMembership.

It’s safe to say that YourMembership (YM) is the lead company in the Community Brands consolidation. The CEO of YM, JP Guilbault, has ascended to the title of CEO of Community Brands and holds the title of CEO for both Aptify and Abila.

For background, in the past five years, YM has made a rapid rise to become a powerhouse AMS. In late 2012, YM (which stood with about 1,000 clients at the time) acquired Affiniscape, an Austin-based AMS with about 1,200 clients, making them one of the major AMS players in the small to mid-sized association market.

The Affiniscape acquisition was bumpy for customers, according to most accounts, and on ReviewMyAMS.com, you can see a pattern of customer dissatisfaction on YM right after the merger. Much like the Avectra/Abila merger, many of the Affiniscape staff departed shortly after the acquisition. Despite assurances made at the 2012 Affiniscape users conference that a best of breed AMS would come from the careful analysis of both products, clients were notified after the acquisition that their product would be deprecated, and a migration to YM would their only choice — unless they wanted to move to another AMS. Clearly, this angered many Affiniscape clients. Adding insult to injury, many Affiniscape clients felt their migrations to YM weren’t handled with care. Ultimately YM doubled down its investment on migrations and the experience improved. It took years for YM to undo the damage, but they eventually did, and now they enjoy a mostly happy clientele. JP Guilbault admits that he reflects on the Affiniscape acquisition as a learning experience, and one that he vows not to repeat.

But doubling their customer base with Affiniscape was only the beginning. YM acquired job board platform Job Target and learning management system platform Digital Ignite. Years after these acquisitions, the former CEOs of Job Target and Digital Ignite are still on staff with YM, their offices are still in place, as are many employees of those acquired companies. I believe this is evidence of a learning lesson from the Affiniscape acquisition, and is hopefully a foreshadowing of what should be expected for the Abila and Aptify deals, as well as future deals.

These acquisitions, combined with the development of an expertly executed marketing and sales strategy over the past five years resulted in YM being catapulted to one of the leading AMS and technology providers in the market, both in terms of customers and revenue. For this effort, YM was acquired by Ministry Brands in February 2017 for a hefty price tag of approximately $300 million, it’s rumored.

YM customers will be the least affected by this consolidation, according to the industry observers I’ve spoken to. They expect the inertia of JP Guilbault’s tenure with YM to continue for the foreseeable future. Because of this, we can predict that the products, office culture, pricing models, customer service practices, and staff from the legacy YM company to be more difficult to unseat going forward under Community Brands than those of Abila and Aptify.

Therefore, Abila and Aptify personnel and customers should expect aspects of YM’s business practices to be applied to them. That change may be painful at first, but in the long run, it will probably be for the best, as the personnel will be more efficient as duplicative processes are eliminated.

Most consultants and YM customers we’ve spoken to are taking a cautious, wait-and-see approach. Most customers seem to have gotten over the problems experienced during the Affiniscape merger. But like any AMS customer base, there is a contingent of unhappy YM customers, and this contingent sees the Community Brands consolidation as a distraction from the work that needs to be done to stabilize and enhance the products. And to be fair, there is a contingent of YM customers that is excited about the growth and innovation opportunities afforded by YM’s access to hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in their products.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity for YM in the short term is to expand its ancillary products and services into the new customer bases. I’m interested to see how aggressively YM Learning, YM Marketing, and YM Careers will be promoted to Abila and Aptify customers.

Industry insiders believe YM, as the lead company in this consolidation, will be challenged to balance profitability on the one hand, with guarantees of no forced migrations on the other. In particular, YM’s Digital Ignite is a direct competitor to Abila’s LMS, Freestone. And Abila’s netFORUM Pro is often considered head-to-head against YM’s AMS. In a typical consolidation, one product would be deprecated in favor of the preferred product. But as we’ve described in these analyses, this is not your typical consolidation.

ANALYSIS Part 3 of 4: Abila joins Community Brands

In the time since the Community Brands deals were announced, I’ve spoken with senior executives at Abila, Aptify, YourMembership, and some of their competitors. I also attended the Abila Users & Developers Conference, speaking with their customers and consultants, and listened to a keynote presentation from JP Guilbault, Community Brands’ CEO.

I’ve been analyzing the implications of this deal from the standpoint of each company wrapped up in the transaction, based on the conversations I’ve had with my sources.

Today’s post is about Abila.

For background, Abila was formed out of the merger of Avectra and Sage Nonprofit Solutions in July 2013, a deal financed by private equity firm Accel-KKR. Up to that point, Sage and Avectra had little in common. Avectra offered two tiers of its AMS software (netFORUM Pro and netFORUM Enterprise), and Sage offered a suite of products for charitable organizations, the most significant of which was a fund accounting package (Sage MIP). Krista Endsley, Sage’s General Manager, was named CEO of Abila after the merger.

Significant turnover at the Avectra offices ensued soon after the merger. Virtually the entire executive suite turned over. Some industry insiders characterized the transition as rocky, and one longtime Avectra client I spoke to called it “chaos.” My sources tell me that Abila leadership, in hindsight, regretted the mass exodus of personnel.

With its round of funding from Accel-KKR, Abila went on to acquire Peach New Media, provider of an LMS platform called Freestone. With an expanding line of products, industry observers expected to see Abila take a page out of YourMembership’s playbook and make additional acquisitions; but those deals never materialized.

Abila’s CEO Endsley departed the company in February 2017 and was replaced by Craig Charlton, an Accel-KKR advisor. Her departure was coupled with rumors (substantiated by well-placed sources) that Abila had been shopping around for a buyer since 2015. The Abila deal closed one month after Charlton was hired. Some conjectured that Charlton was hired just to get a deal done, but he vigorously denies that rumor.

Abila brings a large DC-area office to Community Brands, an asset that YourMembership has lacked.

Abila’s customer base of approximately 8,000, when taken as a whole, could be described as all over the map. There are approximately 300 large association clients running netFORUM Enterprise, around a thousand netFORUM Pro clients (trending small-medium sized), about 6,000 nonprofit (not association) clients running Sage products, and around 100 Freestone clients.

The short term effects of the Community Brands deal aren’t that significant for Abila customers, in my view. Many Abila staff have been through a merger before, giving them experience to draw from, and I predict the disruption for Abila customers will be minimal. From experience, we’ve learned that the transition from one private equity firm to another gets easier with each subsequent investment.

The long term effects will be interesting to watch. Community Brands staff will be challenged with how to manage three Abila products that compete with other products in the Community Brands portfolio.

  • netFORUM Enterprise vs. Aptify
  • netFORUM Pro vs. YourMembership
  • Freestone vs. Crowd Wisdom (aka YM Learning and Digital Ignite)

Abila’s purchase price was rumored to be in the $150-$200 million range.

ANALYSIS Part 2 of 4: Aptify joins Community Brands

In the time since the Community Brands deals were announced, I’ve spoken with senior executives at Abila, Aptify, YourMembership, and some of their competitors. I also attended the Abila Users & Developers Conference, speaking with their customers and consultants, and listened to a keynote presentation from JP Guilbault, Community Brands’ CEO.

Over the next few days, I’ll analyze the implications of this deal from the standpoint of each company wrapped up in the transaction, based on the conversations I’ve had with my sources.

Let’s turn our attention to the most interesting addition to the Community Brands family, Aptify.

Of the three companies coming together under the Community Brands family, Aptify is the most surprising according to industry observers. The founder of Aptify, Amith Nagarajan, has long boasted the idea that Aptify is a privately owned firm that was fiercely committed to its independence from the influence of investors, and it was an important aspect of their sales pitch.

Aptify even went so far as to become Evergreen Certified, which touts the benefits of privately held businesses:

Taking advantage of the ability of closely-held private companies to have a longer-term view, greater confidentiality around strategies, and more operating flexibility than public or exit-oriented businesses.

Given this commitment, it seems shocking that Nagarajan would sell Aptify. But people close to Nagarajan had different perspectives on his decision. Some said the exit was unexpected, with Nagarajan still substantially involved in decision-making at Aptify and constantly touting the company’s Evergreen status.

Others weren’t surprised, knowing just how much investment money is flowing through the sector, and stating that he had expressed boredom with a technology environment that moved slowly compared to some of the other markets in which he has founded businesses. His need for speed comes as no surprise to those who know him well. Nagarajan is widely regarded in the association sector as a brilliant technologist and entrepreneur, and is rumored to have a dozen companies in his portfolio.

Nagarajan will stay on as a strategic advisor to Community Brands, but will not have any day-to-day responsibilities.

Aptify brings an upper-echelon clientele to Community Brands. Their 100+ clients tend to be among the largest associations measured both by members and revenue. This may be because Aptify is more white-glove-service oriented than many of its competitors, with a large professional services team, much of which works in India. This offshore development team may also be an asset to Community Brands.

Aptify also brings an Australasian office (based in Sydney) to Community Brands, giving the consolidated company a foothold in a new growth market.

Most industry observers I spoke to expect Aptify customers to experience a more difficult transition to new management than other customers. Aptify customers almost universally know Nagarajan, the company founder, personally. As a privately-held business, Aptify had a substantially different culture than equity-backed YourMembership and Abila. Employees at Aptify are experiencing their first change in ownership. Many customers have highly customized databases (though Aptify prefers to call them “configured”). Management at both YourMembership and Abila have been less inclined to take on custom work, and there will be tension between that posture and Aptify’s willingness to give clients virtually whatever they wanted (as long as they paid for it).

This transition isn’t a bad thing; whatever difficulty is experienced by Aptify customers and employees will be temporary. Based on experience with similar deals, we can expect that Aptify will emerge stronger in the end.

Industry insiders will be watching closely for clues on how Community Brands intends to manage two products in its suite (Abila’s netFORUM Enterprise and Aptify) that compete in the same niche.

It will also be interesting to see what happens to Aptify employees after the dust settles. Aptify’s business model is very different than that of Abila or YourMembership, and it’s difficult to imagine how Community Brands personnel could reconcile competing service strategies if asked to serve two kinds of customers: those who are accustomed to white-glove-service and those who expect more out-of-the-box solutions.

Aptify’s purchase price was rumored to be in the range of $75 million.