[NGO] RE: NGO Digest, Vol 2, Issue 13
Josh Milane
jmilane at ulem.org
Fri Jun 23 16:50:34 UTC 2006
I am a true beginner with CMS tools, and I really hesitate to send this email because it is so obviously beginner. However, I am kind of treading water and don't like to if I don't have to.
I was a developer for a few years (PowerBuilder, SQL...) and am getting back into it after doing some general IT consulting for a few years. I've been reading a lot about Open Source tools but reading about them isn't what will get me what I need. I need to start working with them. These listservs are too advanced, but the introductory 'marketing' pieces out there are not useful in the way I would like.
If anyone has any ideas as to what a good practical step would be, I would love to hear it. Plone interests me a lot, as does one other tool in particular... and I am thinking about trying to implement them but need to get my hands on them and train myself.
I am not sure, since they are rather incipient, if there are any structured guides in place?
Thank you for your time and I am sorry to make such a request for what is probably very boring information.
Josh
-----Original Message-----
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Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 11:15 AM
To: ngo at lists.plone.org
Subject: NGO Digest, Vol 2, Issue 13
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Today's Topics:
1. [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base (Jonah Crawford)
2. Re: [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base (Peter Hollands)
3. Re: [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base (Martin Aspeli)
4. Re: [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base (Sam Stainsby)
5. Re: [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base (Martin Aspeli)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:24:10 +0200
From: Jonah Crawford <jbernier at divmod.com>
Subject: [NGO] [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base
To: ngo at lists.plone.org
Message-ID: <20060623122410.29014.1600937985.divmod.quotient.7876 at ohm>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
Hi our company provides Plone programming service to a number of NGOs. We've had a lot of success using Virtual Private Servers as this allows us to easily configure a new server for a new client or project in a matter of hours - not days. Presently we're using VPSLink's Ubuntu setup. I noticed they have a number of inexpensive VPS offerings which would more than suit the budget minded NGO. While their data center is in the states I work out of Europe and get excellent speed even as far as Poland and Romania. If you're going to go the VPS route, however, I caution you to stay well clear of Unixshell.com - we've had really *bad* experiences with them which endangered our relationship with an important client. They are not a reliable hosting solution to bet even a tiny part of your company on - fortunately we bounced back pretty quickly.
Another topic I've been kicking around quite a bit with regards to Plone and NGOs is membership management - we've been using TeamSpace to help one of our clients involve/engage their member base more in their activities. TeamSpace is a really nifty product in that it allows many projects with the same users to be kept distinct from an accounting/oversight perspective. I think it's especially useful for medium to larger organizations and those whose activities require collaboration with outside organizations.
Last winter we built a referral program for an NGO which is helping them raise more funding from their membership. I'm sure it has come up on this list before that foundations are expecting the organizations they fund to raise more money from their membership base each year. Plone can really show its colors (not just blue and white :) in this department, and from a marketing standpoint this has proved to be a very effective talking point for us.
I would be interesed in hearing what others have done with NGOs regarding membership management, collaboration toolsets and payment systems. Also it would be great to keep business matters - except for the most abstract off list - I think it detracts from the tenor of the conversation here.
Cordially,
Jonah Crawford
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:57:29 +0100, Zahid Malik <z.malik at fry-it.com> wrote:
>On 6/23/06, AHatton at oxfam.org.uk <AHatton at oxfam.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:19:21 +0100, Aaron VanDerlip
>> <aaron at netcorps.org> wrote:
>>
>> > Zahid Malik wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Out of interest what would small-to-medium NGOs class as a reasonable
>> >> price for Plone hosting services?
>> > What I have found is that $30 -$50 US per month is what clients in this
>> > space are willing to pay for shared type hosting. In addition to Plone
>> > hosting, clients usually have the expectation of email services being
>> > included in this price. This size of org usually does not need the
>> > resources of a dedicated server.
>>
>> >Perhaps there is a niche here - NGO-only hosting, that has a few
>> >pre-configured set-ups (e.g. Plone, Drupal, mail, etc, and backup and
>> >other admin already set up) for a reasonable price?
>> >Martin
>>
>>
>>Yes, I think there's potential business model here.
>>In my experience there are many smaller NGO's who would like to start
>>working with Plone
>>but are put off by the lack of affordable hosting.
>>People like Zettai in the States seem to have done a reasonable job of
>>packaging
>> up a Plone hosting solution. But there's no one in the UK as far as I know
>>doing this kind of thing yet.
>
>This is something that we might be interested in setting-up. We have a
>couple of racks in London (in separate data-centres) and one in
>Prague. We really only do higher-end hosting for our clients but it
>might be worth exploring this niche. If people have more ideas on what
>they would like to have in a package then please let us know.
>
>
>--
>Dr Zahid Malik
>FRY-IT Limited
>503 Enterprise House
>1/2 Hatfields
>London SE1 9PG
>Tel: 0870 760 7634
>Fax: 0709 200 0450
>Web: http://www.fry-it.com
>
>_______________________________________________
>NGO mailing list
>NGO at lists.plone.org
>http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
>
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:52:53 +0100
From: Peter Hollands <peter.hollands at dale.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [NGO] [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base
To: "A list for NGOs \(Non-Governmental Organizations\) using Plone."
<ngo at lists.plone.org>
Message-ID: <200606231352.53964.peter.hollands at dale.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Right,
There are 4 Huge Topics / Needs for NGOs which overlap here.
Collaboration
Publishing
Learning
Relationship Management (mass volunteering, membership, donations).
Currently, the Plone Community is primarily focussed on being the
best out of the box CMS for the mid-sized market. That is the focus of the
leadership of Plone. (my understanding - I'm sure you will debate :-) )
For many NGOs, Collaboration of the "Networked Virtual Community" is vital.
And we know that Plone can be extended in that direction.
BUT the community is NOT really focussed on that.
We have lot's of itsy bitsy addons - not an out of the box product.
So if we want it - We, the NGO community have got to make it happen.
Plone could potentially be the best INTEGRATED collaboration AND Publishing
environment for NGOs in the world.
Easily.
Those of us familiar with the products and technology know it can be done.
And we have Competition. The Drupal / Civicspace / CiviCRM combination is
gaining momentum fast. But Plone / Zope would be a better foundation.
Peter H
********************************
Internet Business Solutions
Mobile: +44 7811 437 032
********************************
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 06:53:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Martin Aspeli <optilude at gmx.net>
Subject: Re: [NGO] [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base
To: ngo at lists.plone.org
Message-ID: <5012183.post at talk.nabble.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Peter Hollands wrote:
>
> Right,
>
> There are 4 Huge Topics / Needs for NGOs which overlap here.
> Collaboration
> Publishing
> Learning
> Relationship Management (mass volunteering, membership, donations).
>
Indeed. Collaboration is certainly something that is growing in importance,
whether you call it a "CMS" feature or a "groupware" feature. There are
efforts underway (like Teamspace) that address this need, and Plone could
certainly use more work in this area. Publishing is obviously what we do
best.
Learning could mean different things to different people. I'm not quite sure
what you refer to in this context.
Relationship Management is probably the big one. I don't think anyone's
seriously thought about what is needed, whether we want integration with
other systems or some sort of in-Plone solution, and how complex it really
needs to be. Jon Stahl & co are doing a salesforce.com integration project,
which may have interesting outcomes. This is certainly something of the
scale that would need a real project and a real budget, though.
> Currently, the Plone Community is primarily focussed on being the
> best out of the box CMS for the mid-sized market. That is the focus of the
> leadership of Plone. (my understanding - I'm sure you will debate :-) )
>
Sure... but "Plone" consists of the core (that we don't want to bloat) and a
large periphery of third party products and integration points. Everyone, I
hope, is supportive of efforts that enlarge this periphery, and even more
supportive of efforts that stabilise and maintain those third party products
that have a wide appeal.
> For many NGOs, Collaboration of the "Networked Virtual Community" is
> vital.
> And we know that Plone can be extended in that direction.
> BUT the community is NOT really focussed on that.
> We have lot's of itsy bitsy addons - not an out of the box product.
>
> So if we want it - We, the NGO community have got to make it happen.
>
This is what I would hope for. The architecture of Zope and Plone makes it
much easier than in most other systems to maintain such modules that plug
into the core UI but offers distinct functionality. A Plone/Collab set of
modules with a real maintainer and a project community could be a killer.
Martin
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-what-NGOs-need-in-a-website--checklist--t1766079.html#a5012183
Sent from the Plone NGO forum at Nabble.com.
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:00:43 +1000
From: Sam Stainsby <sam at sustainablesoftware.com.au>
Subject: Re: [NGO] [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base
To: "A list for NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) using Plone."
<ngo at lists.plone.org>
Message-ID: <449BF40B.8090303 at sustainablesoftware.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Jonah Crawford wrote:
> I would be interesed in hearing what others have done with NGOs
> regarding membership management, collaboration toolsets and payment
> systems. Also it would be great to keep business matters - except for
> the most abstract off list - I think it detracts from the tenor of the
> conversation here.
Ah, my pet topic ... there is a very real need for this sort of thing ...
I recently built 2 staff/membership management systems for 2 different
NGOs that had quite a bit in common. One of the NGOs, an environmental
group, is interested in going open source, and I'm currently talking the
other one (and anyone else who will listen) about getting some
collaboration going. They are a political party. I'm willing to put some
of my own company's time in to help manage the project.
Between the two systems, here are most of the features (Note: in one
system there are contacts, staff and volunteers; in the other there are
contacts and members ):
* built on archetypes
* workflowable contacts, members & groups (we started using CMFMember
but found it unworkable, so we developed our own solution - a bit
hackish but it does the job - we will be looking closely at membrane &
Five on Plone 2.5 for the next version)
* any contact can be made into a member, and visa versa
* contacts/members can be given a login account (they get a Plone
username and password); in one client's case, they can log in and change
many of their own details, including biography, mugshot, etc; accounts
can be disabled as well
* multiple levels of authority: eg. operator, observer (read-only
access), coordinator (can read almost all info except sensitive data
such as credit card numbers), ordinary user
* groups can have managers
* groups are used for branches, campaigns, committees, roles, org.
units, physical offices, etc.
* separate physical address objects
* addresses can be physically located in "electorates" (for their
political stuff!)
* complex membership application, approval and payment workflows with
some transitions time dependent and automated (using ClockServer)
* export of users and groups to LDAP with sufficient info for
addressbook which allows authentication & group-based authorisation on
LDAP-compatible systems (with the long term aim of one username and one
password for each user throughout the organisation)
* auditing via Plone's history mechanism, augmented to record exactly
which attributes were changed by who and when
* recording of membership and donation payments (not accounting as such
- its just a basic record - accounting is left to commercial packages -
I would like to see that change - example: exporting payment data into
QIF, which could then be imported into something like gnucash)
* regular payment schedule objects that controls parts of a member's
workflow (e.g. due payments are detected, and that changes the state of
the member object)
* regular payment schedules can be used to generate a payment record and
update their next membership renewal date in a single step
* One of our clients uses Jabber quite a bit so I am currently writing
an ejabberd plugin to map LDAP groups into shared roster groups and chat
rooms (I learnt Erlang on Monday - I have the roster groups working so far!)
* use of Smart Folders to do some fairly involved queries (not a
flexible as SQL but a whole lot simple for non-tech users) eg. "all
members in electorates XYZ and ABC who are interested in basket weaving
and nuclear science and geraniums"
* export of any query results to CSV that can be opened in OpenOffice or
Microsoft Excel
* mail templates to generate (snail mail) letters to members: these
template are applied to any query results that lists members to create a
PDF file with all of the letters inside it (basically, a mail merge);
formatting is double sides with proper page boundaries,; templates can
contain images and are edited in Kupu
* mailing label templates for your snail mail: again PDF; users can
chose to generate only one label per physical address
* pre-defined queries and mail templates for due membership, overdue,
lapsed, new membership, thanking donors, etc
* contacts, members, addresses offices etc, all nicely searchable though
Plone beautiful search tools, including LiveSearch
* although not tested in practice yet, there is enough info in the LDAP
to control user accounts and mailing lists on LDAP-savvy mail servers
such as qmail and postfix; mailing lists can have extra recipients
outside of the group
* for the environmental client, this system is also the heart of their
intranet, embedded within the same plone instance - it is essentially
used as an intranet staff/volunteer directory within this context, they
also have:
* web forms for emailing or SMSing members or whole groups of members at
a time
* all the other nice Plone stuff for their intranet, like document
full-text indexing with TextIndexNG, and WebDAV
Whew that was a lot wasn't it .. probably not all either.
One of my clients is already using their system, and report that they
are very happy with it, although they would like to see new features
added in the future. The other client's system is currently be phased
in. Their admin staff are setting it up first, and according to my
client's IT manager, they report that they are "blown away" by its
capabilities. They also have more plans for improvements. Here are some
of the things being tossed around:
* instant campaign portals - this is a rather involved and ambitious
project: to grossly oversimplify, if you have a new campaign, you fill
in a form, selecting some options and adding some people and managers,
and voilà you have a functioning campaign portal
* using the LDAP, Samba and/or PAM for various authentication tasks on
Windows and 'Nix (I have already demonstrated the use of pam_ldap to
provide authentication for a demo subversion repository)
* batching and automation of payments through an secure online web
payment gateway
* geospatial features (Google maps integration anyone?)
and lots of other stuff. I think there is a great opportunity to do some
real good and drum up some good business here too. I would be interested
to hear others' experiences and needs, and if anyone wants to get in on
this project please contact me too.
Cheers,
Sam.
--
Sam Stainsby - Managing Director
Sustainable Software Pty Ltd
"open knowledge :: social conscience"
ABN: 32 117 186 286
WWW: http://sustainablesoftware.com.au/
E-mail: sam at sustainablesoftware.com.au
Jabber: sjstainsby at jabber.org
Tel/Fax: +61 7 3289 5491 Mobile: 0405 380 844
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 08:14:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Martin Aspeli <optilude at gmx.net>
Subject: Re: [NGO] [checklist] + a new topic - Membership Base
To: ngo at lists.plone.org
Message-ID: <5013623.post at talk.nabble.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Sam Stainsby-2 wrote:
>
> Ah, my pet topic ... there is a very real need for this sort of thing ...
>
> I recently built 2 staff/membership management systems for 2 different
> NGOs that had quite a bit in common. One of the NGOs, an environmental
> group, is interested in going open source, and I'm currently talking the
> other one (and anyone else who will listen) about getting some
> collaboration going. They are a political party. I'm willing to put some
> of my own company's time in to help manage the project.
>
This is excellent! Rob Miller (RaFromBRC) is our point man on membership
things. He's been a big push behind membrane (which was started by Helge
Tesdal). Wichert (Wiggy) has also done some work on this lately.
membrane, PAS and Plone 2.5 make building systems like this way easier. I
may be writing a lightweight version for a use case not too dissimilar to
this in the near future... it will of course be open source :)
> Between the two systems, here are most of the features (Note: in one
> system there are contacts, staff and volunteers; in the other there are
> contacts and members ):
>
> * built on archetypes
> * workflowable contacts, members & groups (we started using CMFMember
> but found it unworkable, so we developed our own solution - a bit
> hackish but it does the job - we will be looking closely at membrane &
> Five on Plone 2.5 for the next version)
> * any contact can be made into a member, and visa versa
>
This is a cool feature, and one that requires some real thought up-front.
> * contacts/members can be given a login account (they get a Plone
> username and password); in one client's case, they can log in and change
> many of their own details, including biography, mugshot, etc; accounts
> can be disabled as well
>
You'll love how membrane handles this. Basically, the object is the user if
it can be adapted to the right interface. So, you no longer need to use Site
Setup and manage users that way. You just create e.g. a Member or Contact
object anywhere in the site, and if workflow/conditions allow, that object
just becomes the representation of a user with no more work involved. It's
very elegant. You can do things like having a Department as a folderish
object containing Staff. Each Department becomes a group, each Staff becomes
a user. You could do it with references - each Project references a number
of Staff, making a project into a group that has the associated staff as
members. (this is pretty much my use case, by the way).
> * multiple levels of authority: eg. operator, observer (read-only
> access), coordinator (can read almost all info except sensitive data
> such as credit card numbers), ordinary user
> * groups can have managers
> * groups are used for branches, campaigns, committees, roles, org.
> units, physical offices, etc.
>
This is again an advanced design that will benefit a lot of people.
Teamspace does some of this, mind you. There is permissions juggling galore
here, so getting it right once and for all will benefit a lot of people.
> * separate physical address objects
> * addresses can be physically located in "electorates" (for their
> political stuff!)
> * complex membership application, approval and payment workflows with
> some transitions time dependent and automated (using ClockServer)
> * export of users and groups to LDAP with sufficient info for
> addressbook which allows authentication & group-based authorisation on
> LDAP-compatible systems (with the long term aim of one username and one
> password for each user throughout the organisation)
> * auditing via Plone's history mechanism, augmented to record exactly
> which attributes were changed by who and when
>
Interesting... perhaps you can explain a bit more about how you did that in
a post to plone-developers?
> * recording of membership and donation payments (not accounting as such
> - its just a basic record - accounting is left to commercial packages -
> I would like to see that change - example: exporting payment data into
> QIF, which could then be imported into something like gnucash)
> * regular payment schedule objects that controls parts of a member's
> workflow (e.g. due payments are detected, and that changes the state of
> the member object)
> * regular payment schedules can be used to generate a payment record and
> update their next membership renewal date in a single step
> * One of our clients uses Jabber quite a bit so I am currently writing
> an ejabberd plugin to map LDAP groups into shared roster groups and chat
> rooms (I learnt Erlang on Monday - I have the roster groups working so
> far!)
> * use of Smart Folders to do some fairly involved queries (not a
> flexible as SQL but a whole lot simple for non-tech users) eg. "all
> members in electorates XYZ and ABC who are interested in basket weaving
> and nuclear science and geraniums"
> * export of any query results to CSV that can be opened in OpenOffice or
> Microsoft Excel
> * mail templates to generate (snail mail) letters to members: these
> template are applied to any query results that lists members to create a
> PDF file with all of the letters inside it (basically, a mail merge);
> formatting is double sides with proper page boundaries,; templates can
> contain images and are edited in Kupu
> * mailing label templates for your snail mail: again PDF; users can
> chose to generate only one label per physical address
> * pre-defined queries and mail templates for due membership, overdue,
> lapsed, new membership, thanking donors, etc
> * contacts, members, addresses offices etc, all nicely searchable though
> Plone beautiful search tools, including LiveSearch
> * although not tested in practice yet, there is enough info in the LDAP
> to control user accounts and mailing lists on LDAP-savvy mail servers
> such as qmail and postfix; mailing lists can have extra recipients
> outside of the group
> * for the environmental client, this system is also the heart of their
> intranet, embedded within the same plone instance - it is essentially
> used as an intranet staff/volunteer directory within this context, they
> also have:
> * web forms for emailing or SMSing members or whole groups of members at
> a time
> * all the other nice Plone stuff for their intranet, like document
> full-text indexing with TextIndexNG, and WebDAV
>
> Whew that was a lot wasn't it .. probably not all either.
>
It certainly sounds impressive. For re-use proposes, I'd advise starting
with modest goals. Identify the most important bits first and work your way
up. Pay attention to modularity, to the UI, and to integrateion and
conceptual integrity with the rest of Plone.
> One of my clients is already using their system, and report that they
> are very happy with it, although they would like to see new features
> added in the future. The other client's system is currently be phased
> in. Their admin staff are setting it up first, and according to my
> client's IT manager, they report that they are "blown away" by its
> capabilities. They also have more plans for improvements. Here are some
> of the things being tossed around:
>
Well done :)
> * instant campaign portals - this is a rather involved and ambitious
> project: to grossly oversimplify, if you have a new campaign, you fill
> in a form, selecting some options and adding some people and managers,
> and voilà you have a functioning campaign portal
> * using the LDAP, Samba and/or PAM for various authentication tasks on
> Windows and 'Nix (I have already demonstrated the use of pam_ldap to
> provide authentication for a demo subversion repository)
> * batching and automation of payments through an secure online web
> payment gateway
> * geospatial features (Google maps integration anyone?)
>
There's a whole category for this on plone.org :)
> and lots of other stuff. I think there is a great opportunity to do some
> real good and drum up some good business here too. I would be interested
> to hear others' experiences and needs, and if anyone wants to get in on
> this project please contact me too.
>
Sam,
It certainly sounds like you know what you're doing and that you've got a
lot of real-world experience. The wider community would love to hear more
from you and share in the open source parts of your work. If it can be
properly modularised, a lot of what you describe seems to be applicable
outside the NGO sector as well.
Martin
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-what-NGOs-need-in-a-website--checklist--t1766079.html#a5013623
Sent from the Plone NGO forum at Nabble.com.
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