Originally Posted by swag
I am on the Board for a fairly new 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and as the only technologist in the group, I am the de facto webmaster, CIO, and IT department.
We've got our website up and running, but we are looking to do more. Here's what I'm looking for.
1. Web database software. We want to create a database and allow website visitors to perform various ad hoc queries. We also need certain registered users to be able to insert (and update?) records in the DB. Our website is hosted on a shared server, so we need a package that will run using standard web technologies (i.e. I doubt our hosting company will allow installation of custom software).
2. Email list software or service. We send out a newsletter every once or twice a month. Currently, I do this with a regular email account, Outlook, and the BCC line. We have a few hundred subscribers, and this is already becoming cumbersome. We expect the list to grow to a few thousand over the next 2-3 years, and possibly much tens of thousands after that.
3. Membership / Contact Management software. We are currently maintaining our email list and membership rolls in Excel. Clearly, we will need a better solution as we grow. If it can integrate with the solution from (2) above, that would be ideal.
Thru my day job, I actually work with various products that can do these things at the high end (millions of users, 5 and 6 figure license fees), but I need something smaller, easier to manage, and cheaper. Freeware is preferred, but we could probably justify license fees for affordable products if they do the job right.
Thanks in advance.
I'm pretty big on open source and free software as well, so I can take a stab at my recommendations for what you are looking for. But, as you probably know already, sometimes free means harder to setup and get running...it can require a bit more patients.
MySQL is the standard for open source databases. From there, you have 100s of choices for a web frontend. The buzz term currently is LAMP servers...as in Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP. There are a lot of pre-written PHP modules out there that may fit your bill. The best part is that all four of those things are very standard and will likely fly with your hosting company.
For email, check out Zimbra (
http://www.zimbra.com/) which has a free/open source version (as well as a commercial version). I've only played around with it a bit, but its a quite suitable Exchange replacement. I'm sure it has listserv features.
If I understand what you are asking, then check out SugarCRM (
http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/) which is free and open but also has a commercial version. I've only used it as part of Trixbox (
www.trixbox.org ... I'll get to that in a second). Its a pretty capable contact management system and I'm sure it could be integrated with your overall solution pretty easily.
Take a look at their SugarExchange site:
http://www.sugarexchange.com/
tons of open source projects for running a business.
You didn't ask, but I'm going to mention Trixbox. Trixbox is a all-in-one linux distribution which installs an Asterisk VoIP PBX on any intel-based hardware. I mention it b/c if you are paying a lot for phone service, or need an inexpensive PBX then its amazing. You can move to VoIP based services which are a fraction of the cost of traditional telcos and the PBX features are pretty out of this world too.
Good luck and keep us posted, I'm anxious to hear how this turns out.