Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 19, 2008

Nonprofits have become intimately familiar with Content Management Systems (CMS). Some, especially those that are very content/document heavy, have become familiar with Document Management Systems (DMS). What they might not be so familiar with are Learning Management Systems (LMS). So what LMS should you look at?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 19, 2008

The description: “ Talk with Michelle about internal software systems – document and knowledge management, CRM, client management databases, intranets, etc.&# I volunteered to be the “expert&# in residence for the “Program&# track of Office Hours. So, come join me. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 14, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Speaking of open social networks … August 14, 2008 I just joined identi.ca. The documentation is a bit lacking, and it’s clear that it’s a very new project. You can log in using OpenID.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 27, 2008

But I help them plan their technology initiatives (a new database, a new website, etc.,) I’ll be the project manager on their big new client database project, and help them think about how far to dip their toes into Web 2.0. help them find the vendors that will do the work by helping them craft good RFPs. OK, enough of that.

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Amy Sample Ward

JANUARY 20, 2011

It’s well-documented at this point that people are hungry to engage with causes they care about in various forms. The results we were able to produce didn’t reflect the full contents of our database. Just like in 2008 when I had an “aha moment” about APIs, in June 2009 I had an “aha moment” about Linked Open Data.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 18, 2012

What we do: Benetech's Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) develops database software, data collection strategies, and statistical techniques to measure human rights atrocities. Perform a little bit of GNU/Linux system administration. Want to help assemble evidence used to convict dictors of war crimes?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 4, 2008

It is open source, after all. Yes, it is open source, and I applaud Google for releasing open source software. I won’t be downloading it, or trying it, even when they release Mac or Linux versions. Why so curmudgeonly you ask? And it has some cool features. I am going to have to stop using Chrome.

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Neon CRM

MAY 24, 2023

The first thing to understand about membership database software is that the name itself is pretty misleading. It’s actually a combination of two different functions: The database itself that holds information on your members and the platform that allows you to do things with that information.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 3, 2009

The thing that is prompting this post is the little storm about the security metric that we used to try and get a handle on the security of the 4 different systems we reviewed. You might think that comparing four different open source packages that, in essence, do pretty the same thing (in a broad sense) would be a cakc walk.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 1, 2007

I also have a document nightmare – I have documents on the desktop, documents on my laptop, documents on external hard drives, aiii. There’s been some interesting activity in the realm of women in open source. I need to figure out a good network configuration. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 7, 2007

Office Open XML is Microsoft’s XML-based file format which is now native in Office 2007. Instead of adopting the already ISO approved Open Document format, it attempted to get through ISO a standard that, among other things, depends too much on non-standard, non-publicly available legacy file formats. Be Helpful.

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NTEN

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

used the group for last week, asking about his project to evaluate and implement an organization-wide document management system. What I saw, introducing it to two law firms, was that the resistance faded quickly once the system was in place, and users had such better tools to find and work with their documents.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 11, 2008

That includes applications from Google Documents, to Salesforce.com, to Gliffy.com , (the service I used to create that graphic.) It also includes applications that you might develop (or have developed) that are hosted outside your network. That’s really all it is – there isn’t anything fancy about it. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 10, 2007

I’ve been reading Matt Asay’s blog on open source business models, and he has an interesting post which suggests that writing documentation is a good marketing strategy ! Although the breaks I take during my work day don’t look like this, I liked this cartoon. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 26, 2007

Closed – can’t upload open document formats Can only buy books from Amazon I’m still not clear about what happens when you buy your 201st book – do you have to throw out one? Allows me to upload any open document format (.odt, But … Why am I not buying a Kindle? Sorry, Amazon. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JULY 10, 2008

The role I play most often currently is providing a clear and understandable avenue between the client and a technology vendor (such as web or database development shop). This is also an ongoing process. Intermediation. 2 comments… read them below or add one } 1 Michele Martin 07.11.08 at 6:06 am Michelle, I love this! Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 9, 2008

Of course with my mac, I opened up the system preferences, checked a button, and, voila! And, as Dustin pointed out in the comments to my venting post earlier, a lot of this is not the fault of open source desktop software developers. I do demand a lot of my system. Directories were shared. This is my dilemma.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 15, 2007

One of my favorite quotes in the Connect documentation is this one: “As long as you can invoke the API over HTTP, your application can be Microsoft, HP, IBM, Novell, Oracle, even Sun-based. It appears, from perusing the documentation, that someone in Kintera saw the light, and included PHP code. The API is SOAP. apps out there.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 15, 2007

It seems like it will start out with a local query system, then will be opened up to allow third party development of data analysis tools. A couple of annoyances: the documentation for the APIs aren’t up yet, and the sample code they are going to publish is in C# and Java! - Non-Profit Tech Blog 08.17.07 Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 16, 2007

If you read the reviews (most of which were quite positive,) the people who liked it were looking at the real functionality (it could edit their documents, it could surf the web, read email, etc.) Walmart was selling $200 PCs running gOS (no, that doesn’t stand for googleOS, but greenOS, based on Ubuntu 7.10,) and they sold out.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

OCTOBER 20, 2006

There were two different kinds of APIs discussed – the ones that help organizations with interoperability within their organizational systems – getting data from one app to another, and using APIs for things like Google maps mashups. It seemed that only Blackbaud had APIs you have to pay for. at 7:56 am Michelle- Great summary.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

APRIL 18, 2007

What I’d really like to see though is a true, enthusiastic Open Source community get behind a “better&# spreadsheet for its own sake, not for the sake of copying Office. Phil: I agree – with time and effort, OO or any open source spreadsheet could out Excel Excel. Maybe WikiCalc is the way to go.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

AUGUST 17, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology The search for good web conferencing August 17, 2007 I decided, perhaps rashly, that one way of exposing people to, and training people on, open source software, was by doing web conferencing.

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Tech Soup

APRIL 13, 2012

They have an integrated, cloud-based IT system in which everyone has laptops and merely needs some way to get to the Internet to plug in to 350.org. We use ActionKit mainly for online advocacy and fundraising but we also use it to manage our supporter database, email blasts, and donations. What Can Be Done with a Cloud IT System?

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Neon CRM

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Getting all of your old donor data cleaned and ready so that you can move it into the new system? Without a good plan in place, you’re going to spend your first month (or two) in the new system dealing with improperly formatted records that leave your nonprofit at a standstill. Not so much. Now for the goods news: We’re to help!

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Tech Soup

APRIL 13, 2012

They have an integrated, cloud-based IT system in which everyone has laptops and merely needs some way to get to the Internet to plug in to 350.org. We use ActionKit mainly for online advocacy and fundraising but we also use it to manage our supporter database, email blasts, and donations. What Can Be Done with a Cloud IT System?

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 24, 2006

We like what the delicious mirror API (named Mirrord) can do in porting existing applications, which is happening and documented on our blog. Finally, speaking of the API, we also have our regular one which is fairly robust and a great way to take advantage of the more unique aspects that we have going. 8 Todd Sieling 11.06.06 Be Helpful.

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Tech Soup

JUNE 20, 2014

It is a specialized cloud database to help nonprofits organizations manage their business, run programs, and maintain donor relationships from any browser and on mobile devices. It will also integrate with OneDrive and Sharepoint Online for document storage. The name is an acronym of "micro finance open source."

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

In Cake, the database build is separate from the application building (you do it yourself), whereas in Symfony, you use Symfony to build the database with schema files written in YAML. They both have good documentation and active communities. The approaches are similar and different to each other. Be Helpful.

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

MARCH 16, 2009

This is, for sure, one of the most robust open source CMS to CRM integrations out there, and one that seems to be getting pretty close to providing very powerful integration “out-of-the-box&# – instead of having to piece things together and do customized code, which is more common than not. 3 Christopher Johnson 05.05.09

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Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Social Network Management Systems? at 10:31 am Art Social Networking - Network Management Systems Zen and the Art of | Artist Days 11.03.08 What do these tools allow you to do? 2 Cathy Garland 09.12.08

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Tech Soup

JANUARY 8, 2013

Of course we’ll use mobiles more and more, but for heads-down work on longer documents, spreadsheets, presentations, serious data base projects, graphic design, and anything else that involves looking at a screen for hours at a time and using a proper keyboard – I’ll be keeping my laptop and will be glad to have it.

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