We also track public opinion via Citizens' calls to the Congressional representatives.
Also not true. According to the non-profit, non-partisan Congressional Management Foundation:
"Ultimately about 82% of all citizen action in the United States is generated through these teams at third-party organizations such as the AARP, Greenpeace or Focus on the Family, producing anywhere from 300 to 2,000 email messages delivered to each Congressional office every day - not to mention the barrage of Tweets, Facebook posts and other messages."
That includes phone calls by the way.
It may just be a Democratic Congress ignoring their constituents, but it's more likely congress ignoring the lobbies that our wealthy constituents pay for. (Interestingly, the same lobbies the Republican Congress ignored when they ran the place too...;)
Please, please, PLEASE be careful with this. Understand that working with non-profits is a commitment, and that they're going to be 100% reliant on your expertise and documentation. You'll need to be careful to put on your consulting hat as well, ask alot of "Why?" questions. Often times NPOs will tell you what they THINK they need, not what they ACTUALLY need in technology. Be the expert.
I work with non-profits as a DB/CRM consultant, and I cannot tell you the number of well-meaning volunteers who have cost non-profits thousands of dollars (not a small sum in the NPO community) in lost time, productivity, and then additional service/IT hours to people like me to fix the mistakes, holes and general sloppiness of applications developed for them in good faith. That "volunteer" project can often turn into a massive money-pit for organizations who cannot afford it. If you do go this route, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING (EVERYTHING), and make sure the org has several copies of your documentation.
I'm not suggesting you shouldn't do this, but just understand its not your personal sandbox, these are real people, doing some VERY important and impactful work (most of them at least...) Please don't treat these orgs as second-class citizens or test-beds for your corporate career or cutting-edge untested ideas.
I work as a DB consultant for a non-profit that does CRM-Database and Web consulting for other non-profits. We've developed in a variety of platforms and have done everything from custom built solutions through Salesforce, so I'm pretty familiar with the turf. My tips:
1. Raiser's Edge is a nice product with relatively easy entry, but its REALLY tough to master, and, as is true with most systems I've worked with, reporting is still more an art than a science. It's expensive, support is expensive, maintenance is expensive.
2. Salesforce is our preferred platform at the moment. Low barrier to entry (10 seat license for free for 501c(3)), alot of training available free of charge, and with some tweaking, a good non-profit overlay for it's sales-centric backend. Their current NP Template is severely lacking (we have our own package we use) although they've got some momentum behind it lately, and I expect it to improve dramatically over the next few releases. We do alot of customization work on this platform, and its pretty flexible, nice API, great plug-in for Eclipse and the OO language (Apex) they use for the API layer is derived from Java. I wasn't sold at first, but its really grown on me as a platform. Reporting can still be rough though.
3. Filemaker/eBase Not worth your time, money, or frustration.
4. SugarCRM has been getting some mention in the community lately, and in my experience, may be a viable alternative, but I haven't had enough time to play with it.
5. Custom solutions are always pricey, but you should (theoretically) get what you want. MS Access (please no), SQL Server, whatever the opensource flavor of the week is- if you have a really odd-duck funding or business model, it might be worth a look.
The only reason I wouldn't recommend SF outright to you is that it's a bit finicky to setup the Outlook connector, I can't speak for the others around Outlook connectivity. OTOH, what is your CRM DB doing trying to replace your email system in the first place?
Slashdot Mirror
We also track public opinion via Citizens' calls to the Congressional representatives.
Also not true. According to the non-profit, non-partisan Congressional Management Foundation: "Ultimately about 82% of all citizen action in the United States is generated through these teams at third-party organizations such as the AARP, Greenpeace or Focus on the Family, producing anywhere from 300 to 2,000 email messages delivered to each Congressional office every day - not to mention the barrage of Tweets, Facebook posts and other messages." That includes phone calls by the way. It may just be a Democratic Congress ignoring their constituents, but it's more likely congress ignoring the lobbies that our wealthy constituents pay for. (Interestingly, the same lobbies the Republican Congress ignored when they ran the place too... ;)
Whoa, whoa, whoa... "Unskilled labor"??? You just TRY and call my wife 'unskilled labor'. Trust me, doesn't work out well.
Please, please, PLEASE be careful with this. Understand that working with non-profits is a commitment, and that they're going to be 100% reliant on your expertise and documentation. You'll need to be careful to put on your consulting hat as well, ask alot of "Why?" questions. Often times NPOs will tell you what they THINK they need, not what they ACTUALLY need in technology. Be the expert. I work with non-profits as a DB/CRM consultant, and I cannot tell you the number of well-meaning volunteers who have cost non-profits thousands of dollars (not a small sum in the NPO community) in lost time, productivity, and then additional service/IT hours to people like me to fix the mistakes, holes and general sloppiness of applications developed for them in good faith. That "volunteer" project can often turn into a massive money-pit for organizations who cannot afford it. If you do go this route, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING (EVERYTHING), and make sure the org has several copies of your documentation. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't do this, but just understand its not your personal sandbox, these are real people, doing some VERY important and impactful work (most of them at least...) Please don't treat these orgs as second-class citizens or test-beds for your corporate career or cutting-edge untested ideas.
I work as a DB consultant for a non-profit that does CRM-Database and Web consulting for other non-profits. We've developed in a variety of platforms and have done everything from custom built solutions through Salesforce, so I'm pretty familiar with the turf. My tips:
1. Raiser's Edge is a nice product with relatively easy entry, but its REALLY tough to master, and, as is true with most systems I've worked with, reporting is still more an art than a science. It's expensive, support is expensive, maintenance is expensive.
2. Salesforce is our preferred platform at the moment. Low barrier to entry (10 seat license for free for 501c(3)), alot of training available free of charge, and with some tweaking, a good non-profit overlay for it's sales-centric backend. Their current NP Template is severely lacking (we have our own package we use) although they've got some momentum behind it lately, and I expect it to improve dramatically over the next few releases. We do alot of customization work on this platform, and its pretty flexible, nice API, great plug-in for Eclipse and the OO language (Apex) they use for the API layer is derived from Java. I wasn't sold at first, but its really grown on me as a platform. Reporting can still be rough though.
3. Filemaker/eBase Not worth your time, money, or frustration.
4. SugarCRM has been getting some mention in the community lately, and in my experience, may be a viable alternative, but I haven't had enough time to play with it.
5. Custom solutions are always pricey, but you should (theoretically) get what you want. MS Access (please no), SQL Server, whatever the opensource flavor of the week is- if you have a really odd-duck funding or business model, it might be worth a look.
The only reason I wouldn't recommend SF outright to you is that it's a bit finicky to setup the Outlook connector, I can't speak for the others around Outlook connectivity. OTOH, what is your CRM DB doing trying to replace your email system in the first place?