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 not sure if this will work for you, but it did for our non-profit. www.relevanttools.com. We've been with them about 2 1/2 years now, at $30 a month. I've been very happy with their customer support. The owner is Jean, and she is very helpful with solving any problems.

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.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

We don't yet have physical office space, so the cost of phone service is not yet a concern. But it likely may be in the future...

www.joomla.com - use w/MySQL DB, have users create account, then you can (or delagate) email lists, etc.

salesforce.com will often give away their service to non-profits, we managed this for a small ($250k/yr) non-profit that i'm on the board of.

Actually that's one major benefit of Trixbox. You stick a server in a closet wherever someone has internet access and can loan you the space. You can then have VoIP telephones wherever. So until you have office space you could still have a phonesystem up and running with telephones in different cities, states or even countries, and no one would be the wiser.

One software as service company I know of is HyperOffice. Back in the Internet boom they were trying to be an MS-Office competitor; after the bust they settled in and found a niche serving small companies and organizations without a technical staff -- similar to how you describe your organization.
http://www.hyperoffice.com/

They have some case studies on their non-profit clients:
http://www.hyperoffice.com/hypermain/non_profit.cfm

A disclaimer - I know one of the principals in the company. But as an IT executive with a large company who looks at software for a living, I can also tell you that their suite is quite nice. Pricing is published on their website; non-profits get a discount.

You didn't mention fund raising, but if that is/will be a need, Fund Raiser Basic is very good and cheap at $89; email support is also excellent

http://www.fundraisersoftware.com/prospect_basic.html

Good suggestions, keep 'em coming.

I've consulted with many non-profits and each one is different... I wouldn't say I have a standard toolset to recommend across the board...

However, I would like to recommend a website called TechSoup.

At http://techsoup.org/ they bill themselves as "the technology place for nonprofits". There you will find forums and articles with how-to's and how-we-did's for many of the issues you raise now and will likely run into in the near future. Also, they offer access to discounted software and services specifically for non-profits, including microsoft licensing, adobe licensing, symantec/antivirus, cisco, etc....

See their articles:

Ask TechSoup: Open-Source Tools for Fundraising?
Free, customizable donor databases and CRM applications
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcent...g/page5934.cfm

A Few Good Email Newsletter Tools
Reliable, affordable ways to send out email in bulk
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcent...t/page5935.cfm

I think you will find some good information here, and be able to make decisions that closely match your organization's needs and structure.

Also, gleff mentioned salesforce.com license donation... get the details here:
http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/product/

Software like VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Xen are all available for free-as-in-beer, and Xen is open source as well. Plan for virtualization of servers up front for easier scalability, fault-tolerance, and better security through separation of services. Not non-profit specific, of course, but saves money in the mid and long term. But you probably knew that already.

I read this thread rather quickly, so forgive if this suggestion was included among the other excellent and detailed advice.
I work through a 501 (c) 3 and am the sole full time employee. So I get to wear all the hats. I have found - and sometimes too late! - that some software manufacturers will sell at a good discount to bona fide not-for-profits. Just one example is Quark. I paid a hefty amount to buy a single use copy only to discover later that I could have saved a good percentage of the cost.

Typically, you will need to transmit the IRS letter of recognition of your organization as tax exempt. I have scanned that to my hard drive so that I can print it out to fax it or attach it to an email.

I have picked up some good tips here ... thanks!

Might work for some (and apparently so because they assure me they have thousands of happy customers), but HyperOffice was pretty much a disaster for us. We had 50-60 users on it, and they couldn't fix various basic problems that affected us (garbled text in outgoing email in their own web client interface, for example). And it's a very difficult product to migrate out of except on a user-by-user basis. Might be fine for a few users, and might be more fine if you use their Outlook connector which bypasses any problems in their own client. But their web client interface is pretty tired. Plus, more importantly, support was slow.

We just migrated to a dedicated server running Zimbra (the paid version) using partner managed hosting company Contegix. So far, so much better. Fast and responsive support and up to the minute web client interface. This costs us about 3x as much on a monthly basis, though. Apparently that's where we need to be to get the right service.

Not only that...but you can get more use out of one box!
It doesnt take powerful hardware to run a sever for most people's needs (tons of exceptions to that, I'm sure) so you might be able to actually run 2 servers on one machine...

Also, to add another one or two to the list, check out these open source routers. Just slap some old network cards in an old PC and load the CD Rom
IPCop and PFsense. I prefer the later by far, but the (community) support is crabby, techy and downright rude sometimes. There's 3 part article on getting IPcop up and running on the link in my sig.