December 2007

Managing NP Tech Projects Event - Quickly Approaching

By Laura Quinn, December 20, 2007
The date for the Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects event, hosted by Aspiration and us, is coming up quickly! It’s in New York City on Thursday, January 10th through Friday, January 11th, 2008.

View more or register now.

It’s going to be a great event. I have to admit that when we originally started talking about it, it sounded strategic and sensible, but not particularly compelling for my needs. As we're fleshing out the sessions, lining up terrific facilitators and seeing a fabulous group of folks register, though, I can't wait for the event. I know I'm going to learn a ton about project management, and make some terrific contacts.

The informal structure will be geared towards sharing best practices and lessons learned, exploring available software tools in this space, and forming relationships with other project managers. See more about the goals and agenda online - and we welcome your thoughts on the sessions that would be most helpful to you.

We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest in the event, and spots are filling up quickly. The folks who have registered so far represent a huge diversity of nonprofits, including large political organizations, national advocacy groups, foundations, online virtual nonprofits, local arts organizations, human service agencies, consulting firms, and more. There’s 17 seats or less left – register now!

We look forward to seeing you there.

New Report: API and Data Exchange Evaluation Framework

By Laura Quinn, December 19, 2007






Here's the second report in this week's one-two punch of in-depth resources to help you compare software applications!

We're excited to pre-release a new report from Idealware and NTEN: Getting Your Systems Talking: A Framework to Evaluate APIs and Data Exchange Features (free registration required)

This report provides a detailed look at the factors that go into a solid API or other mechanism for data exchange. There's an overview article that discusses the considerations, but we go way beyond that: Paul Hagen provides a detailed evaluation framework and rating scheme that will allow someone with a reasonable technical background to compare and score the solutions provided by different software applications.

While this report is a little more technical than most of our resources, it's critical infrastructural stuff. Data access is a vital part of a software offering - if you can't get programmatic access to the data, you'll be faced with substantial limitations when trying to integrate it with other applications or create new views. The evaluation framework in this report allows us - or you, or anyone reasonably technical - to compare data access features in an apples-to-apples way.

The framework was a substantial effort, and we had a lot of help. Paul Hagen did all of the heavy lifting, and NTEN, Beaconfire, and Jacobson Consulting Applications provided invaluable financial support. We also relied on substantial contributions of time and expertise from technical leads at Beaconfire, Jacobson Consulting Applications, Forum One Communications, and Database Designs. Thanks to all - I'm excited by the result.

New Article: Comparing Lower-Cost Integrated Packages

By Laura Quinn, December 19, 2007

If you've felt that we haven't been publishing as much stuff of late, never fear. It's more of a logjam than a slow down, and we're going to have a bunch of stuff breaking through in a hurry!

Eric Leland brings us the first of these great new resources: Comparing Lower-Cost Online Integrated Applications. This article provides a detailed comparison of eight different lower-cost packages that support constituent data tracking, email blasting and online payments, as well as a number of other features. Have you always wanted to know how Democracy in Action compared to MemberClicks? Here's your chance. Want an overview of some of the newcomers in the space, like Wild Apricot or Z2 Neon? Here you go - it's our holiday gift to you.

Resource Roundup 12/18

By Laura Quinn, December 18, 2007
A Beginner's Guide To Data Backup (Small Business Computing)
Good overview of some of the options for and varieties of data backup

Blogs in Plain English (Common Craft)
The latest in Common Craft's fun "Plain English" video series - this one on blogs

One Computer, Multiple Operating Systems (TechSoup)
An introduction to virtualization software, which can allow you to run multiple operating systems on one computer

Is mobile fundraising the next frontier for charities? (MobileActive.org)
Great overview of what mobile advocacy could mean for nonprofits

Feed Your Content to the World (ICT Hub Knowledgebase)
A nice summary of how to syndicate your website content via RSS

Ask Idealware: Sharepoint and Document Management

By Laura Quinn, December 17, 2007
Michael asks: We are looking at integrated solutions that can help us with a number of things, including document management. We have a number of bids, and the prices vary widely, particularly in the area of document management - for instance, some of the less expensive solutions rely on Microsoft Sharepoint for document management, while others recommend Interwoven or Hummingbird/ Open Docs. It seems that Sharepoint offers a lot of what we need in terms of document management - the ability to link documents to cases, version control, check in/ check out functionality, and it's not clear what the more expensive solutions offer in addition. What does a robust enterprise document management system offer that something like Sharepoint doesn't?

Peter Campbell of EarthJustice and TechCafeteria says:
Commercial Document Management Systems (DMS) like OpenText and Hummingbird are more robust than the document management built into Sharepoint 2007 Server (MOSS) or 2003 Shared Services (WSS), but not by a large factor. Almost everything that can be done with the commercial DMS's can be done in Sharepoint. However, Commercial DMS's focus on that feature set and, are therefore, somewhat easier to deploy (mind you, none of these things are simple -- they all take a lot of configuration and planning). The real strength is that you can do much more with Sharepoint, building workflow automation and adding Intranet and Portal features that the other DMS's don't natively support.

A few things to factor in: Commercial DMS's keep files in the file system and index/catalog them. Sharepoint stores files as Blobs in SQL Server. If you are talking about a considerable amount of files, this could be very hardware intensive, and might limit you in other ways.

Also, Sharepoint comes in a few different flavors, and the version that comes free with Windows Server (WSS) is not nearly as powerful as the enterprise version (MOSS), one particular difference being the search functionality. The enterprise version is available via Techsoup though, which helps, but it requires purchasing both standard and enterprise licenses for each user. This is still likely a less expensive product than Hummingbird or Opentext.

Finally, the true Sharepoint 2007 Document Management functionality works with Office 2007. Earlier versions are not as tightly integrated. This is probably true for Exchange 2007 as well.

The Ask Idealware posts take on some of the questions that you send us at ask@idealware.org. Have a great option to suggest for this question? Hate our responses? Help us out by entering your own answer as a comment below.

Choosing the Right Online Discussion Format

By Laura Quinn, December 7, 2007
There was a great discussion on the Progressive Exchange discussion list recently about various kinds of discussion forums. One of the participants asked about the difference between things like bulletin boards and chat rooms, and advice on online methods for parents to exchange ideas.

Lars Hasselblad Torres of Mixed Media had some really useful thoughts on this topic, which I wanted to share here, with his permission:
A "chat room" will generally refer to an application that enables synchronous (as in, we're talking online - "same time, same box") conversation via text (though voice and video is catching up quick). A bulletin board can be one of several things including:
  • a place to post announcements online
  • a place to create and participate in discussions (via threads, which are like discussion topics)
And of course there are blogs and other comment-driven forums...

Choosing the right forum really depends on several key elements, among them:
  • goals (attract members, collect points of view, engage members, answer questions, etc)
  • timing (will topics go on forever, or be time-bound in some way?)
  • participants (open to the public, or for a specific target audience, i.e. “members” or a demographic)
Also, sort out your "theory" of dialogue (honestly, in my opinion, no one can definitively answer these questions for you):
  • should it be "facilitated" or moderated?
  • must it take place through the web, or is email really "Queen"?
  • does it happen "best" in small or large groups?
  • should it result it "action"?
Finally, you will soon find yourself wading through a host of possibilities, and many great folks with a solution. I would say, start with the basics (OnlineGroups.net, CommunityServer, or phpBB for example). And, depending on your branding needs, Yahoo Groups and Google Groups still remain advanced and powerful tools that shouldn't be overlooked.

Start small, become comfortable with the "art" of hosting, and develop your own clear sense of what you want based on the needs and patterns of your unique community. From there, you will be better prepared to speak with vendors (ie Dialogue Circles, Neighborhood America, WebLab). At the same time, check out how some of the leading communities power their dialogues - you can read about it, but there is nothing like experience. I recommend ethepeople.org.

My first bit of bad news is that the "basics" will revolve around and depend upon your intent. Plus, there are lots of unanswered questions. For example do self-moderated groups perform better than moderated groups? We don't really know, though everybody has a hunch... On the good news side, there are lots of great resources for hosting "good" online discussions. A chat with experienced people like the folks at Group Jazz, Full Circle Associates, and SocialSignal will definitely put you leagues ahead of the self-starter crowd.
For my own part, I suggest approaching online communities with caution. I posted my own thoughts to this list, excerpted here:
For an online community, you need a large, online audience, who is very engaged with your organization, and a staff commitment to seed the content and answer questions. In starting a community, you have what a friend of mine calls the "Empty Disco Syndrome" - no one's talking because no one else is talking - and you need a lot of momentum to overcome that.

Though I will admit that an audience of parents of kids with special needs sounds like it might be a good fit (they sound like they may be very motivated to talk to each other).

If you've never done anything with virtual communities, most constituents and organizations find an email discussion list to be an easier starting point. I typically recommend that people start with a discussion list and graduate to an online forum if the email list is so active and vibrant and useful that email isn't the best place for it anymore (a good problem to have!)
For some more great resources on this topic, check out Full Circle Associates' resources page.

Salesforce Strengths, Costs, and Limitations

By Laura Quinn, December 5, 2007
Along with Eric Leland of Leland Design and Matthew Scholtz, an independent consultant who is also on staff at ONE/Northwest, Laura participated in a discussion of the current database options sponsored by the Fund for the City of New York. We created a transcript of the conversation, and the participants were kind enough to let us publish some excerpts – this is the third of four excerpts.

Matthew: When it comes to Salesforce, the data model is very customizable, but right now there are some limits to what you can do to customize the interface without getting into custom coding, what you can do with the report engine that they have, and what data you can get out and in what format for things like sending communications. If you'd like to target a mass communication to a pretty complex set of people, those who've done this and that but not this other thing, it can get to a point where it's tricky or impossible to do.

Fund for the City of New York: Have you run into any sort of problem with quantity of records in the online tools?

Matthew: Oh, no. Salesforce is extremely scalable. There's no problem there.

Laura: Salesforce is used in the corporate world by clients with hundreds of thousands if not millions of records. Though its use in the corporate world is a limitation as well - by default, the language used in the interface is distractingly 'salesy,' so you need to plan to customize it.

Fund for the City of New York: What’s a typical cost for Salesforce?

Laura: It's free to license for up to 10 licenses, so for most small non-profits that means it's free for the software. And beyond 10 licenses, the license cost is significantly discounted. But that doesn’t include the consulting fees to get it up in running.

Matthew: Yeah. You know, in general, that's an impossible question to answer in a general sense. There's no one price for anything, right? It really depends on what each client needs and each client needs something different. So the consulting fees are going to depend.

Eric: I haven’t been on as many Salesforce projects as Matthew, but the ones I've worked on have not typically been with really small nonprofits – in my case, they’ve had a minimum of six staff, up to about 25 or 30 staff members. With these organizations, the Salesforce projects tended to be anywhere from $6,000 to $15,000 by the time they're done doing customizations. Most of that is in configuring various add-on functionality that they knew they wanted, but they didn't necessarily have a great estimate for how much it would cost up front. Some of that cost is also in integrating outside providers - an online event registration system or something like that.

So, Salesforce is often a bit more involved than folks expect, and like Matthew said, it's hard to actually estimate that without a fairly significant planning process, and tech process.

Matthew: But one of the nice things about Salesforce is that once you get it set up, many updates can be done in-house. If what you need to do is possible, it’s often not that difficult.