[NGO] what NGOs need in a website [checklist]

[David Bain]

Here are a few things (off my head) that I think any NGO might want from
their website.

   - Contact Form
   - Easy to customize Donation Form /Database (for admins to view data)
   - Membership?
   - Simple Conference Registration System (register participants and
   share meeting resources, documents etc...)
   - Faqs (useful to inform persons about who they are)
   - News and Events
   - Newsletter (to keep the community up to date)

I'm sure there are others, this is my brief checklist from my experience of
working with NGOs on Plone and non Plone projects.



On 5/31/06, Martin Aspeli <optilude at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Hi George,
>
> It's true that Plone is more consultancy driven than volunteer driven, but
> also true that Plone is very strong in the NGO sector. Speaking to people
> like PloneSolutions, it's a market that suits Plone very well. Oxfam is of
> course a prime example (three, in fact, if you count Oxfam America,
> International and GB as separate projects).
>
> The simple truth is that for non-trivial needs, you need investment, or
> sufficient in-house expertise. Building a "serious" application takes time
> and commitment, of the order that it almost always needs to be budgeted for.
> Of course, where Plone (and/or some well-supported 3rd party product) does
> most of what you need, Plone's attention to usability normally means that
> the *end user* will at least get a lot of out Plone for free, but for more
> particular needs ( i.e. where the application needs to support work
> practices, not just push information), organisations' needs are sufficiently
> different in most cases to make some degree of bespoke development (or at
> least configuration) necessary.
>
> This is in part where I hope the people on this this list can make a
> contribution. If NGOs can agree on a common set of needs (more or less, of
> course, each case is different), then in theory you could build a set of
> components or maintain a distribution of Plone + some third party products +
> whatever custom code, that would be well-suited to many NGOs. This kind of
> targetted momentum itself may be enough to sustain such development for the
> future.
>
> I can't comment on the alturism of Drupal experts, but I doubt that you
> could get many non-trivial applications (i.e. more than Plone
> out-of-the-box) built for free, with sufficient quality assurance, testing
> and training that they were actually usable and could be depended upon, at
> least not very often.
>
> I'm sure the idea of teaching the art of fishery rather than handing out
> dodgy seafood will resonate with many people here. Work together, build
> skills and share knowledge, in order to help yourselves and each other,
> don't hope that someone will simply drop an application that meets your
> needs into your laps. :)
>
> Martin
>
> On 5/31/06, George Lee <georgeleejr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
>
> I work / volunteer for a variety of small non-profits / community networks
> in the U.S. So a variety of individuals and organizations are part of
> these networks, but the paid staff is only 2 or 3 people and the budgets are
> around $200,000 or less with not much tech budget.
>
> Although I work in my free time developing Plone sites for them, it is
> hard to know how realistic it is to use Plone for a group of this size. I
> personally like it a lot and the flexibility it offers, but I worry that
> when I can no longer maintain the tech -- even if I create really clean
> code, documentation, etc. -- that maintaining it / modifying it will be
> prohibitively expensive. I know some other people who have said that using
> something like drupal would be more wise to do because of the wider
> volunteer base, as opposed to Plone which seems like most of the work gets
> done through consultants in organizations.
>
> Can people share perespectives on this? Also, I've rarely seen $ amounts
> given over these lists but can someone give some examples of what an
> organization might spend on a few different types of projects as a site
> changes in the future? How about for some basic maintenance and
> troubleshooting support?
>
> Peace,
> George
>
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