In 2008, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society had a logistics problem. Too many online orders!
With growing visibility from their TV show, “Whale Wars”, Sea Shepherd simply had too many online orders to handle with too few people on staff to do it. Their facilities weren’t setup for pick and pack, order management, or fulfillment.
Enter Michael Niman and his team at Nonprofit Business Solutions.
Their approach at NBS is simple and genius - provide efficient, scalable operational support to not-for-profit organizations so they can focus on mission relevant programs – not office work. Or in the case of Sea Shepherd, help them avoid burdensome ecommerce fulfillment work.
The results have been phenomenal.
Since NBS took over, Sea Shepherd has grown from $200,000 in annual sales to more than $2 million in yearly sales through their AmeriCommerce store shop.seashepherd.org.
NBS handles all their logistics and fulfillment issues including order management, international shipping, and warehousing. All e-store operations are managed by NBS using the tools within AmeriCommerce for multiple storefronts, multiple languages and multiple currencies. In addition to the ecommerce software, NBS also used AmeriCommerce to design Sea Shepherd’s online store and create a custom development resulting in the prevention of more than $146,000 in fraudulent orders. All data is easily exported from AmeriCommerce and imported into their reporting tools.
Because NBS works exclusively with nonprofits, their focus is aimed at scalable efficiency and cost savings for their clients. In other words, they want to do the most for their non-profit clients with the least cost possible.
Unlike most businesses, NBS has actually been reducing their fees to their nonprofit clients as they become ever more efficient in their operations – trying to give as much value to the nonprofit as possible. Their model is to save, not gain wider margins for larger profits.
And that’s where things get interesting with AmeriCommerce.
NBS relies upon AmeriCommerce multistores to manage all their non-profit e-stores. So each time they bring on a new client, they capitalize on keeping the same admin console, same processes, and same infrastructure and easily bring on new sites. NBS also provides rapid onboarding with new non-profit clients by handing off all site, product and ecommerce requirements directly to their AmeriCommerce team.
They process Euro, Australian, UK, Pound Sterling, and U.S. dollars all through AmeriCommerce with centralized management, 24/7 Multilanguage service and multiple agents using the single admin console for multiple stores. Call center agents manage orders and customer inquiries, inbound phone orders, shipping, reports and all sales tracking through AmeriCommerce for all 14 stores.
This scales nicely and provides e-store services that a nonprofit simply cannot do as efficiently and securely on their own. For example, since NBS uses AmeriCommerce for custom design and custom development, they are able to create increased value with custom development and a scalable infrastructure for every not-for-profit ecommerce store they manage.
Recently NBS needed a custom donation tool to drive donations during the checkout process. The purpose was simple, get more donations! The AmeriCommerce team developed a donor request tool that NBS has given to all their non-profit clients and their average donation has gone up tremendously. One nonprofit organization saw a 398% percent donor increase with this single feature.
With AmeriCommerce, Michael and his time at NBS get freedom from technology headaches, costly security and infrastructure.
NBS doesn’t worry about employing a team of developers, software support agents, or the costly requirements of PCI compliance. AmeriCommerce covers all that.
The result is more and more powerful features and extremely low costs to operate their online e-store services. Making NBS one of the most effective e-store operators and fulfillment groups in the U.S.
Learn more about Michael and his team at http://www.consultnbs.com