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Ask Slashdot: Event Sign-Up Software Options For a Non-Profit?
New submitter don_e_b writes I have been asked by a non-profit to help them gather a team of volunteer developers, who they wish to have write an online volunteer sign-up site. This organization has a one large event per year with roughly 1400 volunteers total.I have advised them to investigate existing online volunteer offerings, and they can afford to pay for most that I've found so far. In the past two years, they have used a site written by a volunteer that has worked fine for them, but that volunteer is unavailable to maintain or enhance his site this year. They believe the existing online volunteer sign-up sites are not quite right — they feel they have very specific sign-up needs, and can not picture using anything other than their own custom software solution. I am convinced it's a mistake for this non-profit to create a software development team from a rotating pool of volunteers to write software upon which it is critically dependent. How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and use an existing solution?
Look at CiviCRM (in combination with drupal). Extremely flexible, build for non-profits, completely Open Source.
Here's a list of 62 volunteer-management packages. Some are web based. Some are free. Somewhere in there should be something that solves your problem.
Eventbrite is set up for this sort of thing -- volunteer signup is a very common use. Plus, free.
I think I'd set up a small demo using your real data and requirements -- its obvious ease of use and lack of cost would make the case pretty easily. (I'm sure that's the case for ten or perhaps fifty other off-the-shelf services too.)