Jumpstart Honored at Fourth Annual Convio Client Summit

Jumpstart, an organization that brings college students and community volunteers together with preschool children for yearlong, individualized tutoring and mentoring, was presented with an Innovator Award in the Constituent Empowerment category for its Read for the Record campaign. This annual, international campaign brings preschool children together with valued grownups in their lives to read the same book on the same day, in communities worldwide. This year’s campaign culminated in more than 1,000,000 children reading Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar in libraries, classrooms and homes around the globe. All award winners were recognized at a ceremony last night at the Convio Summit, the company’s annual conference where more than 650 non-profit clients, partners and industry thought leaders gather as a community to share common experiences and effective strategies for nonprofits.

“It really hit home when we found out we had won an Innovator Award, especially knowing that we were up against hundreds of other deserving nonprofits that are also doing great work,” explained Jay Southwood, Development Manager at Jumpstart. “Our staff that supports the campaign is relatively small so we need to be efficient in our work. Through the Personal Events and TeamRaiser platforms we were able to offer our campaign participants a variety of ways to easily get involved and help grow Jumpstart’s Read for the Record.”

The Read for the Record campaign was launched in 2006 in an effort to raise awareness about the importance that reading with young children has in developing crucial early language and literacy skills they need to succeed in school and in life. Jumpstart’s online campaign engaged constituents worldwide and empowered them to reach out to their own personal networks to promote participation. The campaign’s virtual book drive has raised $130,000 over the past two years; and the 1,000,000 participants in this year’s reading campaign was a dramatic increase from the 78,000 participants during its first year. Nine other nonprofits received Innovator Awards and were recognized in categories Advocacy, Best Use of Open, CRM Visionary with Common Ground™, Email Communications, Online Fundraising, Overall Use of Convio, Special Events and Best Website.

“Our clients are leading the charge in embracing online technologies to create stronger relationships with their constituents and cultivate support for their missions,” said Gene Austin, CEO of Convio. “Recognizing the success of our clients at Summit with our annual Innovator Award ceremony allows the entire nonprofit community to learn from each other’s unique and best-in-class strategies for fundraising, advocacy, events and managing supporter interaction.”

For more information on Jumpstart visit:

More information on the 2009 Summit Innovator Award Winners and Notable Mentions can be found at www.convio.com/2009innovators.

About Jumpstart

Jumpstart is a national early education organization that works toward the day every child in America enters school prepared to succeed. To cultivate a child’s social, emotional and intellectual readiness, Jumpstart brings college students and community volunteers together with preschool children for year long, individualized tutoring and mentoring. Since 1993, more than 70,000 preschool children across America have benefited from millions of hours of Jumpstart service. Jumpstart’s national sponsors include American Eagle Outfitters, AmeriCorps, Pearson, Sodexo and Starbucks. Jumpstart is the five-time recipient of the Fast Company/Monitor Social Capitalist Award (2004-2008) and has received a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator. For more information, visit the Jumpstart Web site at www.jstart.org.

About Convio

Convio is passionate about helping nonprofit organizations use software and services to fulfill their missions. The company is the leading provider of online marketing, fundraising, advocacy and constituent relationship management software and services to nonprofit organizations. The company’s online marketing suite offers integrated software for fundraising, advocacy, events, email marketing and web content management, and its database system, Convio Common Ground™ CRM, helps organizations efficiently track and manage all interactions with supporters. All products are delivered through the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and are backed by a portfolio of best-in-class consulting and support services and a network of partners who provide value-added services and applications focused on the unique needs of nonprofit organizations.

Nonprofit organizations used Convio to process $777 million in online donations during 2008 — a 72 percent increase over 2007. Convio clients sent more than 3.1 billion emails to constituents during that period with an industry leading deliverability rate in excess of 95 percent. Charities of all types used Convio to power more than 3,500 web domains as well as complete 44 million advocacy calls to action.

For more information, please visit www.convio.com.