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Businesses Software

DB-based Association Management Software? 37

Posted by Cliff from the software-that-plays-well-with-others dept.
BrynM asks: "I work for a professional association that is currently using several Symantec Act! databases to keep track of Membership, Event Registration and Continuing Education. This 'solution' is growing very long in the tooth as Act! is really just a contact database and not a full blown management system and doesn't handle payments for member dues, orders or registration fees at all. I have worked for an Association that used iMIS, which is fully featured but is way beyond my current employer's budget to implement. There's a short list of software in the Google Directory, but foraging the vendor's websites hoping for a demo and trying to get a quote for all of them would be unrealistic. Finding something that uses a database back-end that we can interface other things with would be ideal. I'm OSS agnostic on this one - we just want the most useful and practical solution. What software would you recommend? Do you have any experiences with software to avoid?"
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DB-based Association Management Software? More

DB-based Association Management Software?

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  • foraging the vendor's websites hoping for a demo and trying to get a quote for all of them would be unrealistic.

    Unrealistic? By which you mean a lot of effort and time? But you want the rest of us to spend our time typing up our experiences and opinions about the software we've used for this? That is very selfish of you, in my opinion. How about you do the work of testing demos and write up your experiences and share it with the rest of us to comment on. That way you will have actually contributed somethi

    • Plus it takes only a few seconds to click each link and locate the pricing and demo links. Total research could take less than the time to post on Slashdot and wait for a response. Just going through the Google Directory list he linked to, there's all sorts of information available. The first link shows a product that includes source for a 'recommended' $50/year [ebase.org]. Another more expensive one [associationsonline.com] took 2 seconds to find on Google and has the free demo clearly linked at the top right.
    • Many products, such as iMIS, don't post any pricing information on their site and insist on a rep visiting you for a demo. I happen to have several that do offer a demo installed, as a matter of fact, and have been going through the list at Google. Further, if you have ever used software pitched to associations, you would know that spending time with the demo rarely will give you an idea of the product's long-term usefulness and operability. Thanks for flaming my bad choice of words though. You're a champ.

  • SQL Ledger? (Score:3, Informative)

    by m0rph3us0 ( 549631 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @04:41PM (#9783651)
    SQL Ledger [sql-ledger.org] Perhaps this might work? It seems to be more oriented towards billing things rather than maintaining a contact list.
  • Just run MySQL on a *nix server and take a weekend to learn PHP. Its all free, runs fast, and should be able to scale as large as you can throw hardware at it. It will also be cross-platform and web based, so nothing to install on the clients. With some tinkering you could do automated billing (email .pdf's on the fly), really anything you want. G-luck.
    • Just run MySQL on a *nix server and take a weekend to learn PHP.
      PHP/MySQL was my original idea (I know both), but my employer would rather find a vendor and a support channel. I can't say I blame them after they got really burned by some previous web developers. Their member database is far more mission-critical than their website is. They are worried about the "what if ______ got hit by a truck or became disgruntled" factor.
      • Finding something that uses a database back-end that we can interface other things with would be ideal. I'm OSS agnostic on this one - we just want the most useful and practical solution. What software would you recommend?

        ...my employer would rather find a vendor and a support channel.

        So...you're *not* really OSS agnostic after all, are you? IMHO, the poster has given you the solution. I suggest that you show up one Saturday and implement the MySQL/PHP solution. Make sure to write a user manual too,

        • What he said.

          I would add - document it very well to allay fears that they'll be left high and dry by the under-the-bus or disgruntled-employee scenarios.

          That's two forms of documentation - a users manual and a maintainers manual. There's the advantage of open source - it's all open and as long as it's well documented, developers are fungible.
  • You know, I could tell you all about the relative merits of using GCC vs. IBM's Visual Age for C++ vs. Intel's C compiler vs. MS Visual C++ for .NET or whatever they are calling it.

    But software to keep track of your friends and how much they owe you? I'm going to need a little help understanding this concept of 'friend'. What is that?

    Or maybe I could just look it up on Google.

    • But software to keep track of your friends and how much they owe you? I'm going to need a little help understanding this concept of 'friend'. What is that?

      They aren't friends, they're dues paying members of a professional association. These are business transactions. Let me Google [google.com] a little for you... ;)

  • Get a copy of codecharge studio, PHP and MySQL (or Perl or asp or java or whatever) and roll your own custom application. This program makes it really easy to create a web based database application. Depending on your application you may get away with not having to do any programming, at the very least you will do very little coding. Of course, you do still need to know a thing or two about good database design...
  • Act!, its fucking horrible. I mean really unbelievably horrible.
  • What we'd really like to see is a web-based collaboration package that would let group members work on membership rolls, newsletter, event calander and mailing list.

    She's involved with a ski club, Toastmaster's and a church, and in all three cases there is *no* good way to share the work of supporting the organization.

    Just about all the members have broadband ethernet and she'd love to have a software package that would allow multiple members to share the work without stepping on each other's toes or
    • The solutions I've seen that do offer the capabilities you want are lots of $$$. Since I work for an estabilished association, we can offord to look at some of the solutions that do these things (the under $5,000 category). If I run across anything that works for what you need on the cheap, I'll re-respond to your post so you get an e-mail. I feel some of your pain on this one. Most of the responders to my question don't even understand what I'm asking about or what a professional association is. If geeks c
    • I told you I'd post if something met your needs... Birdddman posted [slashdot.org] a link to Clubdata [sourceforge.net] just a few minutes ago. It's too rough for what I need, but it looks like a good fit for you. I know I'm re-posting it to the same story, but I want to be sure you get an e-mail letting you know it's there. Thanks again for posting.
    • If I may plug a project - www.openacs.org It's somewhere half in between the 'php/mysql' solution and the full-blown, commercially supported shrinkwrapped package. Very active community, quite a few companies that will build-to-order for you based upon it (if commercial offering & support is an issue for you) and with many (large) organisations depending on it, it won't go away very soon. Only drawback - it takes a learning curve, it's a mature toolkit and you really need to spend some time with the
  • Could someone translate this Slashdot article into English? I don't know what language it's in, but I didn't follow it one bit.
    • I work fo' some professional associashun dat be currently usin' several Symantec Act. Right On! databases t' keep track o' Membership, Event Registrashun and Continuin' Educashun. Dis 'solution' be growin' real long in de tooth as Act. Right On! be really plum some contact database and not some full blown management system and doesn't handle payments fo' memba' dues, orders o' registrashun fees at all. What it is, Mama! Ah gots worked fo' an Associashun dat used iMIS, which be fully featured but be way b
      • well, I can comprehend Jive.. but.. the Jive has to be translated from English that made sense to begin with.. see, I understand all the words..they LOOK like English. . but none of them make sense together.

        Maybe it's because I've been on enough cold medicine lately to kill a large pet. Or maybe not.

        Maybe the person who posted this is just making the problem so complex, they can't find a reasonable solution?

        hmm...

        • I was just feeling like a smartass and thought it would be funny.

          Go back about 3 posts to mine that said "Just talking with my wife about this subject" along with the OP's followup and you'll get the picture.

        • Re:I'd be glad to... (Score:3, Informative)

          by BrynM ( 217883 ) *

          Maybe the person who posted this is just making the problem so complex, they can't find a reasonable solution?

          I made it as simple as I could. I work for a Professional Association [google.com] like the AMA [ama-assn.org], the APhA [aphanet.org], IWA [iwanet.org] (International Webmaster's Association) - hell, the RIAA is an association too! These associations have members who pay money we call dues. In return they get access to a network of similar professionals, continuing education (which is required to keep your license to practice for people like lawyers

  • I used to work for a lodging association in Sacramento and we used a vendor over near Rancho Cordova to help us implement a package.

    They were a reseller for a national software package. They were also developing a home grown association management package. Right now I can't remember their name but I've e-mailed someone I used to work with back then to see if they could remember.

    If I find out the name I'll post again.
    • I used to work for a lodging association in Sacramento and we used a vendor over near Rancho Cordova to help us implement a package...Right now I can't remember their name but I've e-mailed someone I used to work with back then to see if they could remember.
      Funny that! I'm in Sacramento too. Did that vendor in Rancho support iMIS? If so, then I know who you were talking about. Either way, let me know and thans for responding!

  • MASS (Score:3, Informative)

    by matthewd ( 59896 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @06:45PM (#9784875)
    http://www.membershipadmin.com/

    I haven't tried this one personally, but it does have the ability of letting you use different back end databases. A demo copy is available for download. From the FAQ:

    "Can this membership software database integrate with other databases?

    Yes. The default database engine is dataflex, which has ODBC support. Other backend database engines are also available-at a cost. We support MS-SQL, Oracle, mySQL, Pervasive, IBM-DB2. The worst case scenario is to use the import/export functionality.

    Further information on the database capabilities see http://www.dataaccess.com"
  • You could try http://clubdata.sourceforge.net It is very rough around the edges - but seems to work. the only problem I've had is that much of it is written in german. We started using it - but only very very recently (and with quite a bit of tweaking.)
  • Check out Saraf Solutions' Aviansus:

    http://www.saraf.com/Aviansus_Home.html [saraf.com]

    It's built on OSS technologies, including Apache, Tomcat and Postgres, IIRC. I'm working with a Chamber of Commerce which is in the middle of migrating to it from an old IMIS system. They should be going live on it soon. Contact me if you want me to put you in touch with the end users for a reference / first hand account of how it works.
    • Aviansus looks interesting. Too bad their website is so spare. The purchasing page, for example, has no price information. There's only a list of different pricing/seats models, without prices! I did'nt see much on how it works or what it looks like - on entering the site I think I saw a 'demo' link, but after browsing a bit I couldn't find it again, even after returning to the home page. Could be good, but they need a website overhaul.
  • I'm helping to work out a web portal for an international nonprofit org, and we sure could use some packages to help with admin.

    We're not pro coders, just interested neophytes. So far we've rolled out own with PHP/MySQL based site, with self made template main pages, phpMyAdmin, phpbb conferencing, LinPHA photo album, and some other stuff.

    Getting it all to work together and getting the config for each done has proven to be a great DIY project, but it sure is a long road. It's been in process for quite awh

  • OK, so I went off and checked out the InfoCentral online demo. It looks like it might fulfill some of the requirements.

    It's another web based MySQL front end. OSS too. Mostly weighted to member management, it seems to have some financial stuff. It's designed to be a church membership management thing, but plenty of customizing ability is built in.

    Check it out: http://www.infocentral.org/ [infocentral.org]



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