By Renee Zau, CEO of DonationMatch
After a year of gathering feedback from current members, supporters, UX experts, mentors, partners, and more members, we are excited to announce that the new and improved DonationMatch platform is here! We hope you're having a great start to 2016, and this makes it better.
There were quite a few ideas which were weren't able to squeeze in (Rick and Tim especially, thanks for your invaluable input), so keep an eye out for even more bonuses to be released over the next year.
For now, here are some highlights of what's new:
A New Look
Our new design hails from switching our CMS (content management system), which meant selecting a new template, framework, and our ever-hardworking CTO Darryl rewriting the entire site from scratch.
Menus are now on the left of the dashboard. These should look familiar (companies will see "Find Events" and "My Items" in lieu of Find Donations and My Events, respectively); general workflows are the same.
The dashboard remains your starting point, with messages and other to-do's now organized into highlighted sections, and with activity stats (and *new* organization totals, too) below.
No More Usernames
Log in with just your email address and password--easy peasy! All profiles using with the same email address will be accessible with the same login information. This means you can...
Switch Between Profiles Easily
Once logged in, you'll see the dashboard of the last "organization" (nonprofit or company) you managed. If you represent more than one organization, switching between them takes just a click in the upper right corner (name/arrow) and selecting the profile you want to manage next.
Adding organizations to represent = no extra logins! (Verification process still applies.)
See All Unread Messages In One Place
Inbox too full? There's now an easier way to handle private messages. In addition to message previews on your dashboard, you can also click "See New Messages" in your To-Do area to see matches with unread messages on one easy, sortable list. Also new is that each is timestamped with date/time sent.
New showcase pages
Show Off Your Good Work
Every organization now gets a showcase page to publicly share with others. It includes links to your website, social media accounts, and the most popular information from your profile. Use this promotional page to boost awareness about your charitable activity--it's even one-click shareable!
How do you find your showcase page URL? Click on "My Profile" to see your page. Copy the "https://..." link address from the navigation bar and share it--and your praiseworthy work --with others!
(For Nonprofits) Add Referral Codes Provided by Companies
Given a DonationMatch referral code by a charitable company? You can now add codes yourself through "My Account" to ensure you reap the benefits of being their direct referral.
What's on YOUR wish list for a web-based donation system? Tell us in the comments below, and come to www.donationmatch.com (or register if you're new) to see how these our platform's new features can knock even more time off the event planning process!