FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
WHAT IS OVRTURE?
Ovrture is a digital platform built for the top of the gift pyramid. You can create tailored cultivation sites for sharing key information (proposals, gift agreements, personal videos, specific fundraising priorities) with prospects. Ovrture also has a robust stewardship reporting feature for building impact reports for existing donors.
DOES IT HAVE AN API?
Yes, Ovrture has an Application Programming Interface (API); which is documented here. Our API follows the OpenAPI standard and allows client systems to seamlessly ingest and export to/from their specific CRM and data systems.
HOW ARE ANALYTICS CAPTURED & PRESENTED?
Users have access to highly textured data about their donor’s engagement with their site or report. You can also set up alerts to be notified when a donor logs in so you can appropriately follow up. All of this information gets aggregated to the system level for easy export to your CRM to have a running log of what was shared with a donor and when.
CAN YOU PRINT CONTENT FROM THE SYSTEM?
Yes! On the cultivation side of the platform you can print specific content panels to have a custom PDF leave-behind document. Stewardship reports can be printed for one or all funds included in a donor’s report. The donor can also print the report on their own, or you can do it on their behalf.
HOW MUCH SUPPORT DO YOU PROVIDE?
Your adoption of our technology is mission critical for our team. To this end, we will hold your hand as much as needed. During onboarding, we’ll provide formal training for all members of your team to ensure you can confidently navigate the platform. After you’re up and running, you can take advantage of our weekly trainings for administrators and users, or set up a 1:1 training with your client engagement account leader.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO BUILD A SITE OR REPORT?
Depending on the level of personalization needed, sites can be built in as little as five minutes. If you need a totally custom approach for a high-value donor, it will take longer. Reports can be built at scale and hundreds at a time.
WHO HAS A ROLE WITHIN THE SYSTEM?
Typically, the primary users of Ovrture include gift officers, communicators, donor relations teams, and advancement services teams. Ovrture is built for the digital advancement office, so just about everyone has a seat at the table.
WHO IS THE IDEAL CLIENT LEADER?
We’ve found that communicators make a natural lead for the Ovrture system. We do strongly recommend building an onboarding team with folks from the fundraising team, donor relations, communicators/designers, and advancement services/IT.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO LAUNCH A SYSTEM?
Not to be sassy, but we can move as fast as you can move. On average, we can launch a system in about 12 weeks.
WHO DOES THE DESIGN FOR OUR SYSTEM?
Each client instance of Ovrture is custom designed for your brand and personality. We want your platform to be a natural extension of your print and digital assets. Our team will lead the design process after receiving your brand standards and guidelines. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to provide detailed feedback during every step of the design process.
HOW MUCH DOES OVRTURE COST?
Ovrture’s Software-as-a-Service licensing fees are determined by each organization’s specific scale and requirements. Learn more about pricing here.
WHY DO I NEED TO PROVIDE THE OVRTURE TEAM WITH AN SSL CERTIFICATE?
We require the use of encryption for all web traffic to and from our platform for your choice of platform domain (ex: mysite.institution.edu or mysite.foundation.org). Doing so allows us to secure your data and prevents your donors from questioning the validity of your site on our platform. Establishing this trust makes everyone more secure… Ovrture, you, and your donors.
HOW OFTEN WILL I HAVE TO PROVIDE OVRTURE WITH A NEW SSL CERTIFICATE?
Approximately once a year. Apple Inc. has recently announced that in the interest of security, they will no longer support TLS (SSL) certificates that are valid for more than 398 days from the date of issuance after September 1, 2020. Many people use Macs, iPads, and iPhones to visit websites and applications and we need to comply with this new restriction to prevent issues for both you and your donors when using our platform.
More info: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211025
CAN I USE OUR WILDCARD (*.EXAMPLE.COM) SSL CERTIFICATE?
You may be tempted to offer us your wildcard certificate, and while we can use that for your Ovrture system, to do so you will need to provide us the corresponding private key as well. This is a security issue as anyone with both could potentially host any website at any subdomain of your domain with said certificate. Should you ever need to revoke the certificate you’ll have to replace it everywhere it is used.
WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THE CERTIFICATE SIGNING REQUEST (CSR)?
Use the CSR to request a SSL certificate from the certificate provider of your choice and send it to Ovrture via this form.
WHAT SSL CERTIFICATE PROVIDER SHOULD I USE?
You can use any provider you like, and it may make sense to use the same provider you have used for your institutions other web properties.
If you are looking for an easy to obtain, low cost SSL certificate for just mysite.institution.edu, several of our clients have been happy with NameCheap’s Comodo PositiveSSL product: https://www.namecheap.
This certificate will meet our mutual needs and is only $10 / year.
WHAT HAPPENS IF I DON’T PROVIDE A NEW CERTIFICATE TO THE OVRTURE TEAM BEFORE MY CURRENT CERTIFICATE EXPIRES?
Your Ovrture site (mysite.example.com) and all of your donor microsites will trigger web browser warnings when visited. This is beyond the control of Ovrture, but is easily and quickly remedied by installing a new certificate.
WHY DO WE NEED TO CREATE A DNS ENTRY?
This and our design team’s work with you is what allows our platform to look like it is a true part of your organization. We accomplish this with a CNAME, which allows mysite.clientdomain.tld to function as an alias to *.ovrture.io, the home of our platform.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNAME_record
WHY OVRTURE.IO AND NOT OVRTURE.COM FOR THE DNS?
Ovrture.io is the domain that is used stealthily in the background by our platform. It is completely invisible for you and your donors, unless they delve into the complexities of DNS records.
Ovrture.com is our website where the public can learn about our platform.
This strict separation of hostnames is one of the many steps we have taken to ensure the security of our platform and any information you store within it.
DOES OVRTURE SUPPORT SINGLE SIGN ON?
Yes, our application currently supports authentication via SAML. We have clients using Azure AD, Active Directory Federation Services, Okta, OneLogin, Shibboleth, and others as their Identity Provider (IdP) for Ovrture. If your IdP isn’t listed, no worries, if it supports SAML we can made it work. Single Sign On can be used for any backend Ovrture account besides the System Admin.
WILL YOU OFFER SINGLE SIGN ON FOR THE SYSTEM ADMIN ACCOUNT?
Yes, that is on our development roadmap.
WILL YOU OFFER SINGLE SIGN ON FOR THE DONORS & PROSPECTS?
Yes, that is on our development roadmap.
DOES OVRTURE SUPPORT SINGLE SIGN ON (SSO) VIA INCOMMON FEDERATION?
As an InCommon Federation Service Provider, we support Shibboleth SAML2 InCommon Federation IdPs for Single Sign On. As such, we can support SSO for any of the IdPs listed on InCommon’s member list.
WHAT SAML2 ATTRIBUTES ARE NEEDED FOR SINGLE SIGN ON VIA INCOMMON FEDERATION?
Our system looks for a scoped SAML2 attribute is “eppn” or “eduPersonPrincipalName.” We can accommodate the use of other SAML attributes to facilitate easier adoption of Single Sign On, but if your IdP provides our app “eppn” via the InCommon Federation, our app will be able to match users to their Ovrture accounts.