Join us in Chapel Hill!

This day-long conference will bring together representatives of the nonprofit and technology communities to identify and address the technology needs of the nonprofit community in North Carolina. The conference will be an interactive conversation between nonprofit leaders, technology experts, and volunteers. Look for Plus Three's Alice Lincoln and Michael Peters when you register and throughout the day.

Friday, June 25, 2010 from 8am - 5pm
The William and Ida Friday Center in Chapel Hill, NC

Congratulations, ServeNext.org!

In February, ServeNext.org won a $50,000 grant in the Pepsi Refresh Project.

You can win, too.

The Project is simple — every month in 2010, nonprofits submit their ideas, and people vote for their favorites. At the end of each month, the top 32 ideas win $5,000, $25,000, $50,000 or even $250,000. There are plenty of months left in 2010, so why not give it a shot?

Find Out How They Did It — and How You Can, Too!

To celebrate ServeNext.org's win, we're hosting a FREE strategy call with ServeNext.org Executive Director Zach Maurin where you can learn tips and tricks for using all the marketing tools available in ARCOS to engage your supporters and turn them out to vote for your idea.

Strategy Call: Mobilizing Your Supporters to Support Your CauseWednesday, April 7th @ 1:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Register for the strategy call today.

Not planning on entering the Pepsi Refresh Project? The same strategies ServeNext.org used can help you achieve your online goal — whether it be growing your list, raising money, or motivating supporters to become advocates on the social networks.

Register for the strategy call today.

We'll send conference call information Tuesday, April 6th.

More Information

Plus Three built its ARCOS marketing software in 2001 specifically for political parties. Its first client, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was having an identity crisis that year, with no strong fundraising process in place to pull out of its slump. Plus Three built the ARCOS-based Demzilla, a database of about 166 million registered voters with list management capabilities that enabled the DNC to personalize and target fundraising email messages.

Campaign contributors are the political equivalent of media subscribers, according to Plus Three co-founder and President Juan Proaño. Seeing the correlation, Plus Three entered the publishing space in 2005 by acquiring assets from Primedia's Internet Resource and Technology Group, which it folded into ARCOS. Plus Three tackled the key challenge of acquiring new subscribers for Primedia by applying its database-building expertise, says Proaño.

For the JohnEdwards08 presidential campaign, Plus Three expanded its services to include viral marketing tools, blogging, a mobile phone campaign and an advocacy program—the One Corps community service program. Those services are included in the current version of ARCOS, which includes a CRM database to deliver newsletters, blog posts or any other “hook you need to drive sign-up registration,” says Proaño. Magazines using Plus Three to power their websites include Surfing Magazine, Skateboarder Magazine and Motor Trend.

Plus Three has shown how similarly political and media brand campaigns use integrated online communications and asset management to create that registration hook. The difference between them lies in content development, according to Proaño. Media companies have the advantage, with more resources to dedicate to unique, rich content rather than to speeches and PR.

Publishers take note: Leverage your content and data lists—your two strongest assets—to consistently feed each other.

WASHINGTON, DC (Feb. 13, 2009) -- Plus Three LP, a New York-based online fundraising and technology company that empowers nonprofit, advocacy, membership, and political organizations to build successful online initiatives, today announced its role in helping the Latino Inaugural Gala 2009 set an online fundraising record for the Hispanic community. In just one month, over $625,000 was raised online through the sale of 3,000 gala tickets at http://latinoinauguralgala2009.org/. The event raised more than $1 million.

The Latino Inaugural Gala 2009 set an online fundraising record for the Hispanic community. In just one month, over $625,000 was raised online via Plus Three's ARCOS platform. See how ARCOS can help your organization beat its fundraising goals. Request a Demo | Request a Consultation

"We are extremely proud of this accomplishment and having been able to support the Latino community," said Plus Three President Juan Proaño. "The Hispanic community will increasingly play an important role in political and issue activism and now we've proven that we can turn that activism into a strong fundraising tool."

Given the plethora of inaugural events occurring in Washington, the Latino Gala distinguished itself with a very high-quality website design and superior ticket processing capabilities. This coupled with the superior event management capabilities of Plus Three's ARCOS technology gave Plus Three a competitive edge over other technology companies.

The ARCOS platform can handle over 5,000 transactions per minute, provides industry-leading reporting and was designed to handle targeted email messaging to ticket holders, volunteers, and media. Another major factor was the significant cost savings; Plus Three does not charge per-email or per-transaction payment-processing fees. In addition, Plus Three was able to go from initial concept to a fully functional, custom-designed website and online ticketing system in just ten days.

"Plus Three helped us design a great website that made it possible to sell 3,000 tickets in a short time frame," said Latino Inaugural Gala Event Planner Grace Garcia. "The website allowed us to get out key information in a timely way and to provide tight coordination with the media and with volunteers."

The gala was held Sunday, January 18 in Union Station and drew over 4,200 attendees including Latino elected officials, community leaders and celebrities from across the country to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama.

The gala, which was covered by local, national, and international media and recognized as the "sexiest" party by Politico, was co-hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI), the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute (CHLI), Democratic National Committee Hispanic Caucus, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and Voto Latino.

About Plus Three & ARCOS

Plus Three LP is a New York-based online fundraising and technology company that empowers nonprofit, advocacy, membership, and political organizations to build successful online initiatives. Plus Three's ARCOS platform provides an integrated suite of online marketing tools including content management, contribution processing, advocacy & viral marketing tools, targeted e-mail messaging, online Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) database, real-time reporting and analytics, blogging, and social networking.

Since being founded in 2002, Plus Three has helped its clients raise over $250 million, cultivate more than 12 million new activists and send over 2 billion emails in order to better carry out program work, serve their members, advocate for legislation, and win elections.

To learn more about Plus Three, please visit http://plusthree.com/ or contact Alice Lincoln at alincoln@plusthree.com or (866) 945-4889.

Allan says, "check out the fee structure for Plus Three. It's not revolutionary but more indicative of the way donations processing fees and per-user licenses are going the way of the dodo — that is, extinct. Plus Three doesn't charge for e-mail delivery or commission fees. One of the things that always drove me crazy in working out costs associated with operating a CRM was the way fee structures always militated against usage. That is, the more work you did with a CRM, like e-mailing or getting donations, the more you had to pay. Plus Three has a very flat fee structure in that regard. Listen to the podcast for more details regarding the pricing as well.

"I think Plus Three has got the right target segment in mind when it comes to their pricing and their software's capabilities. Databases for a nonprofit's Web site and for the merge fields needed for e-mail fundraising are finally shared so there isn't some sort of awkward integration involving .csv files if you find yourself moving your workflow and data back and forth between your Web site and CMS. If you're looking for an integrated solution that's pretty easy to alter and don't have any internal developers to roll your own solution and you've got some pretty serious e-mailing initiatives go ahead, I suggest you might want to take a deeper look at Plus Three."

The podcast and full text of the post are available on Non-Profit Tech Blog.

WASH., D.C. (May 7, 2008) -- Plus Three LP, a New York-based online fundraising and technology company that empowers nonprofit, advocacy, membership, and political organizations to build successful online initiatives, today announced that it has completed a major upgrade for its client EMILY's List (www.emilyslist.org), and that it has ported the organization's powerful database of candidates, donors and supporters into its ARCOS platform. As a result EMILY's List is reporting new efficiencies and increased options that allow it to increase the effectiveness of email campaigns, respond to issues on behalf of candidates in real time, segment campaign messages based on local data about constituents, and attract potential candidates with new programs and initiatives.

As part of the migration, Plus Three developed a rich new design for emilyslist.org.

With more than 100,000 members across the country, EMILY's List is the largest political action committee in the nation and the largest financial resource for women running for elected office. When Plus Three began reviewing their legacy system last year they discovered a disparate set of four systems for content management, contribution processing and bulk e-mail. Plus Three's challenge was to integrate each of these systems into a single platform with a common interface and expand possibilities with integrated multimedia tools such as streaming video, blogs, podcasts and other user-generated content.

"At its highest level, our challenge was to find a way to translate EMILY's List's tremendous grassroots support into an online initiative that truly reflects its reach and influence," said Juan Proaño, Plus Three President and Co-Founder. "We were able to meet that challenge in a compressed time frame and give the organization the tools it needs to be effective during this critical period."

A key reason Emily's List chose Plus Three and ARCOS over competitors was its demonstrated ability to streamline multiple systems into one platform, and in a reduced timeframe. Given the current election season, EMILY's List needed to integrate and expand these key systems but in a way that was transparent to current and prospective candidates, donors and members. Another major factor was the significant cost savings from moving to ARCOS.

"What's key for us is that with this change we've expanded our possibilities and been able to reduce overall costs because we have a single interface for multiple operations," said Britt Cocanour, Chief of Staff, EMILY's List. All of the contribution and candidate profile pages now exist in the ARCOS content management system instead of the legacy system, improving efficiency and organizational workflow.

Using its PAC fundraising interface, visitors to EMILY's List can contribute directly to several different candidates across the country using a single form through a multi-process credit card transaction system. At the same time, administrators can collect and review localized data and launch timely campaigns and initiatives in real time targeting specific voters and constituents using ARCOS's Dashboard functionality.

Earlier this year Plus Three launched a demonstration campaign to highlight ways clients can grow membership, establish networked groups of online and offline supporters, push localized issues-based content to constituents, and raise more dollars online. It is encouraging prospective clients to visit www.plusthree.com/demo to request a demo.

About Plus Three & ARCOS

Unlike most of its competitors, Plus Three does not charge per-email or per-transaction payment-processing fees – thus enabling clients to improve ROI by performing targeted fundraising at the industry's lowest cost. The ARCOS platform also integrates easily with third-party and legacy systems, enabling unparalleled customization. The ARCOS platform is built using open-source technology, which provides three key differentiators clients value above all else: reliability, scalability and security. In addition, open-source technology is free from onerous licensing fees.

Plus Three L.P., a New York-based online fundraising and technology company that empowers nonprofit, advocacy, membership, and political organizations to build successful online initiatives, today announced it has upgraded its ARCOS technology platform and migrated its clients to its robust ASP. As a result, Plus Three reports it has been able expand the products and services it offers its clients, adopt the highest service-level guarantees in the industry, and add best-in-class security controls that ensure customer and member data is never lost or stolen.

Plus Three has a track record of success that is unrivaled in the market today, having delivered more than 1 billion emails and raised over $250 million dollars online for its clients since 2004. Over the past four years, Plus Three has also helped its clients recruit over 12 million new supporters.

New Model, New Technology

Traditionally, organizations have used the Internet as a one-way channel to broadcast their message and gather limited feedback. Today, many organizations are taking a new and more expansive approach.

"The new model is to build a solid and identifiable brand that will spark grassroots excitement so that constituents become advocates of the message," said Juan Proaño, Plus Three President and Co-Founder. "After spending considerable time listening to our customers, we found that the industry is seeking new applications to accomplish this goal, but in a format that gives them greater access to real-time data and control to adapt marketing campaigns to often fast-changing conditions."

ARCOS 7.0 addresses the need for these tools. The ARCOS platform has long supported standard elements such as:

ARCOS 7.0 introduces an array of new features including:

Plus Three's Vice President of Product Development Alice Lincoln says, "We built the ARCOS platform for enterprise-level organizations and are proud to today be able to offer the same cutting-edge tools and high level of performance to clients of all sizes – even those who may feel they do not have room in their budget for a high-quality, unified solution for their online and offline marketing needs."

To highlight ways organizations are using ARCOS 7.0 to solve business needs, Plus Three is launching an ongoing demonstration campaign that will showcase various ways clients are growing their member bases, establishing networked groups of online and offline supporters, pushing localized issues-based content to constituents, and raising millions of dollars online. For a demonstration of how Plus Three technology has helped clients such as Sierra Club, John Edwards for President, fashion company Rock & Republic, the United Federation of Teachers, and Primedia, please visit www.plusthree.com/demo today.

About Plus Three & ARCOS

Unlike most of its competitors, Plus Three does not charge per-email or per-transaction payment processing fees – thus enabling clients to improve ROI by performing targeted fundraising at the industry's lowest cost. The ARCOS platform also integrates easily with third-party and legacy systems, enabling unparalleled customization. The ARCOS platform is built using open-source technology, which provides three key differentiators clients value above all else: reliability, scalability and security. In addition, open-source technology is free from onerous licensing fees.

Plus Three LP, ("Plus Three" or the "Company"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced a strategic partnership with a leading provider of online petitions, PetitionThem.com. With this partnership, Plus Three gains access to PetitionThem's registered database of proven activists and grassroots political participants enabling Plus Three to enhance services to its stable of political, non-profit and advocacy clients. Additionally, UK-based PetitionThem, as the fourth largest online petition company in the world, gives Plus Three the ability to offer its core services to a much wider array of global geo-political, economic and cultural issue participants. For PetitionThem the partnership provides immediate access to the U.S. market bringing its leading petition services to local activists.

"Plus Three has helped clients break boundaries and use the Internet and related technologies to more effectively communicate with their constituencies," said Juan Proaño, Plus Three's president. "However, we know that for Plus Three and our customers to continue to be successful, we must continue to add services and solutions that enable organizations to communicate directly with their constituent base using a variety of methods to guarantee participation. Online petitions used to primarily focus on issues relating to the environment, but recently those issues have taken a backseat to political battles reflecting the polarized state of our nation. We are excited to announce this partnership with PetitionThem as it adds a service to our offerings that immediately benefits our customers."

Plus Three benefits with instant credibility and recognition gained from associating with one of the top petitioning sites in the world. Through PetitionThem, more than one million people have accessed the service to sign petitions and participate in local and national issues. This database helps Plus Three customers promote social change and effective policy change by leveraging the enthusiasm and voice of these activists. In addition, Plus Three gains access to an additional donor base for their clients that has indicated a willingness to participate in the political process and give money to causes. Following PetitionThem's practice of diligently protecting its members' information, Plus Three will only use that information when it has received expressed permission from a PetitionThem member.

"In the United Kingdom, PetitionThem has been tremendously successful at engaging and supporting people who are interested in social issues," said Roger Rowett, co-founder of PetitonThem.com. "For our members to participate in the increasingly global community it is important for us to have access to issues and organizations in the United States. We will continue to seek partners like Plus Three that open new markets to us and increase the effectiveness of our site."

About PetitionThem

Petition-them.com has been designed to take advantage of the potential world wide audience of the Internet. Usually, people who wanted to ask others to 'sign up' to a cause or campaign had to stand on street corners, or in shopping precincts. If the group had plenty of resources they could use traditional forms of media advertising such as newspapers, TV, or billboards. The limitations of standing on a street corner are obvious. One of the limitations of using other forms of media, apart from the cost, is that you can only promote your cause, you cannot actually get people to sign your petition. Petition-them.com offers all the advantages, with none of the drawbacks. It enables any person or group to advertise their cause in a responsible way, and allows people to sign the petition on line. The people who created Petition-them.com simply wish to offer this service in order that individuals can have a real voice. They are excited by the potential Petition-them.com has, and believe that the site can become a real vehicle for public advocacy.

Plus Three LP, ("Plus Three"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced its expansion into the publishing industry with the acquisition of the assets of Primedia Internet Resource and Technology Group ("PIRT"), a division of PRIMEDIA Inc. The acquisition includes the group's experienced leadership team, and the technologies used to manage more than 300 online publications. Additionally, PIRT executive Len Porcano joins Plus Three as Vice President of Technology, bringing his expertise in online content publishing and business operations.

With the acquisition, Plus Three becomes an immediate leader in online publishing technology. Included in the technology assets acquired are: Krang, the leading Open Source publishing tool; a Membership/Subscription tool; a centralized paid content platform; and PIRT ShuzaI, a tool for quick building of user data collection forms by web editors. Plus Three will fold the PIRT technology directly into ARCOS™, the company's successful and widely deployed constituent management platform.

"This is a major strategic advancement for Plus Three as we seek to expand on our leadership in online constituent communications," said Juan Proaño, president, Plus Three. "Over the past several years, we've leveraged our technology and marketing knowledge to virtually reinvent Web-based donor campaigns and constituency management with our work for organizations like the Democratic National Committee and the Kerry for President Campaign. With the acquisition of PIRT, we will extend our marketing knowledge into another high growth online category — publishing."

About ARCOS

The ARCOS software platform is built using Open Source, the world's most flexible and scalable software. Using Open Source provides three key differentiators that the company's clients value above all else — reliability, scalability and security. Open Source is also free from onerous licensing fees, enabling ARCOS users to constantly maximize the value of their investment while substantially reducing the cost of every donation. Built on this industry-leading open source platform is a complete suite of solutions that allow organizations to more effectively communicate with their constituents. The ARCOS platform is easy to integrate into legacy systems providing complete and reliable access to information and applications located on those systems. In addition, the Open Source platform enables unparalleled customization and enhancement.

Plus Three LP, ("Plus Three" or the "Company"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced that Co-founder and President Juan Proaño of Plus Three was named among the top 100 Hispanic entrepreneurs in the United States by Hispanic Trends Magazine. As president of Plus Three, Juan has improved the way progressive organizations build constituent groups and fundraise by giving them immediate access to the widest array of contributors. Over the last 10 years he has developed a level of expertise in the areas of product development, strategic marketing and software integration that have produced industry leading technologies and best practices in the fields of database marketing, email delivery technologies and fundraising efforts. Most recently Plus Three's fundraising tools have helped non profit organizations like the NAACP raise money for Hurricane Katrina victims.

"It is an honor to be considered one of the top Hispanic Entrepreneurs in the United States," said Proaño. "I am proud to be among the list of successful professionals who have driven positive change in Hispanic communities and in the business world, but prouder still of the hard work and dedication exhibited by every member of the Plus Three team who is committed to the success of this company."

Plus Three's extensive work with customers like the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, John Kerry for President, NAACP and the AFL-CIO has established the company as experts in online fundraising, constituency management and the political landscape. The company gained national attention last summer and fall for their breakthrough work building the Democrat's database of registered voters, Demzilla, and providing the technology that enabled the Democrats to dominate the Republicans in online fundraising.

Today, Plus Three is expanding into the online publishing industry with the acquisition of Primedia Internet Resource and Technology Group ("PIRT"), a division of Primedia Inc. With the acquisition of PIRT, Plus Three has become an immediate leader in online publishing technology.

Plus Three LP, ("Plus Three" or the "Company"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced that Thomas Burke has joined the company as COO and Len Porcano as VP of Technology. The additions to the executive team come as Plus Three expands its customer base and product feature set. Both additions are effective immediately with Thomas joining the company in Plus Three's Washington D.C. offices and Len in the company's New York location.

"Thomas' deep political roots and technology background, and Len's expertise in online content publishing and business operations, are great assets for Plus Three that enable us to expand our customer base while enhancing the services and solutions current customers rely on," said Juan Proaño, president and co-founder of Plus Three. "The next six months promise to be an exciting time for Plus Three and the additions of Thomas and Len are instrumental to the next growth phase of our company."

Thomas Burke has been building technology solutions for twenty-five years. His early work in database applications included modeling and chemical weapon simulations for the US Air Force and database applications at the Federal Integrated Quality Control (FIQC) system. Burke worked on the 92 Clinton campaign, and subsequently accepted a position at the Clinton White House doing targeted marketing using Census and commercial data.

After leaving the White House, Burke spent ten years in the private sector, first as co-founder of a leading regional ISP in Baltimore/Washington, then as lead developer for Bigfoot Interactive, now part of Alliance Data Systems. In 2001, Burke returned to politics as the principle architect of the Democratic Party's Datamart. Burke and his team spearheaded the DNC's change from high dollar fundraising to low-dollar fundraising, led by online initiatives.

Prior to joining Plus Three, Len Porcano spent a combined six years at About.com and Primedia before and after the merger between the two companies. At About, Porcano architected one of the largest migrations from Microsoft NT/IIS to an open source platform. This reduced the hardware footprint by approximately 60 percent while increasing capacity more than 300 percent, a key factor in About's continued growth at a critical time in its history. Following the merger, Porcano was made VP of Development at the newly formed PIRT group. While there, he was instrumental in executing PIRT's goal of reducing Primedia costs and consolidating most of Primedia's web properties on a single technology platform.

Plus Three, LP ("Plus Three" or the "Company"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced it has been selected by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) to service, unite, expand and mobilize its 160,000-member base. Supporting the UFT's continued commitment to provide top services to its members and implement a communications platform that is fully integrated with the organization's pre-existing technology, the updated portal improves online communications and enhances the services and information accessible to members.

The addition of the UFT — the largest union local in the world — strengthens Plus Three's strong penetration in the union arena; the company's client roster also includes the AFL-CIO, California Labor Federation and the United Farm Workers. The company is already the leading provider of technology solutions for political fundraising.

"It is our continued goal to support our members with excellent services and timely information," said Bill Stamatis, UFT Web content director. "The redesign of our site improves communications with our members, and with the parents of the children our members serve. We selected Plus Three after a careful examination determined it had the technical know-how we needed to successfully integrate new features with our IBM iSeries and tailor it all for our members' needs."

Members of the UFT who visit the portal will experience a seamless transition to the new site that is more secure and convenient, and easy to use. Features and benefits include:

"Maintaining relationships with members is as critical for unions as it is for political organizations and candidates," said Juan Proaño, president and co-founder of Plus Three. "The company's unparalleled expertise in creating strategic, member-focused Web sites ensures that our customers are able to effectively build and support large memberships with online tools. Our innovative platform and comprehensive feature-set ensures that our customers are providing the best possible services to their members and recreating the networking value of a one-on-one relationship in an online community."

Plus Three is the leading provider of online marketing and fundraising services to large member organizations such as advocacy, non-profit, unions and political groups. Since its inception, the Company has been tapped by leading Democratic organizations and candidates to support their election efforts with highly targeted online campaigns. Online fundraising took on added significance during the recent Democratic Party primary, as candidates capitalized on the medium to build widespread communities and attract donations. Evidence of the increasing vitality and importance of the Web as a campaign fundraising tool, Plus Three raised over $185 million online through systems it developed since the start of 2004 in support of progressive campaigns and causes, and helped the DNC match the RNC for the first time ever.

The latter contribution is considered the more significant of the two, and it has people like Juan Proaño, co-founder and president of Plus Three, an online fund-raising company with offices in Washington, D.C. and New York, eager to demonstrate how his company can link candidates to constituents and, most importantly, their wallets.

"There's never been anything like the Internet for fund raising, which has changed the way people think and the way they approach fund raising forever," says Mr. Proaño, 32, a Miami native of Peruvian and Colombian descent.

Plus Three, founded with partners David Brunton and Thomas Burke, was born in 2002 out of a merger of several companies that brought together expertise in online marketing, design, and software development. The company works with private corporations, nonprofits, and political organizations to communicate with constituents and solicit donations.

Plus Three might be just another company had it not been for good timing and Mr. Proaño's decision to keep in touch with a former colleague who happened to be working for the DNC on a technology project. His colleague made him a job offer, which Mr. Proaño accepted because, he says, it was the biggest technology project going at the time. The fact that it might affect the 2004 presidential election also played a role in his decision.

The project involved building a computer database for the Democrats that would compete with the Voter Vault database compiled by the Republican Party beginning in the mid-1990s. The Republicans had information on millions of constituents, while the Democrats had collected a mere 65,000 to 80,000 e-mail addresses.

Plus Three helped the DNC build a database called DataMart containing the names of 166 million registered voters. The database

The Democrats and, later, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, used the DataMart list to contact people by telephone, direct mail and, primarily, e-mail, targeting them with ads and political messages tailored to each person. Their efforts proved so successful that the DNC raised $85 million in 2003-04 and raised more money than the Republican National Committee for the first time ever.

"All the candidates and campaign committees we worked with actually gained ground against their counterparts," Mr. Proaño says. Those results assure a permanent place for the Internet in political campaigns. Companies like Plus Three can help candidates use the Internet to accept registrations, track donations, and write letters, blogs, and petitions. "It makes everything you were doing before easier, cheaper, and faster," says Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI) at George Washington University. Ms. Darr says campaigns must still rely on fund raising, organizing people, and getting people to vote. The Internet makes it more efficient, she says.

"The beauty of the Internet is the cost efficiencies in communicating to constituents," says Edgar Duarte, CEO of Ontime Fundraiser Inc., a Miami online fund-raising firm. Anyone seeking to raise funds can do it faster and cheaper using the Internet, and those wishing to communicate a message or organize support can now reach millions in the blink of an eye.

Ms. Darr predicts that Internet usage will play an integral part in future campaign strategies, although its use will never be perfected. "It's always going to be a work in progress because the technology is just going to be leaping ahead," she says.

As the Hispanic population continues to grow, connecting with Hispanic voters will be among the top priorities for candidates, according to Mr. Proaño. "There's a big battle brewing between both parties to take that large constituency group and start to persuade them," he says. "There needs to be more effort and more resources poured into reaching our community."

To do that, Mr. Proaño believes it's important to return to the basics of properly identifying the estimated 35 million Hispanics in the United States. "We need to start there," he says, "and we need to go beyond traditional surname matching." The next step is to attach statistical data to each person that will help candidates, nonprofit organizations, or corporations

"Tapping into this highly interconnected base of Hispanics online can move a large segment of the population in support or against an issue or candidate," Mr. Proaño says. "Internet applications are like a super-powered phone tree, and large-scale mobilization of a particular group can be very influential with decision-makers. I think the party that recognizes it first and moves forward with it is going to get the jump."

The question then becomes: "How do you reach Hispanics?"

Mr. Proaño says Spanish-language radio and television will continue to be effective and, at the moment, more Hispanic phone numbers are available than e-mail addresses. That means phone banks in which volunteers or staffers call to solicit donations or votes will continue to be a popular means of contact. As far as the Internet is concerned, Mr. Proaño believes bilingual and English-dominant Hispanics are more reachable than those who speak Spanish only.

IPDI's Ms. Darr says the Internet has changed political fund raising and opened doors to political participation for people who in the past had little or nothing to say. Previously, political reporters, donors of large sums of money, professional political operatives, state party people, and candidate staffs dominated campaigns.

"What the Internet has done is allow people who are interested in politics but not part of that old clique to actively participate and be empowered," she says. The "old clique" numbered between 100,000 and 150,000 people, Ms. Darr says, compared with the 7 million to 15 million people that the Pew Research Center estimates participated via the Internet in 2004.

"It used to be the case before 2004 that you simply could not succeed at presidential politics unless you focused your efforts on big donors because you just couldn't raise money fast enough otherwise," she says. "What Howard Dean showed ... was that you could use the Internet and raise enough money from small donors not only to make yourself competitive, but in fact to raise more money than anybody else at that point."

Mr. Proaño notes that Hispanic votes did not reach their full potential in 2004, lagging behind Republicans and other minority Democratic groups. He believes that in the future, Hispanic voters will have the greatest impact in western states that have voted Republican in recent elections such as Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado, as well as those states that hang in the balance, including New Mexico and Florida. Young Hispanics growing up with the Internet have the greatest potential impact on the electorate and selecting future presidents.

"Developing more effective techniques to reach out to Hispanics will be critical to the next candidate looking to be elected president," says Mr. Proaño.

Plus Three LP, ("Plus Three" or the "Company"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced that the Company has been selected by the Coronado Project to design, implement and manage its online presence. Key to this campaign is the launch of the Coronado Web Site at www.coronadoproject.combuilt on Plus Three's ARCOS platform. Visitors to the site will be able to register to vote, access the Project's recent memo to the Democratic Party offering actions the party must take to ensure it does not remain the minority party for years to come, and sign up for future Project memos.

The Coronado Project was formed by leading Hispanic operatives to reengage the Democratic Party's interaction with minority groups including the Hispanic community. In "The Crossroads," its first open memo, sent to Party leaders, the Project challenges Democrats to develop stronger relationships with the Hispanic community and sets forth seven major changes the party must make to improve outreach. The basic tenet of the Project is that the African American and Latino communities are the foundation for the Democratic Party's return to majority status.

"Since 1996, the Democratic Party has lost 28 percent of the Latino vote and if that trend continues, Democratic candidates for President will continue to lose," said Paul Rivera, Coronado Project member and senior political advisor for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign. "As polarizing issues continue to confront our nation, Democrats must find new ways to improve their relationships with minority voters. While we are encouraged by Antonio Villaraigosa's recent mayoral victory, one victory does not a future make. The Democratic Party cannot continue to rely on 20th Century methods to engage Latino voters in 21st Century campaigns."

Plus Three is the leading provider of online marketing and fundraising services to large member organizations such as advocacy, non-profit, unions and political groups. Since its inception, the Company has been tapped by leading Democratic organizations and candidates to support their election efforts with highly targeted online campaigns. Online fundraising took on added significance during the recent Presidential Election, as candidates capitalized on the medium to build widespread communities and attract donations. Through its reliance on Open Source software, Plus Three is able to reduce the cost of each dollar raised, maximizing the value of every donation.

"Plus Three's fundraising and get-out-the-vote work in the 2004 national campaign and other experience with other political clients gives us unique insight into the challenges facing Democrat leaders in their efforts to mobilize Latinos," said Juan Proaño co-founder and president of Plus Three. "Recent plans announced by DNC Chairman Howard Dean to meet with Hispanic leaders across the country is an excellent start for reconnecting with Latinos one-to-one in their communities. However, Democrats need to fully understand the particular communication and generational hurdles that must be addressed when reaching out to Latinos. Plus Three's tools will help the Coronado Project educate their audience in the Democratic Party, while simultaneously providing a resource center for the Latino community."

ARCOS is built using Open Source, the world's most flexible and scalable software. Using Open Source provides three key differentiators that the company's clients value above all else — reliability, scalability and security. Open Source is also free from onerous licensing fees, enabling ARCOS users to constantly maximize the value of their investment while substantially reducing the cost of every donation. Built on this industry-leading open source platform is a complete suite of solutions that allow organizations to more effectively communicate with their constituents.

Plus Three LP, ("Plus Three" or the "Company"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced that co-founder and President Juan Proaño will be participating in a panel discussion at the Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York, NY. Proaño will take part in the discussion entitled, "Got Lists? How to Build Your Base Online," drawing on his success building world class databases for Plus Three customers and offering his best practices for building and managing powerful databases. Attendees at the 2005 Personal Democracy Forum Conference will be able to attend the panel on May 16 at 2:00 P.M. ET. For more information please contact Kelby Troutman at 781-487-4610 or ktroutman@racepointgroup.com.

"The low cost of Internet communications has drastically changed the way large and small organizations reach out to their constituents," said Juan Proaño co-founder and president of Plus Three. "Armed with an email database of 250,000 supporters, organizations are able to deliver a highly targeted direct response message to an audience larger than some national news networks get in any 30 minute increment. This is a tremendously powerful tool for organizations to leverage for both activism and fundraising. We look forward to sharing our experiences and developing best practices for effective online communications."

Plus Three, LP ("Plus Three" or the "Company"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced a significant upgrade to its ARCOS software solution. ARCOS 4.0, the Open Source platform built on Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl, greatly increases the functionality and ease-of-use from ARCOS 3.1 with a complete fundraising platform that incorporates the most advanced tools available in Web and email publishing and reporting. In addition, ARCOS enables users to easily conduct sophisticated database searches and build highly organized email lists. Plus Three customers feel comfortable knowing that the technology has proven it is capable of handling dramatic traffic surges and that redundancies built into the software ensure no donation is ever lost.

The ARCOS platform underlies one of the most successful fundraising efforts in U.S. history. In the 2004 presidential race, ARCOS transacted more than $185 million during the 2004 campaigns for a variety of progressive causes and platforms, and helped the DNC beat the RNC for the first time ever in fundraising.

"Over the past few years, we have seen the Web achieve its promise for online retailing, for interconnecting companies, and for delivering a total customer experience," said Geoffrey Bock, senior vice president at the Patricia Seybold Group. "Now, we are at a similar stage in its importance for constituency management-transforming the ways in which non-profits and political organizations operate in the digital age."

ARCOS is built using Open Source, the world's most flexible and scalable software. Using Open Source provides three key differentiators that the company's clients value above all else — reliability, scalability and security. Open Source is also free from onerous licensing fees, enabling ARCOS users to constantly maximize the value of their investment while substantially reducing the cost of every donation. Built on this industry-leading open source platform is a complete suite of solutions that allow organizations to more effectively communicate with their constituents.Features and Benefits

Among the standard features of ARCOS are constituent relationship management, email and link tracking, event management, social software and an online activism center. New features and benefits include:

Availability

For pricing and availability, contact Plus Three at (866) 945-4889.

Plus Three is the leading provider of online marketing and fundraising services to large member organizations such as advocacy, non-profit, unions and political groups. Since its inception, the Company has been tapped by leading Democratic organizations and candidates to support their election efforts with highly targeted online campaigns. Online fundraising took on added significance during the recent Presidential Election, as candidates capitalized on the medium to build widespread communities and attract donations. Through its reliance on Open Source software, Plus Three is able to reduce the cost of each dollar raised, maximizing the value of every donation.

"As technology use continues to spread throughout large member organizations, such as political parties, unions and non-profits, demand is surging for our platform," said Plus Three President and co-founder Juan Proaño. "ARCOS meets the critical need of these organizations to regularly interact with their member bases helping to ensure activism and participation. The strength of our solution enables users to easily and quickly create targeted campaigns, and distribute them quickly without concern for the delivery of the message or for the resulting spike in traffic and donations. To ensure the effectiveness of each campaign, we've added real-time monitoring allowing users to track donations as they come in to see what campaigns, messages and individual links, donors respond to most."

Plus Three, LP ("Plus Three" or the "Company"), a strategic marketing and technology company serving major U.S. political organizations and non-profit institutions, today announced that co-founder and President Juan Proaño and will be participating in a panel discussion at the Politics Online Conference in Washington DC. Proaño will take part in the discussion entitled, "The Internet Cash-Cow: Fundraising Online." Attendees at the 2005 Politics Online Conference will be able to attend the panel on March 11 at 10:45 A.M. ET.

"The Internet is changing the way organizations raise money. Since the start of 2004, more than $185 million has been raised online in support of progressive campaigns and causes through systems Plus Three developed," said Juan Proaño co-founder and President of Plus Three. "Our extensive work throughout the 2004 Presidential elections sets us apart as the online fundraising experts. Through our work we have the deepest understanding of what organizations must do to help ensure a successful online fundraising campaign. We look forward to sharing our experiences and discussing how issue-advocacy and non-profit groups can maximize their online experiences."

Made up of current and retired New York City public school teachers and the largest union local in the world, the UFT is the sole bargaining agent for most of the nonsupervisory educators that work in the New York City public school system. It represents roughly 74,000 teachers and 17,000 classroom paraprofessionals, along with secretaries, guidance counselors, psychologists, social workers, nurses, adult education teachers and 32,000 retired members.

With 6,000 new teachers added to its membership every year and a desire to vastly increase its portfolio of member services, UFT's archaic paper-driven business methods and static, noninteractive Web site simply couldn't keep up.

Amid a three-phase design and deployment campaign, new services offered by the UFT range from Web-based course enrollment, which replaces a mail-in paper form, to health care benefits from the UFT Welfare Fund. According to UFT President Randi Weingarten, the fund has provided upward of $1 billion in benefits to union members over its 30-year history. Breaking news, pension and financial services, updated salary schedules, and tax advice are also being betterprovided to educators thanks to the new online environment.

"With our growing membership, the time to rethink the delivery of services and information could wait no longer," said Joe Vigilante, the UFT's director of information services. "With all of our data on [an IBM] legacy AS/400, we needed to get that information directly into the hands of the people who needed it most, our members."

To improve service while managing costs, Vigilante's team chose a complete opensource solution with multiprocessor, rack-mounted ProLiant DL servers from Hewlett-Packard Co. running Red Hat Inc.'s Enterprise Linux operating system. There isn't a new server running Solaris or Unix in sight, although an IBM iSeries (formerly AS/400) remains. The only Microsoft Corp. software in use at UFT is the Office suite of productivity applications and one legacy Exchange Server for e-mail.

It's close to the typical evolutionary pattern, according to Jeffrey Hewitt, an analyst with Gartner Inc., in Stamford, Conn. "These are new applications and sometimes represent additional horsepower added in parallel to existing systems," Hewitt said. According to his research, 22 percent of companies polled are deploying open-source systems not to replace older technology but to deploy new applications.

Regardless of the strategy, Linux is earning high marks not just as a technical solution but as a financial one that results in immediate and significant cost advantages.

"The Linux open-source route provided us with a way to avoid license fees and learn from a vast community of developers and users with issues similar to ours," said Vigilante.

That's a theme that's echoed in disparate users, from off-the-leading-edge, paper-based organizations such as the UFT to nextgeneration Web-based startups. For example, Feedster Inc., a San Francisco search engine and syndicator of XML Web content, would never have gotten off the ground if not for the savings achieved by implementing Linux.

"It didn't make sense to us or our investors to pay huge Windows and [Sun Microsystems Inc.] Solaris license fees and buy expensive support contracts," said Feedster CEO Scott Rafer.

"And for the price of a single Oracle license, we got the top-tier MySQL product, direct access to the people who developed it, and a worldwide community ready to help anytime."

Those licenses were nearly a showstopper. With its entire operation — and its lawyers — based in New York, the UFT refused to sign contracts whose terms would be governed by the laws of any other state. Red Hat, for example, is based in North Carolina. "For large enterprise corporations, this isn't a problem," said Vigilante. "But as a labor union, we were ready to walk away if vendors would not change their terms for us." Change them they did.

Site Control

A significant challenge faced by UFT was maintaining high Web site availability after migrating hosting and operations from a third-party service provider to UFT's own network. Outsourced in 1997 to offload management chores — a skill that did not yet exist at UFT — the site offered only static, nontransactional general content. Updating the site with important news for its members often took hours, which is typical when management is performed by a third party with many different customers and priorities.

All Web services now operate from redundant servers installed on-site. Page templates were designed using Macromedia Inc.'s Dreamweaver, according to Bill Stamatis, UFT's Web content manager. Running Red Hat Linux, the Web servers also host Krang, an advanced opensource content management and Web publishing system.

With 6,000 new teachers added to its membership every year and a desire to vastly increase its portfolio of member services, UFT's archaic paper-driven business methods and static, noninteractive Web site simply couldn't keep up.

Krang provides a story and media-editing environment, letting Perl programmers customize it to control the data entered in its content editor as well as the way templates and content are brought together to build output. Krang supports the Red Hat, Debian and Gentoo versions of Linux; the Fedora Project, and FreeBSD. With Krang handling content management, the content itself resides in a MySQL database from Sweden's MySQL AB. Web pages are served by Apache Software Foundation's Apache HTTP Server.

"We're not a [24-by-7] startshop, so we needed to plan, build and test a redundant environment with automated failover to accommodate any outage," said UFT's Vigilante. Working with Plus Three LP, a technology provider specializing in solutions for labor unions, based in New York, UFT established a notification system that alerts key personnel of any Web outage and initiates automated failover to the backup servers. "We hope never to use it," Vigilante added.

Choice of Platforms

In moving away from its static Web site and paper-based system of membership services, UFT and Plus Three crafted a three-phase approach. The key to success, according to Deirdre Hannigan, Plus Three's vice president of client services, was to move cautiously and maintain tight budgetary control.

"Phase 1 was homework, learning their processes and analyzing the current technology environment," said Hannigan. "In Phase 2, we installed hardware and the Krang content management platform to relaunch the Web site. We're now in Phase 3, bringing member services, health care and teacher resources online."

UFT chose Red Hat Linux, based on recommendations from both IBM and Plus Three. In contrast, Feedster followed a different path, deploying Novell Inc.'s SuSE Linux on some servers and Gentoo Linux from the Gentoo Foundation Inc. on others.

A startup, Feedster had no legacy systems baggage-a rare luxury. UFT, with all its data residing on the AS/400, wasn't so lucky. IBM, however, offered what Vigilante considered a perfect solution, allowing the AS/400 to stay put while integrating it into the new open-source environment.

IBM's Toolbox for Java and JTOpen is a library of Java classes that can be used by Java applets, servlets and applications to access AS/400 or iSeries server data and resources. The toolbox provided everything that Plus Three and UFT needed to develop communications conduits and file access.

Digital Handshake

As part of its goal to foster educators' professional development, UFT's educational programs, in affiliation with local colleges and universities, offer a full spectrum of workshops and graduate level courses to some 10,000 members each year. In the third phase of the project, the Web site will be the place where teachers can learn about and register for these courses. And the union's nationally acclaimed Dial-A-Teacher program, in affiliation with the New York City Department of Education, offers homework assistance to more than 60,000 public school students and parents every year. The program uses the Web site as a starting point for matching students' needs with specific teachers; the goal is to make a wide range of content available in as many as 12 languages.

"The Web site averages 30,000 visits per month. But the average visit length went from 30 seconds to 5 minutes," said Stamatis. "Members are downloading materials and even reading online. And now that we post news daily, we've created a compelling reason for teachers to visit and stay."

In addition to being lightyears more efficient than the UFT's previous paper-bound methods, the union's new interactive Web presence also conveys a friendlier persona to the organization's 150,000 members.

"There's no way the president of a union organization of our size can do a traditional reach-out to its dues-paying membership," said Vigilante. "What we've tried to do is design the site and its services to provide an 'electronic handshake' to members. We're there all the time, and we've worked to provide immediate response or have the information they need just a click or two away."

The UFT, it seems, has learned its own lessons.

"Plus Three's innovative work with Open Source and next generation platforms like the contextual Web, really captured my imagination and is my primary reason for joining the company," said Tregar. "I look forward to working with the company's outstanding programming team to show large organizations and companies they no longer have to compromise with proprietary systems that lack the power and flexibility to meet their needs. I am anxious to contribute to the company and ARCOS and expect we will have some exciting updates to announce for the platform soon."

Tregar brings an extensive programming background to Plus Three. Before joining the company, Tregar served as Lead Programmer for Trafficmac Inc., where he was responsible for driving the development of Trafficmac's next generation software and managing a team of programmers. Prior to working with Trafficmac Inc., Tregar was the Lead Programmer at the PIRT Group, a division of Primedia Inc. While at the PIRT group Tregar maintained the Bricolage Open Source content management system and lead the Krang development team. Krang has been a huge success for PIRT, lowering administrative costs and improving the online editorial process at hundreds of magazines.

"Like any company would be, we are excited to be able to add someone with Sam's programming expertise to our team," said Plus Three President Juan Proaño. "We have had tremendous success developing Open Source solutions for our customers, as evidenced by the online fundraising success of our clients in 2004 totaling $185 million dollars. In addition, our work with unions continues to accelerate and Sam's vision and expertise will prove invaluable as we grow our company and service offerings."

About ARCOS

The ARCOS software platform is built using Open Source, the world's most flexible and scalable software. Using Open Source provides three key differentiators that the company's clients value above all else — reliability, scalability and security. Open Source is also free from onerous licensing fees, enabling ARCOS users to constantly maximize the value of their investment while substantially reducing the cost of every donation. Built on this industry-leading open source platform is a complete suite of solutions that allow organizations to more effectively communicate with their constituents. The ARCOS platform is easy to integrate into legacy systems providing complete and reliable access to information and applications located on those systems. In addition, the Open Source platform enables unparalleled customization and enhancement.

The Republicans began building their database, which they call Voter Vault, back in the mid-1990s. It's no accident they got a head start: Bush adviser Karl Rove used to run a direct-mail company, so he knows the value of a few good leads. "We don't say a lot about Voter Vault," notes Christine Iverson, press secretary for the Republican National Committee. "A lot of the information is strategic, and the less the Democrats know the better." Secret it may be, but Voter Vault caused a stir last month when it emerged that the Republicans had — wait for it — outsourced some of its construction to a bunch of programmers in Maharashtra, India.

By 2001, the Democrats — the party of would-be overnerd Al Gore — were staring at a data gap. All they had was a few tens of thousands of e-mail addresses stored on a computer so obsolete its monitor was green. So they hired a small firm called Plus Three to build them a database of their very own, which they named Demzilla. Voter Vault and Demzilla currently hold about 165 million entries each.

So what's in these things? Any information about you that the parties can legally get their hands on. They start with voter-registration records, which are rich in priceless personal data like phone numbers, home addresses and birthdays. That info gets cross-referenced with census data plus records the parties keep: who worked or volunteered for them, who donated money. Names in Demzilla typically have 200 to 400 pieces of info attached to them.

But the secret sauce for any 21st century political database is email addresses — there's no quicker or cheaper way to get out the vote than by e-communicating directly with supporters. In addition, there may be magazine-subscription records, membership rosters from organizations like the AARP ... who knows? The parties aren't saying. "We probably have more information about the average voter than they care for us to have," admits Robert Bennett, chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio.

The more data the parties have, and the more ways they search, collate, cross-reference and puree them, using data-mining kung fu perfected by generations of direct marketers, the more precisely they can tailor their pitches to individual voters. Undecided black housewives under 35 will get very different phone calls from the Kerry campaign than Hispanic CEOs over 60. Data mining also helps the parties find, and sway, those all-important swing voters. "Now we can identify individuals within a neighborhood, in a state, in a market, where we never would have gone and looked before," says Juan Proaño, president of Plus Three.

So keep a close eye on your candidate, because you can be sure he's keeping an eye on you — and on the competition. "The Democrats have typically not had a very good database," the G.O.P.'s Iverson sniffs. "We're very happy to take all the information they give out about Demzilla and absorb it."