Rick Hernandez, the founder of Social Good Software, discusses in his interview with The New IT how he helps non-profit organizations achieve their maximum efficiency with minimum effort.
No business opportunity is how other software developers define charitable institutions. On the other hand, Rick saw the non-profit organizations as a potential niche worth investing in his time, effort, and money. He purposely developed the Social Good Software to help non-profit organizations, especially the Altru users that encountered issues while using it or those who wanted to get the most out of the system.
“I can say that my team is world-class at this one thing and nothing else. We understand this problem very well — we know its little tentacles and everything that comes with it. When people ask me, who is your competitor? or your competition? I say nobody! because no one is very obsessed about the problem as we are.” – Rick H.
Know more about Social Good Software and how Rick Hernandez and his team make a significant difference to all of their customers:
What is Social Good Software?
Social Good Software of Rick Hernandez is a software service platform that helps non-profit organizations, a vertical market that other software vendors have been ignoring, to operate more efficiently.
Currently, there aren’t that many resources going into non-profit organizations. Usually, when people think about charitable institutions, they don’t think of a business opportunity. Their thought is that there’s no money in it, but that’s not the case because the arts and culture market is a 980 Billion dollar market that includes private sales of art pieces, all kinds of arts and culture, not just attractions and places.
What did you see that was lacking that you can fill?
Before I started this software company, I was doing more interactives. Lots of our customers were digital interactives — digital gallery pieces, waypoint finding machines, audio tours, or just the things you interact with when you go to a museum.
Some of the stuff we created got to go around the country. We’ve gone to the mayo clinic, a couple of science centers throughout the U.S., and our connection here in Utah. Lots of our stuff got hosted at the Natural History Museum of Utah and the University of Utah — the Nursing College and the Orthopedic Center.
That’s how I worked in the Arts and Culture space. I was involved in ideation, creation, production, testing, and finally releasing it to the public, where hundreds of thousands of visitors get to interact with this one piece.
What you’re currently doing today?
Now, we have software for back-off office for our customers. Back off office is things we essentially bucket into three to help our customers: automate, delegate, and streamline.
Automation. We help our customers get those things that are manually done out of their plates and let an automation system do it for them.
Delegation. It is more specifically on things they can’t handle internally. A lot of non-profit organizations can’t afford software developers and designers. They can delegate it to my company, where I have those individuals who can take on these specific initiatives they have in mind.
Streamline. It means understanding our clients and how they do things. We help them trim down their steps from their processes. For example, if their step process takes 50, we get it down to 14.
How would you feel your software is being a disrupter in the industry? How specifically are you making that disruption?
There are many benefits that Social Good Software can provide, but most importantly, on the hour saved. We take these large initiatives they want to do and put automation in place. Instead of hiring an employee or themselves trying to do it, we put an automation system that will work for them.
For example, most of these organizations have some membership component to them. One of the automation we are doing is to remind folks to renew their membership automatically. There is no required staff to remind their customers about their membership renewal.
Do you have competition in doing this stuff?
I believe we do not have any competition with what we do because we are niche down into the particular people we serve, so there is not a single vendor that can help our customers as much as we can.
We also know the specific person that we have to contact. It is either director of philanthropy, the director of membership, or the fundraising director. It is the person who is making rain for the organization.
How would you say you are innovative?
We essentially have this kind of app that we sell that helps with the automation piece, but the real magic where it is innovative is when you combine it.
For instance, you can remind your folks to renew their membership while we will also send them an end-of-the-year appeal. You combine two things: reminding folks to renew their membership and for an end-of-the-year deduction. That is what makes it innovative, the way it is meaningful for the organizations.
Have you seen an increase in donations because of it?
Definitely yes!
If you are doing all the manual tasks, like sourcing a list and coming up with the messaging, there are times when things slip, like you do not have the time to do this and that. That is when we step in and set it automatically. Automation System will take care of it for you.
Who takes care of your technology? How does your back end?
We are a small team of nine, but we are highly skilled and only do this one thing. I would say we are world-class at this and nothing else.
Some companies are trying to capture as many markets as possible while we are narrow in what we do, who we help, and how we can help them. Like today I turned away businesses not necessarily because we could not serve them but because we choose not to serve them since they do not fit in the market we operate, which is why we pass them along.
What do you think is the next step for your company? How do people get a hold of you and all that good stuff?
The next step is to continue serving the arts and culture market. Right now, we are very niche down into the people we serve, so we are looking for ways to expand that. Currently, in the U.S.A, there are around 110 000 arts and culture organizations, and we can only serve five percent (5%) of the market. We are looking to open that up to maybe 25% to 30% of the market.
Many cultural centers and institutions have been neglected and run by volunteers, so we are making a smaller tier price item they can avail to help their organization perform more effectively.
Learn more about Social Good Software and the services we offer by visiting our website socialgoodsoftware.com.
