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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?
How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and use an existing solution?
By not helping them with their custom solution.
Look at CiviCRM (in combination with drupal). Extremely flexible, build for non-profits, completely Open Source.
Start with:
Is this software related to our industry?
Do we need some advantage over our competition or can we just use the same stuff they do?
What's our back up plan if we discover that our self created software ends up making the Obamacare website rollout look good?
How much money do you think we will save?
If it ends up costing more money, how much we will sink into this project before quitting?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I've used it to handle large event signups. You can add drop downs, free text fields, etc and pretty much setup any kind of information you need. You can then export the results to a spreadsheet to create name badges, sort by requests, etc as well. They have a free version but it may not allow you as many signups as you need. You can, however, buy a month to month subscription and then drop back to the free one when you don't need it.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The vagueness of this made my eyes hurt - oh and the traditional, "How did this make it to the front page?" Now that's out of the way, if you honestly can find a great product that harnesses all your needs with only a reasonable amount of customization then I'm sure they would be intrigued by it. But as in anything, you need to make a convincing argument. Lots of analysis about the cost/time/training savings that this "out of the box" system would use. However, there's a reason completely custom software exists. It matches the way the business runs not forcing the business to run how some generic software forces them to. I'd be more specific, but your context doesn't allow it.
First off, the question sounds a little whiny. Rather than investigating the best possible solution, the submitter is looking to get his/her way. This is absolutely the wrong approach. The submitter is far more knowledgeable of the situation that any of us. If they cannot even craft an argument for why their approach is best, how are we, who know next to nothing about this project, to be able to come up with one?
As laid out by the submitter, there are two choices:
1. Use already owned and successfully tested software and customize it to the current year's needs.
2. Purchase untested and unfamiliar software and customize it to the current year's needs.
It sounds like going with what you are already familiar with is the way to go. You're going to need to do customization either way to fit into your UX. One solution likely has people who are familiar with it, the other is something completely new. Why wouldn't you stick with what you already know works?
Though the requirements are a bit vague, Google spreadsheets might be able to fit the need. It can be setup to just have a form/questionaire for the volunteers to fill out and then sticks it all into a spreadsheet.
Yes, it is, for a whole host of reasons that I'm sure will be expanded upon here shortly. I've spent 20 years dealing with troubled and failed IT projects, and one of the biggest mistakes I see time and again is an organization trying to create a mission-critical project, often in a compressed time frame, using developers who are not an experienced, functioning team. You can usually throw into that first-time adoption of some silver-bullet technology and/or methodology. So, what you get it, "OK, let's get 10 random programmers who have never delivered a working system together as a team, and they're going to develop this mission-critical system from scratch in 4 months using Swift and Agile, even though none of the programmers have ever used either. And we can add more programmers if we start to fall behind."
Having the programmers be volunteers is even worse, since they are now self-selecting based on their own interest, instead of being chosen for, you know, actual skills, talent, experience, and so on.
Sigh. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Or it's simply that the existing volunteer(s) don't want to do it any more, and nobody thought to ask the other 1,400 people if some of them would want to take over the task. Especially since each volunteer probably knows half a dozen people, so the potential pool is closer to 10,000.
The best way to guarantee
you don't get help that might be free
is not to ask, 'cuz we forget
them that don't ask, well, they don't get!
Burma Shave
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Don't give them what they ask for. Give them what they need.
Following this, I am 99% sure that a spreadsheet is sufficient for their actual need. Don't waste time, money, and resources on pie-in-the-sky vaporware. Just get it done.
How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and use an existing solution?
I wouldn't. This seems like a trivial project, something you could whip up with Perl/CGI in a few hours. Is there something wrong with the "site written by a volunteer"? Why is the original developer the only one that can "maintain" and "enhance" the site? What exactly needs "maintaining"? Why do you expect that there is an "existing solution" that not only meets their needs but that also costs nothing to "maintain" and "enhance"?
I've noticed a sort of reverse-Not-Invented-Here syndrome recently, where problems that would be trivial to build one-off solutions for are instead solved with huge, unwieldy, general-purpose, off-the-shelf products. It seems the pendulum swings both ways.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and use an existing solution?
Easy, give them a quote. Then let them know that doesn't include support.
I think any developers on slashdot could likewise quote them...
I'm going to say, if I like the charity and am willing to do them a favor: $100k up front, and another $50k on completion if it's relatively simple. Then another $50k per year for support. I can pass background checks and all that stuff.
Oh... so they want, for free, something that would cost at least $200k? And they think their free versions going to be even remotely be equivalent? It's like saying "Well, we could take the buss, but ferrari's are more comfortable. We can't afford a real ferrari so go get us some volunteers and have them custom build a Ferrari from the ground up so we can save money."
It's silly on its face... and if they can't figure that out, I think it's a clear sign how they'll handle the rest of the money they get. Run, don't walk away from that place. This is an important lesson for you not them.
Your job is to inform and advise. Convincing them is not a reasonable task. People making the decision may not do so in a manner you consider rational.
Make your case honestly and to the best of your ability. What someone else does with your input is beyond your ability to control. You have already summarized the key points of the decision reasonable well. Back them up with supporting info and let it go. Ulcers are not fun.
When you depend on an existing third-party solution, the third party can hold you for ransom. (For example, many companies use Oracle's database software, and they're subject to the whims of Oracle as a result.) But by building your own solution, based on open standards, you are free from outside influences and other complications.
Of course, building one's own solution requires a team of developers with well-defined specifications, so that the departure of single developer doesn't threaten the project, and new developers can be brought quickly up-to-speed. Apparently, the mistake made by the non-profit is that they depended on a single developer, and he didn't even document his work.
As a programmer analyst your responsibility is to map the requirements of the customer, assess them and come with a proposal. Your proposal has to either satisfy their requirements or suggest a different course of action. If there are unreasonable requirements it's also your job to bring them back to reality.
Keep in mind that nobody else here understands your customer better than you.
Not to mention, that anytime my wife has been suckered into helping do a website for a nonprofit for free, they are the biggest pains in the ass.
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.
The details of what they're looking to do is a bit vague, and it depends on what the real requirements are. In other words, this is a two part question, and the choke point is vague...
Part 1: Getting the data in the door.
I'm a huge fan of Machform for this. It's not free, but it's inexpensive, self-hosted on any garden variety LAMP stack, their support folks are pretty good, and making new forms is a very simple process that you can teach Sally Secretary to do in half an hour. You can download the data in a CSV once the form is done and look at it in your spreadsheet flavor of choice.
Part 2: Doing something useful with the data.
So, you've got a spreadsheet full of names, addresses, and phone numbers. What do you do with it? Do you run a Mail Merge in Microsoft Word? nice and easy. Does this go into a SQL database somewhere? Importing it gets interesting, although I think you can export the data from Machform using PhpMyAdmin. Does it need to go into Quickbooks? Good luck with that, although to be fair you'd need half a dozen interns to copy/paste that no matter how you slice it. ConstantContact? I don't know what mass import tools they have, so that can vary. The list of potential use cases goes on and on, and whether this is a practical method or not depends if "data getting into spreadsheet form" is a solution.
It's been said that a well-asked question is half the answer. If you can provide us with more information as to what's done with the data, and where their current solution falls apart, and what specific uniquenesses are limiting the current setup, more solutions may come to light.
They're being lazy, and you're being lazy. Let me give you some real get-shit-done dealing-with-dullards project management 101.
When an organization feels they must use custom developers it's often because of those "unknown unknowns" in the non-existent specification that they want to make up as they go along because they cannot sit down and concentrate long enough to commit it to paper. You should not accept this. If you do, you shouldn't be in this business. Your job is to MAKE them decide on the specifications. If you think it's someone else's job, but nobody is doing the job, then guess what - it's your job, because your job is to do the fucking project correctly.
Mock it up SCREEN BY SCREEN ON PAPER, button by button, every edge case handled. Nail down every field, every possible error condition. Hold meetings with simulations waving bits of paper around to simulate swiping, button clicking, and result pages. Do not stop until you have a "working" piece of software that exists entirely in paper mockup that everyone agrees will solve all their problems. Tell them it is crazy to start coding until you get to this point because it's like starting work on a custom engine before you know if it's going into a car or truck. There is no reason not to do this, and nobody does this, because people are stupid and don't understand how software development works, and they think they can write the spec as they go along and the developers will just adapt and figure it out. It's our fault for being so adaptable on 90% of late-stage feature requests that come through, and it makes us feel like the 10% that kill us are actually our own inadequacies.
Then you write it up formally (as briefly as possible, preferably with shiny pictures or a pop-up book if you can) and you tell them this is the specification. You get signatures. You create an Appendix A that says that any feature request is a change to the scope, and that changes require a new Appendix, and also make them sign something that acknowledges that any appendices may necessitate starting ALL CODING FROM SCRATCH AGAIN, and that if the appendix is added because of something they "forgot" or "didn't think of until they had a chance to actually use the UI" then they take full responsibility for not thinking about the mockups hard enough.
Once that nightmare is over (which should be 3/4 of the cost of the project if you're getting paid), then you try to match their needs to a piece of existing software. Only if they truly have requirements that do not exist do you accept a custom development project.
The rotating pool of volunteers is of far less importance. A shitty implementation and customization of a third-party system can be just as confusing as a custom code project for new volunteers coming in, though arguably slightly less so, so it is certainly preferred.
Delegate the difficult part of the system you need. If you delegate dealing with security, registrations, username, passwords, verification mails, security, etc the sign-up system get very simplified. Perhaps you would like to consider Stormpath ( https://stormpath.com/ ). They provide security, dealing with users, passwords, assign those users to groups and controlling all the security stuff, mailing, etc. It integrates with google, facebook, etc. I think it costs $49 at month, but they have a free full version with enough calls to serve 1400 users registrations. No sure they language you are considering, they support PHP and Java (and other languages). That + a cheap hosting site and perhaps some solution using wordpress (PHP) would result in a very simple application that junior programmers could code.
A couple of years ago, I was asked to be the registration chair for a national event, which we successfully held this spring. All previous events had been run strictly on paper-and-pencil mail-in forms, but that involves a lot of manual work, including a lot of last minute work at the event door. I looked long and hard at various open source and commercial event management offerings, and I spoke to other people who ran similar events. Based on recommendations from other event organizers, I landed on regonline as a good blend of features and customizability, even though it was a bit expensive (though they offer a discount for a 501(c)(3) organization.) What it came down to for me was effort. I wouldn't have time to set up all the hosting needed, to install and configure the software, or to integrate with a payment gateway, and I got a lot of really valuable features from their system. I didn't want us to make our attendees suffer through hour-long lines at a registration booth. And I was able to provide instant reports to the conference chair, who used them to help run the event smoothly.
Something it sounds like you need to do here is figure out "who is the Registration Chair"? If it's you, your only question to the Event Chair should be "what is my budget?" Base your solution on the bottom line. If your budget is $5/registrant, and it includes lanyards and ID cards, your options are wide open. If your budget is $0.50/registrant, and you have to use a box of old "Hello my name is..." stickers, your options are a bit more limited. The important thing is: the Registration Chair is in charge of registration. He or she decides how to best solve the problem, not "here are some random developers, you must write us a site."
One thing that still isn't clear is why you would have to "write" a new site. It sounds like you created one a few years ago, and then another, and then another. I realize your group is a precious snowflake, completely unique in the world, but events really are just events. They all have web sites, registrants, admins, venues, agenda items, merchandise, travel, lodging, taxes, payments, receipts, badges, volunteers, and reports. And there is nothing in that list you can't get from the marketplace. Ultimately, if you absolutely can't use a packaged solution because of [illogical rationale], you should only need to have someone reconfigure the existing site. That's a lot less effort, perhaps not much more than c/2014/2015/g
Finally, if you're taking payments on line, you're going to run into extra effort and risk to interface with them. No matter what, you really, really don't want to be responsible for someone else's credit cards. Not these days. The risk is more than you can imagine. If that's something you can foist off on a third party, you'll keep a ton of liability out of your organization.
John
You might not even have to start from scratch. I'd wager that ACT (A Conference Toolkit) could be customized to fit their specific needs. ... but they still haven't explained why it is that Event Brite or Brown Paper Tickets wouldn't work for them, other than expense. I guess they just assume that volunteer programmers are 'free' vs. the opportunity cost.
If nothing else, you then don't expose yourself to some security mistake because you rushed to put something together. Or some other simple mistake, like the conference I attended where everything was managed by e-mail ... only it seems their hosting service got flagged as a spam relay, and over 50% of the e-mail never went through. (so the organizers never got many people's talk proposals, and they had to scale back the meeting from 3 days to 2).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
They should only go with custom code up to a certain extent. The organization should have the freedom to choose its own service provider (including volunteers). I'm probably stating the obvious, but if there is too much custom code they will be forced to spend a lot to rewrite code when volunteers rotate (and most likely will want to roll their own fancier solution), spend a lot of energy/time/money to maintain the code, or have difficulties finding volunteers who want to get involved in such a mess.
I don't know the specifics of your use-case, but CiviCRM is a Free Software contact relationship management software aimed specifically at non-profits. It has a large community of users and developers. While the community mostly operates on non-profit budgets, it includes users such as the FSF, EFF, Wikimedia, sub-orgs of UNESCO, Amnesty International, NY State Senate, etc. I use it for my small local clients, but I'm happy to be able to pool ressources with such organisations.
While turn-key tools can only do so much, you would probably have better chances of customizing that to fit your needs, and in the long term, the organization can turn to specialized service providers if necessary, without restarting from scratch.
Heck, worst case, if your volunteers are PHP-averse and don't feel like spending too much time customizing the application, you can write just a front-end application to it, and use the CiviCRM REST API to store the data. Writing a whole new application just for that seems like a huge waste of ressources, and does not seem sustainable. An event management tool has a ton of small but critical features to think about.
If they think it will be hard to learn an existing generic tool, imagine how hard it will be for new staff/volunteers to use a completely custom tool. Not to mention that if your organisation has an aim of promoting common good, community building, etc, they should also participate in existing Free Software projects :)
> How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and use an existing solution?
The 2 core beliefs are:
1) We are so special
2) We know what we want
Neither of these assumptions are true. But, you know that already.
The best course of action is to get a simple program and get them to use that. Get them to use it the standard way first. With sufficient training and motivation, they may be able to use last year's program.
After that, the event will have started and everyone will be too busy to do anything else.
95% of all projects like this, including in large corporations, would have cost less overall if they had just used index cards in metal boxes.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Event signup (free)
https://www.eventbrite.com/
Have them start with that, and then ask them what does or doesn't work.
Then, estimate labor to build, maintain, and support custom work.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
The So Cal Linux Expo and Texas Linux Fest both use scalereg for attendee + staff registration. It can probably be customized to meet your needs without too much effort. (Note, I'm the primary scalereg author.)
http://www.signupgenius.com/
That's the problem. Maybe they have fields that are not available on any of the other sites. Maybe they want to run reports off the site. Let me tell you what I think their goal probably is: A few weeks before the event, they want to lock the registration, get a report of all registrants, when they get in, when they leave, if they have any dietary restrictions, who requests lodging. Then they give that to their office manager who starts contacting local hotels and caterers.
I wrote a web-based event management program a few years ago on a LAMP plus JavaScript. It's been rock-solid and has handled thousands of registrants. Having said that, here's the way to determine if their needs are truly specific (you're going to need a management module and a registrant facing module):
1) What fields do they want to display to registrants? To event planners? Problem here: clients don't know what they want till they start playing with the site.
2) What fields do they want registrants to fill in after they click on the invitation link and reach the registration page? Do registrants request lodging? Do they arrive on different days? Do they leave on different days? Do they have dietary restrictions?
3) How will registrants be allowed to edit their information until the "lock" date? Probably a combination of unique pin generated for them, plus their email address.
4) How do they want to contact the registrants and ask them to sign up? The site I created created a custom URL for each event, and they were mailed to the invitees for that event. So, you create the event, and you email all the registrants (in the BCC field) with the link.
5) You're getting PII - personally identifiable information. You need a secure server. You'll need an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection.
Fortunately, your organization has a few years of experience with this. So they know what they want to do generally. That's a very big deal - a client who actually knows what he wants.
THEN - you can check out some of the available commercial options, or see if they really need something from scratch.
Don't convince them write a static html page with frames or iframes to survey monkey and call it done. Tell them it'll take a couple of weeks to test and debug and then upload it to their volunteer signup URL.
:))
BTW, this is the classic ROI conundrum. The work used once a year will NEVER payoff, but you just can't convince some customers of that. :/
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
> How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and use an existing solution?
I wouldn't. Pushing for "your" solution rather than the right solution is being a fan, not a professional.
I would instead work with them to come up with a list of requirements. Note that that a requirements document is needed in order to do either correctly - to either build or buy, you need to know what features the solution needs to have. Applying a "checkbox" style to the list might be a good idea, to visually emphasize that the right solution is that one that checks off all of these needs.
Then with the requirements list in hand, you look at each option - the existing one, off-the-shelf solutions, and a schedule / quote to build a a custom solution.
If an off-the-shelf solution meets al of the requirements, you show them that - here's the list of 20 things we figured out you need, and this solution checks off all 20 boxes. If no off-the-shelf solution can check off all of the boxes, you ask if any of them can be customized to check off all of the boxes. If not, you must either build custom or revise your requirements.
This process will find the right solution, rather than convincing them to do it your way, against their better judgement. Remember, there's at least 50/50 chance that you're wrong. The other people are just as likely to be right as you are. Listing the requirements as a checklist will answer the question, in a clear, convincing way.
I once asked a couple of friends who'd heard me argue a proposal whether they thought I had done a good job arguing my view. They surprised me when they answered by shrugging and saying "well, you were right. I don't think you did a god or bad job of convincing us, it just became clear that your view is correct." When you present a clear set of facts showing which way is right, you don't need to "convince" anyone to do it "your way", you've simply demonstrated which way is in fact the right way to go.
let their sales team handle the rest? One I've worked with in particular is Payscape Advisors. They have a managed software solution built for customized registration type processes (camps, after school activity, sports, etc) called RegPoint. They've been getting some good reviews lately and I know they are planning on increasing the development team size soon. Unless they are planning on selling the software they are trying to develop to their direct competitors I, personally, think that custom solutions are not really necessary especially since it's for only one event a year.
Then they will see the error of their ways.
Other than that... just walk away.
If you don't know how to convince them they're doing it wrong, what makes you so sure they're doing it wrong?
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
I have used CiviCRM and recommend it for the situation you describe. Among other things, the CiviVolunteer module is being improved rapidly. CiviCRM can do things like track time for different kinds of jobs, etc. It also has a strong CiviEvent module that can track registrations, etc. If you are organized, and test it first, you can set up tablets at the check-in tables that feed directly into the CiviCRM setup. (Test that first and be sure you have reliable internet, etc.)
While CiviCRM is a cousin to Drupal, CiviCRM is increasingly being used by organizations who use Wordpress for their website, not Drupal. Pairing it with Drupal allows one to use Drupal Views to display the CiviCRM info in custom ways. Wordpress doesn't offer that flexibility. But if you seek basic but solid functionality now, and likely improved integration with Wordpress later, then CiviCRM with Wordpress can work fine.
I strongly recommend talking to a consultant to plan and to get it set up for you for the first time. Then your people can learn by doing. If they are capable of writing custom software, they can learn and use CiviCRM.
License: "GNU Affero General Public License 3 (GNU AGPL 3) and the CiviCRM Licensing Exception."
Frankly, when I here "we have unique demands" I ask for clarification an detain gently guid ether to the determination they are not a unique as they think.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Speaking of unfinished jobs...?
Hey, that's authentic spell checker gibberish. At least $10 worth at current rates.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I think most of your small ones are legitimate. "Tax system gamer" is hardly applicable, as the taxing agencies know how to get around the "tax-exempt" status. Even non-profits must generate some profit just to maintain. Most of them have no "paid" executives. Just a handful of people trying to carry out the mission of helping others. So, please, do help the small ones, if you are so inclined. They need all the help they can get.
Some of the Big Ones, I agree, are a little shady.
I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
If you value your time and skills, don't work for free. Teach for free, but don't let people use you.
To put it differently: I will teach anyone anything I know how to do, for free, as long as it's clear that they want to learn. Sharing knowledge freely and desiring to learn are both valuable for society in the long term. But if you want me to do the work myself, you need to pay me.
Something about teaching a person to fish...
Not happy with Eventbrite ticketing process (recent purchase of tickets). EventBrite emailed me some PDFs, and the event asks me to print paper tickets. But the PDF is in US Letter format instead of A4 (which the rest of the world uses). After a lot of fiddling with printer settings, I can print but the printout is one big black block – not enough lettering visible to identify it as a ticket. EventBrite have abused PDF format or just did it badly.
I would definitely DISrecommend Eventbrite to anyone who wants to run a pain-free event.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Of course now that I want it, I can't find a reference for it . . .
On of the issues in doing a project like this for free, is that many customers equate the cost of an item or service with its value. In the case Anonymous Coward mentioned above the system/website has no cost so some will feel that is has no value. It can also extend to the persons time to develop/maintain the system. As the system grows, change requests are submitted that 'cost' the developer but, add no cost or value in the eyes of the customer.
Several companies that offered support for 'free' services discovered that customers from the free service were much more demanding and intolerant that those that paid even a nominal fee for the same or a similar service. A few companies even discontinued their 'free' offerings as the cost to maintain those services became too burdensome.