Good OSS donation/CRM software required
My wife works for a lutheran school as the secretary, the same school my daughter goes to. Unfortunately, it’s primarily a Windows environment. It was 100% windows until I donated a linux server to handle their backups. But now that the machine is in there, it opens the door to using and utilizing a number of web-based applications. I already have mediawiki setup on the thing so that they can start utilizing it for notes and items to each other. It will take some time for them to use this system, and be comfortable with it, but that’s ok.
However, right now they’re looking into software to handle donations and receipts (because they are an independent school), and also some limited CRM capabilities; i.e. to have information on donors and the ability to quickly print out mailing labels based on certain criteria (i.e. did the person attend the golf tournament, did they donate in the last year, etc.).
The closest thing I’ve found so far is ChurchLedger, but my wife has played with it a bit and it’s too geared to churches, and too complicated for her to use. I’m trying to convince her (and, by proxy, the school) to use something open so that if, in 5 years, things go wrong or the developer of the app they’re currently looking at dies, etc. that they have something easy to maintain and that anyone can look into. Originally they wanted her to develop something in Access and were going to pay for courses for her.
Any suggestions on something that could be used here, meeting the criteria of being able to print out donation receipts, mailing labels, perhaps some rudimentary bulk mailing feature, that is preferably written in PHP (or perl), and uses PostgreSQL or MySQL to store the data? I had considered whipping up something on my own, but don’t have the time right now to invest/donate something like that. Any suggestions of potential candidates would be useful. It has to be web-based as they’re currently using windows on the desktop systems, but I’m hoping that will change over the next year or so.
Brian Elliott
Have you looked into a nice CMS system? Joomla has several features you might like and there are many cases of churches and schools using it for a great many applications. It’s also fairly easy to use. Has an admin backend and a user sign in capable front end. This would allow you to keep things that are sensitive to only be viewed by appropriately authorized individules.
There are extensions and plugins that make it very adaptable to your needs. For the database you’re talking about Joomla has an available set of extensions called Fabrik (http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,1659/Itemid,35/)
It allows for you to make your own database applications that run inside your Joomla installation.
I would think that within a week or so, you could have the Joomla site setup for internal use and have the database application well on the way to be used.
Hope that helps!
Jan 11, 2008 @ 15:31:10~BE
vdanen
Hmmm… I didn’t know you could do that kind of thing with joomla. I guess I’ll have to take a look at it (I’ve been meaning to for a while but never had the time). Thanks for the tip!
Jan 11, 2008 @ 15:45:33Colin Guthrie
While I don’t want to *not* recommend Joomla as I love it myself, I would also suggest you take a good, hard look at SugarCRM. There are handy VMWare images that allow you to play quickly to experiment before deciding to install it your self.
It’s quite complex and may be hideously over designed for their current needs but it is a genuine, full featured CRM system. It would easily be able to do the job you need it for but it may just end up being too complex. That said the UI can be customised to a good degree and it is entirely possible that it can be dumbed down to hide all the non-relevant stuff.
It’s not the kind of app that you can evaluate quickly tho’, which I always find a bit of a pain seeing as I am generally quick to judge things like software, but I have colleagues who swear by it after giving it the time it deserved to evaluate it properly.
Jan 12, 2008 @ 06:29:09baud123
Have a look at galette which is used by many associations to manage their members and donations.
http://galette.tuxfamily.org/en/doku.php
there are all your fonctionalities needed :
Jan 13, 2008 @ 06:30:00- register member / their donations
- printing mailing labels
- bulk mailing feature
in PHP/Mysql (perhaps Postgres as well in latest version), some translation from french to english perhaps remaining to do
vdanen
Hmmm… took a quick gander at the website.. looks like it has some potential. I’ll have to download and install it to really determine whether or not it will work (as there are no fees, and all I see on the site are “fees”, not donations, but since this is a french->english translation, this could be due to translation, not functionality).
Thanks for the tip!
Jan 13, 2008 @ 10:48:26