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

Sandford,Maryellen sandfordm at cadl.org
Wed May 31 18:43:04 UTC 2006


Speaking as non-profit (district library) that recently decided to use Plone instead of Drupal, I agree that Plone4NGOs would be very popular.  Something else to consider adding to "What NGO's need in a website" is a product that would like to the drupal product, CiviContribute.
 
CiviContribute enables you to track and manage contributions to your organization. It also allows you to quickly and easily create a customized web page to accept online donations. It is fully integrated with CiviCRM and creates donation records for all online donations, eliminating data entry time and errors. 
More info at http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviContribute+Guide
 
Maryellen Sandford

-----Original Message-----
From: ngo-bounces at lists.plone.org [mailto:ngo-bounces at lists.plone.org]On Behalf Of David Bain
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 2:32 PM
To: A list for NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) using Plone.
Subject: Re: [NGO] what NGOs need in a website [checklist]


with respect to affordable training, does anyone know what NGOs typically pay now for training?


On 5/31/06, Nate Aune <  <mailto:natea at jazkarta.com> natea at jazkarta.com> wrote: 

in an email from Leda Dederich, she reports the results from her 
survey about what non-profits are looking for in a CMS...  (see the
forwarded msg from Jon Stahl below). see the initiative/survey here:
http://www.scoutseven.com/dotorganize  <http://www.scoutseven.com/dotorganize> 

I think if we created a Plone4NGOs distribution/service, it could be
hugely popular. below are the things that they are asking for, and
some possible solutions from the Ploneiverse.

> The top feature needs identified look something like this: 

> Online event calendars/event management and tracking

CalViews, Calendaring

> Email newsletters  (yep, a full 50% of respondents don't have an
> email delivery service that works for them) 

HamCannon, PloneNewsletter, PloneGazette

> Volunteer recruitment and management

integration with salesforce.com / SugarCRM

> Mechanisms for feedback from constituents on org goals/priorities 

CMFQuestions, PloneSurvey

> Bulletin boards/online forums (this surprised us too)

Ploneboard

> Online donating/donor tracking (again, more than 50% arn't set up
> to accept donations online, even though they'd like to be) 

this could be part of the Salesforce.com / SugarCRM integration.

> Mail merge to offline communications /direct mail

salesforce.com  <http://salesforce.com> and/or SugarCRM can handle this

> Selling products online

PloneMall? CMFPayPalHelper. Spanky is working on a python/Plone
wrapper for PayPal's API

> More thematic needs were:

> Integration, integration, integration 

Plone needs to do more of this. there are already plugins for
Democracy in Action, Whatcounts, and Onenw is working on Salesforce
integration.  what about upcoming.org and eventful.com for posting
events?

> Setup ease

point-n-click installers are great, but Plone is still tricky to get
setup on linux box. a turnkey hosting solution ala Bryght.com would
be great.

> Affordability

Plone itself is free, but consultants are probably still more
expensive than PHP programmers (Drupal, Joomla)

> Reliability

Has anyone experienced a ZODB corruption?  I think Plone is one of 
the most reliable systems available. the insistence on unit tests
also greatly improves code quality and reliability.

> Training/Support

Joel's PloneBootcamps are a great example of affordable training, but 
Joel can only do so many of them. I'd like to see more Plone user
groups which can assist non-profits at the local level and sharing
their resources more readily (slides/videos from presentations),
which should be pretty easy to do with a simple RSS feed. 

Also, getting Plone.net launched once and for all would probably make
NGOs feel more comfortable about choosing Plone and getting adequate
support. it's very difficult to find hosting / support / usergroups / 
consultants via plone.org.

I just got off the phone with the executive director of a non-profit
who went with Drupal instead of Plone. I asked her why and she said
because there were more non-profits using Drupal so she was more 
comfortable about finding support. And the hosting costs were
considerably cheaper and less complicated than setting up and hosting
a Plone solution.  We need these things to change if we want to make
Plone an attractive option for NGOs. 

Nate

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Jon Stahl" < jon at onenw.org>
> Date: April 26, 2006 12:40:56 PM PDT
> To: "Alan Runyan" < alan at enfoldsystems.com>, "Nate Aune"
> < nate.aune at adaptivewave.com>, "Joel Burton" <  <mailto:joel at joelburton.com> joel at joelburton.com>
> Subject: what nonprofits say they need from online tools
>
> Alan, Nate, Joel-
>
> Thought you might this interesting... Nate & Alan, you already know
> a bit about Leda and the work she's been doing.   This is some of 
> the first real hard tools-agnostic data about what nonprofit
> organizers really say they need.
>
>
> best,
> jon
>
> From: Leda Dederich [mailto:  <mailto:leda at scoutseven.com> leda at scoutseven.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 11:50 AM
> To: Phillip Smith; Michael Stein; Sonny Cloward; Margot; Alexandra
> Samuel; Jon Stahl; Steve Andersen; Arif Mamdani;
> pradeep at picnet.net; Brian Sant; Eric Squair; Sam Dorman; Jamie
> McClelland; Phillip Djwa; Rolf Kleef; Favianna Rodriguez; David
> Taylor; matthew at netcorps.org
> Subject: your top 5 tools for organizers
>
> Hey there friends and colleagues,
>
> As most of you know,  I've just wrapped the dotOrganize survey
> (full report available soon) which was an effort to better document 
> the needs of grassroots organizers using online technology to
> support their work.  If any of you are unfamiliar with this
> project, check out http://www.scoutseven.com/dotorganize  <http://www.scoutseven.com/dotorganize> .
>
> We had almost 400 responses from orgs all over the US, and a fair
> share from Canada.
>
> One of the survey's key components was a needs assessment of the
> specific tools people use, need, don't need, and don't understand. 
> We're crunching the numbers to get exact rankings on all this
> stuff, but here's a sneak preview for y'all.
>
> The top feature needs identified look something like this:
>
> Online event calendars/event management and tracking 
> Email newsletters  (yep, a full 50% of respondents don't have an
> email delivery service that works for them)
> Volunteer recruitment and management
> Mechanisms for feedback from constituents on org goals/priorities 
> Bulletin boards/online forums (this surprised us too)
> Online donating/donor tracking (again, more than 50% arn't set up
> to accept donations online, even though they'd like to be)
> Mail merge to offline communications /direct mail 
> Selling products online
>
> More thematic needs were:
>
> Integration, integration, integration
> Setup ease
> Affordability
> Reliability
> Training/Support
> 
> As for what people don't need or understand, perhaps it will come
> as no surprise that all things "Web 2.0" arn't that popular with
> people who still struggle with basic contact management and email 
> delivery.
>
> We'll have a deeper analysis on all this in the detailed report
> (you'll be notified when it's available).
>
> So, in addition to these assessments, dotOrganize is also mapping 
> organizing tools currently available to the sector.  This
> information will also be made available online.
>
> Which is where you come in.
>
> I'd like to ask that you take 5 minutes and tell me your top 5 
> favorite tools which may address some of the needs identified
> above.  I'm going to know some of them already, I'm sure, but
> that's not the point.  I'm trying to get a sense of what my
> favorite online organizers and integrators out there currently 
> depend on.  And if there's some sweet little tool that has yet to
> cross my path.  I'm hoping to feed some resource ideas back to all
> the survey participants (some of who are really struggling!), and I 
> will also include this info in our mapping efforts.
>
> Your help muchly appreciated.
>
> So please just brain dump.  I'll aggregate.
>
> Thanks so much for your help!
>
> Leda
>
>
>
> --
> Leda Dederich
> Director
> ScoutSeven/dotOrganize
> http://www.scoutseven.com
> 415.551.5100


--
Nate Aune - natea at jazkarta.com
http://www.jazkarta.com


On May 31, 2006, at 1:49 PM, David Bain wrote:

> 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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