UX Jobs: Salsa Labs seeks a UX Designer (Washington, DC 20009)

Salsa needs User Experience Designers that want more than just a job. The company is building new products that are used to help people impact the world. For real. Salsa Labs is not just a SaaS company. The firm supports more than 2,000 nonprofit and political organizations in their efforts to drive lasting change. From taking back parks to policy education to worldwide relief efforts, Salsa’s clients use Salsa’s tools for some of their most critical activities. Salsa’s products are an investment in their success and you have a chance to be part of helping them achieve their missions.

As background, Salsa offers small- to mid-sized nonprofit organizations an inbound marketing platform in a software as a service format. The US nonprofit institutions industry includes more than one million organizations with combined annual revenue of about $110 billion. Demand is driven by the need to represent special interests or provide social services that can’t be met by the market or government. The space is fragmented: the largest 50 organizations account for about 25 percent of industry revenue.

The success of nonprofits often depends on efficient operations and their ability to match expenses with fluctuating revenues. Large nonprofits have advantages in fundraising due to strong name recognition. Small nonprofits can be successful if they serve a dedicated membership or have a dependable source of revenue.

Salsa tools giving users the ability to segment and review their online marketing initiatives in one convenient place. Additionally, the company provides strategic education to accompany its product offerings. This is not consulting per se, but rather strategic education to help its clients understand the benefits of a fully integrated CRM strategy powered by Salsa Labs’ tools.

Salsa gets paid in direct proportion to its client’s success: it has a monthly fee that’s billed quarterly, upfront, on an annual contract. Fees are based on the size of the clients list. If clients aren’t growing and building their list, then Salsa isn’t growing either. The nature of this revenue model coupled with the quality of its technology makes Salsa extremely popular with small to midsized nonprofits.

Nonprofits worldwide are still working to recover from challenges posed by the recent economic crisis, including the presence of a growing number of people in need. In order to meet this increased demand for services with relatively flat funding, organizations have to find new revenue streams from the online generation as well as keep their per supporter acquisition cost as low as possible – which means Salsa’s affordably-priced platform specifically built to help them grow and engage online is well-positioned.

There are CRM solutions that service massive nonprofits like the American Red Cross. However, Salsa’s typical client is unable to afford an extremely high-end commercial solution with hundreds of features. Rather, Salsa clients need a simple, highly affordable, robust platform that gives them most of what they need to do to grow THEIR organization’s support online. Offering a stripped down solution allows Salsa Labs to charge significantly less than the major CRM providers because Salsa Labs doesn’t offer all of the bells and whistles that one would encounter in bloated commercial solutions.

Because Salsa specializes in advocacy and fundraising, its clients seek to engage through every available medium not just potential donors, but the public at large. The Salsa Platform helps these organizations spread their ideas. For example, the firm serves quite a few social justice and environmental groups who are fighting for positive change, in addition to providing charitable services. These organizations are trying to influence ideas and shape public opinion in addition to raising money. Naturally, content marketing is critically important to these organizations, and as a sharp Creative Director, this is your opportunity to shine.

Consider the Arab spring: Everyone was organizing using online tools, and that kind of thing is only just beginning. Worldwide, more people are learning how to organize and affect positive change through technology. The political, legal, and economic systems can all be impacted through these tools. There is a phenomenal social and cultural tailwind powering Salsa Labs’ mission. The company is still in startup mode, and there’s a great deal of inspiring work to be done. The company is loaded with brilliant, high-energy people who are totally bought into Salsa Labs mission of serving the larger purpose of humankind. I can’t think of a single company with better energy.