Blacktie-Colorado
A Colorado company with an innovative approach to serving non-profits.

Kenton Kuhn wanted to start a dot-com in 2000. It wasn't exactly the best year for web-based companies. According to E-Commerce Times, that year more than 130 dot-coms closed, including Pets.com, Furniture.com, and Garden.com. But Kuhn had already built and sold Capitol Connection, a legislative services website that now operates under the name State Bill Info.

Besides, the new website wasn't completely his idea. It was Georgia Imhoff's. The philanthropist had complained that sometimes two different high profile nonprofits would schedule their fundraising events at the same time. "She was looking for a way to have a more up-to-date event calendar," Kuhn says.

Kuhn knew he needed to build more than an online calendar. So Blacktie-Colorado.com was built as a clearinghouse of events and planning tools. Members would not only be able to look up dinners and golf tournaments they could attend, but nonprofits would be able to use the site for everything from online RSVPs to seating charts to silent auction bidding.

He took his time setting up the site. He didn't want to be like the entrepreneurs who scribbled a business plan on a paper napkin. He also didn't want to be like the MBAs who researched the market for a year before making a decision. "I'm more impulsive than that, but ours was a methodical approach," he says.

He and the programmers set up a site. Then, in January 2001 he looked up names and addresses from the Colorado Association of Nonprofit Organizations (CANPO) directory, and sent a direct mail piece to introduce Blacktie-Colorado.com. "We could tell it was going to work when we sent 500 postcards and 35 organizations sent them back with a check," he says. Part of the interest, he says, was due to having co-founder Georgia Imhoff's name on the postcard.

Elizabeth Byrnes Crony, who is president of Blacktie-Colorado, says the direct mail response was the first milestone. The second was the September 11 attacks. Local non-profits needed a quick way to inform their supporters that social events were cancelled. Blacktie-Colorado was able to quickly post cancellations on the website. Anything printed became obsolete, Byrnes Crony says.

Then the local organizations needed to continue to fundraise, often competing against September 11-related charities. "A lot of nonprofits were at a loss," says Byrnes Crony, who had previously worked in high fashion in New York City. "They said, 'What do we do, who's going to donate, are we going to rebound.'"

So Blacktie-Colorado offered a free seminar in October 2001. They held the event, "Ask the Experts: How the World of Fundraising Changed After September 11," at the Westin Tabor Center. The expert panel consisted of Georgia Imhoff's husband, investment banker Walt Imhoff, and other local executives.

The seminar was helpful to the 800 attendees, but more importantly, says Byrnes Crony, the attendees saw how easy it was to RSVP online at Blacktie-Colorado.com. "It brought attention to our online calendar and our internet tools," she says. "People had to RSVP online because we did not accept paper."

Non-profits began to sign up for the online reservation system. They can also use the software to create seating charts, make nametags, sell items online, and set up communications areas for the organizing committees. One popular feature is the online RSVP, which is now used by 70 percent of fundraiser attendees (that figure was about 30 percent during Blacktie-Colorado's first year).

The website's most popular feature, says Byrnes Crony, is the 24/7 online merchant accounts, which lets fundraiser attendees buy their tickets and pay by credit card. Even non-profits no longer have to deposit a stack of checks and see which ones clear.

The other feature that Blacktie's 300 non-profit members like is the publicity. Blacktie works with 10 freelance photographers who take pictures at the events, so Blacktie can post them onto the website.

Today Georgia Imhoff and Kuhn are shareholders of the Denver-based Blacktie LLC, which is the parent company to Blacktie-Colorado as well as versions in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Arizona, Kansas City, and Cleveland.

"Those are the ones where people came to us," Kuhn says of the cities.

"I am anxious to be in Washington DC and San Francisco, but we want to work with people who want to work with us."