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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CANADIAN BIBLE SOCIETY SIGN 5-YEAR AGREEMENT FOR MINERVA-ASP™ SOFTWARE
Toronto, Ontario (Tuesday, April 5, 2005) - Martin Hochstein, President, Inquiry Management Systems (IMS)
www.ims.ca announced today that the Canadian Bible
Society (CBS) has signed a 5-year agreement that will see the Canadian Bible Society outsource its
donor database management requirements to IMS. Access to the CBS data will be through the IMS
Web-based Minerva-ASP™ solution www.webminerva.com.
This agreement will also see IMS take over donor support mailings and create a secured online donor
support and development web presence including online donation processing within the existing
www.biblesociety.ca website. Hochstein
added, "We have invested over 1.5 million dollars in hardware and software during the 30-month
development of Minerva to ensure we are able to satisfy the demanding challenges that the not-for-profit
community presents. We continue to receive interest from not-for-profits unhappy about being locked
into systems and suppliers that are unable or unwilling to create a central database system that can be
securely and selectively accessed anytime and anywhere there is an Internet connection. Our Minerva-ASP
system accomplishes that task quite easily using our proprietary "Hot Division" technology. We use one
central database and restrict access to data on a "need-to-know" basis. We can easily handle over 1,000
divisions if need be. We are extremely pleased to see the Canadian Bible Society join our growing list
of NFP organizations that have recognized the value of our product and our business philosophy."
This contract, over a year in negotiation, was concluded once CBS had completed researching the
alternative solutions available. "There is nothing else like Minerva out there," commented Erwin van
Laar, Director of Donor Support and Development at the Canadian Bible Society. "We looked everywhere
for something that would meet our needs now and in the future. We needed to address our internal
database issues and we needed to give selected web access to all of our field agents in 16 district
offices. With a growing database of over 200,000 donors, 2,000,000 transactions and 3,200,000
communication records our storage and access requirements were significant. Only Minerva had the power
and speed capable enough to handle the job. And we particularly liked the flexibility of outsourcing
some or all of our work on an as-required basis."
Patrick Durbano, Director of Business Development for Minerva stated that, "It has been quite a ride
working with the Canadian Bible Society. They challenged us at every turn and in fact helped us make
the product even better than it was."
"While some not-for-profits have been looking at integrating their websites with their databases, the
business cases are only now being written," says Peter Blakely, President of Blakely & Associates
www.blakelyassociates.com who was retained by
CBS to help evaluate suppliers. Mr. Blakely added, "CBS and IMS are a good fit, they both know the
value of an integrated database and they both know that the web delivers it quickly, easily and
accurately to the desk top. I was particularly impressed with the IMS attitude towards enhancing Minerva
to deal with the particular requirements of CBS."
Minerva-ASP is a web-based, donor management application that allows not-for-profit organizations to
outsource some or all of their day-to-day operations. The access fees vary based on database size and
number of users and are competitive with other less flexible solutions now in the marketplace. With
Minerva-ASP you receive a superior relational database tool that includes integrated constituent,
donation, membership, volunteer, telemarketing, event and campaign management modules. In addition,
all the management reports are full drill-down and drill-through using proprietary neural technology
that allows for linear and non-linear searches. As a subscriber you decide how much of the data capture,
banking, mailing and other activities that you want to handle and outsource the balance to IMS.
Minerva-ASP lets you control what you wish to outsource and allows you to re-focus time, energy and
effort on meeting organizational goals. You can access Minerva-ASP from your office, home or even on
the road, just login and you are connected to one of the most powerful, efficient and easy-to-use
donor systems anywhere.
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