These days, having an “Intranet” comes up a lot as a requirement for website projects. I’m using the term advisedly to refer to a range of needs for private space for organizing campaigns and collaboratively developing ideas.

This is different from project specifications that call for members-only sections. Those kind of requirements typically focus on log-in based spaces for designated folks to download private materials, sign up for events not open to the public, maintain their profile and so on. The “members-only” pages communication model typically still has your organization and your site at the center. It places constituents in individual relationships with you.

Here we are talking about requirements that point toward building a communication and collaboration network. Contact, discussion and organizing takes place among the participants as well as with the site owner. Historically, Intranet referred to private spaces for organizational staff, while Extranets extended to clients, volunteers, board, and more. With more organizational work flowing through collaborative networks, the distinction doesn’t seem as important. Typical requirements that organizations bring us today include:

• a shared space to brainstorm, draft, edit public policy documents or strategy and tactics for advocacy campaigns
• space for community organizations doing the same kind of work, such as immigrant rights or youth services, to collaborate on development best practices documents
• spaces for researchers in different places or in different organizations to collaborate on community development or employer research agendas
• private spaces to post and discuss assignments for classes in a school or workshop trainings
• shared private calendar of events of interest for organizations working together

Many tools out there can be adapted to meet needs like this—whether this was their intended purpose or not. We find ourselves recommending several kinds of possibilities, ranging from the simple and out-of-the-box to the more complex. Planning and customizing may make a lot of sense when you need to develop a more strategic collaborative model with specific community networks, particularly less technical and more program-driven and community-based teams. Where time, cost, staff attention span pose limits, simpler solutions may do. And they could serve as proofs of concept for a second generation strategic initiative.

• Creating a wiki. You can do this using an inexpensive hosted service, such as wikispaces or zoho’s wiki, or you can install on your own server the original mediawiki or newer full systems such as tikiwiki. Wikis have the advantage of totally flexible, malleable structure for sharing knowledge. They intentionally have limited features and the formatting or mark-up syntax may frustrate less technical folks.
  

• Creating a simple web site that is mainly kept private. Google sites or Wordpress come up as solutions of this sort. In just a few hours, a site can begin to emerge that can have private discussion spaces, with blog-like commenting, places to store documents and keep track of revisions, make lists and calendars to organize a work plan and collaborative needs. Google sites have the advantage that they build on what for many is first-order collaboration—sharing an individual Google document, spreadsheet, or calendar. Wordpress has more polish and can be installed locally.
  
  
• Adapting project management tools for a knowledge network. We have used and recommended Basecamp for this, and Central Desktop offers similar solutions. These are hosted services, with fees per month that grow the more private spaces you create. Again, you can also have blog-like discussion and commenting, collaborate and monitor versions of documents, have an organizing calendar and so on.
  
  
• Sharepoint from Microsoft offers similar features to the last category. Though an extension of an internal network, it can be opened up to outside team members as well. Larger organizations put a lot of time into customizing it or using its integration with Exchange and other Microsoft stuff, if that is your path in life.
  
  
• All these choices come up as alternatives to building the Intranet or collaborative space as a section of a public website. All the major content management systems, both proprietary and Open Source, have this ability to one degree or another. When the needs go beyond the simple, the power of a full CMS can and should be harnessed to meet goal driven needs. At one time, we thought that all our Drupal websites could just have the same Intranet/collaborative space option. The advantage over just using one of the other types of tools here comes from the ability to refine different types of users, categories, workflows and so on. And this is true with the other CMS systems.

There is planning to be done for any of these options. For example, choosing whether it’s OK to have your private discussion and materials hosted outside (even if based on logins) versus the security of installing it locally can be an important consideration. The communication model for new users, including around email integration, needs careful consideration. You will need to determine what will bring your intended participants into a lively collaborative network, how much structure you need to provide, who will monitor it and other such questions. It is great to know that once you work through these questions, the technical choices get better all the time.

I'll tell you where they shouldn't be - living in the heads and on the hard drives and post it notes of various disconnected staffers.

If you are from a large organization with crackerjack IT personnel or have the capacity to create permission based information access on an intranet or internal file system, then this post probably isn't for you. You can take the time you would spend reading it to have a snack or maybe make sure everyone's log in information is up to date.

Lots of small and even medium sized organizations, however, tend to grow their software and online systems organically. Often this includes utilizing multiple contractors or volunteers - and this can lead to information organization breakdown. This is especially true if the majority of the staffers aren't too technically oriented and responsibilities are widely spread out.

As a consultant for these types of organizations, often one of the first tasks I face is hunting down and listing out all the various pieces of a group's online efforts. Then it becomes a matter of trying to see what they have in there and how things are set up. But who has the log in to your Google analytics? Or to the photo gallery management database? Sometimes I receive a repeatedly forwarded email, which serves as the only record of the account.

I realize this post is going to trigger serious security concerns for some IT managers and that some passwords are so sensitive they should not be written down. However, I still see far more danger in the confusion that regularly exists in a lot of nonprofits and which leads to things like the reckless forwarding of PayPal account information in an email. Not all organizations can realistically implement and track the ideal security and protocols that experts recommend, but not having any system at all is in my mind far worse. So I still recommend naming a known responsible party that is the keeper of "the list" and setting one up. If a password is super critical you can always put "Ask Bob for password" in that field and still have a better grasp on where to find your information.

What to round up
Every organization with a web site should have a master list or system with main account and log in for each web site, software or tool you use. Who should create and maintain this differs from organization to organization, but someone should have this information at their finger tips, whether that is a senior staff member or the Executive Director.

If you have the time and capacity to do more, you can tier your log in information based on security concerns and set up a distribution policy related to each tier.

You can also expand this idea to internal programs and systems, but in terms of online activities you might need quick and easy access to accounts like these:

• Server/Hosting - customer service
• FTP/file transfer
• Email - both Bulk Sender and Internal
• Web Site - CMS system
• Online Donations
  
• CRM
• Advocacy tools
• Additional Tools Like Surveys, Learning Management Systems etc.
• Database Management
• Google Account - Analytics, Maps, And Apps
• Other Web Statistics/Analytics
• Media & Social Network Sites (Flickr, You Tube, Facebook, Myspace)
• Blogs
• Conference Calling and Presentation Software sites
• You Get The Idea...

How to corral all the information?

Create a simple locked (offline) spreadsheet: I find that for many groups all that is really possible or needed is a secure spreadsheet that organizes and shows a list of the relevant information. To give you an idea of what this might look like, I have provided an example spreadsheet of what I have found useful that you can use as a template.

Since this information is sensitive I recommend that it be locked with a password that is easy to remember internally but not likely to be guessed by anyone else. One of my clients uses the first letters of each word in their tagline, for example. And obviously access to this file should be controlled and only given to appropriate and trusted people. Some organizations only keep this in printed form in a locked location for extra security.

Use a password keeper program - This method can be easier and more secure but will take a little more effort and organization to get set up. Using the program features and keychains that come with your operating system is not what I am talking about here - there are free and low cost professional programs available that are meant for this very task that are far safer and more suitable.

Although I haven't tried it personally the KeePass program seems to be the most widely recommended. If you have a program you use that you love (or hate) please leave it in the comments and share your thoughts.

KeePass is a free open source password manager, where you can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file.

You can find a handy guide on setting this up from LifeHacker:
http://tinyurl.com/h5btr

For more program options and information there are great ideas and tips at TechSoup forums on this topic:
http://tinyurl.com/3wgh8d

I still recommend starting off by compiling the list above (with or without actual passwords) until you are sure you know what all needs a log in because its such a great way to get an overview of your activities and spot redundancy.

Some thoughts on wrangling

• The organization should designate the official log in to be used when the account name is visible or used as a profile
• Each staff user should have their own log in when possible for admin tasks and not share or use the account administrators main password
  
• Helps with security when you experience turn over
• Help them keep track by providing staffers with your template to use
  
• Its also handy to set up user/pass convention for organization log ins
  
• Designate the keeper(s) of the main login sheet or system and make sure everyone knows who that is.
• Update the info on your sheet or program whenever it changes
• Have a system to circulate the appropriate log in information to everyone that needs it

Whatever method you choose, just getting started is worth it. Getting a grip on your logins yields an overview of what you are doing, can point out where internal communications blockages occur and can improve efficiency and satisfaction for the people that manage your online efforts.

Especially if you are about to undertake a redesign or change your site software its a good time to gather in all your logins and passwords. Doing so can serve as a neat little auditing list - some of the tools you already have access to might even surprise you.

And your consultants will thank you.

Ah, it's the eternal question: how much should I expect to pay for a website? And how can I find out some answer other than "it depends" without actually building the sucker? It can be really difficult to define what communications approaches make sense for you when website costs appear to be all over the map.

Well, it does depend. If you want to hone in on a price, the best way is probably to get proposals from consultants or firms - not a fast process, but a pretty accurate one. But the general magnitude depends on factors that are knowable, so I thought I'd take a crack at defining what you could expect at each price level based on my experience. Note that this prices are approximate US market rate - so you might be able to find folks who will discount or volunteer for less, but these are what someone who's doing this full time might charge.

$1000
This is around the lowest market rate you're likely to find, and it won't buy you a lot. At this price, you might be able get an independent consultant, probably without a ton of experience, to whip out a 10-30 page static site, based on a templated graphic design and a very straightforward navigation scheme. You won't get something very branded to your organization, and you'll likely have to define precisely what you want up front, as this price wouldn't cover time to help you work through your needs to any substantial degree. You may well have trouble finding someone to work at this low end.

$5000
At this level, you could get a jack-of-all-website-trades independent consultant who makes a living building website to build a simple site tailored to your needs. It might cover a simple, custom graphic design, and potentially one or two simple features (like a simple event calendar). There still wouldn't be a lot of time for strategy or feature definition, but you could expect a bit more customer service from the consultant. Note that a jack-of-all-website-trades consultant is likely to be, as the aphorism says, a master of none. Top quality websites are typically designed and built by a team of people - perhaps a graphic designer, a navigation expert, a content specialist, a design implementer, and an serious programmer. A jack-of-all-trades isn't likely to be an expert in all of those things, so it will be important to see a portfolio to judge their skills in the areas important to you.

$15,000
We're now getting into the realm of solid, scalable, strategic websites. It would cover an independent consultant, a team of consultants working together, or a small firm, in building a site on a solid infrastructure (like a content management system) with some strategically chosen features beyond simple text and images. It also might cover a very simple, basic site from a top consultant or firm - something very small but expertly crafted and designed. The budget would now cover some up-front help from the consultant in figuring out your needs.

$50,000
A lot opens up in this price range. This could be a fairly sophisticated site from a small firm, or a straightforward site by one of the top firms in the country, with some substantial strategic guidance.

$100,000
This is a solid budget for most large websites. Very sophisticated web applications or huge sites could certainly cost more (potentially much more!), but for $100,000 you could hire a top nonprofit internet consulting firm to create a robust site. At this level, your consultants can also help guide you through decision making, and shepherd decisions through internal politics and disputes - you're getting a strategic partner in addition to just someone to implement a site.

So that's my experience with website costs. Others want to share their experience?

We've got an online seminar coming up tomorrow on Website Analytics - essentially, how to tell what people are doing on your website. We talk through the metrics you can track, what they mean, and how to use them, focusing substantially on Google Analytics. This is one of my favorite sessions - it's fun to conduct. We spend a lot of time actually demoing tools (both Google Analytics and AWStats, another free tool that a lot of folks have already), and then focus on how to actually use analytics to make decisions.

Interested? Join us! It's $40 to register, and all you need is a phone and a web browser to participate. Read more or register now.

What does Social Networking have to do with Constituent Relationship Management (CRM)?
Here are a couple of live examples:

1) A health advocacy organization set up a Ning site to support collaboration and knowledge sharing among like-minded organizations. The site has grown to about 300 members and is the single largest source of “new blood” into the collaborative effort. However, in order to ensure that all the Ning members get the monthly eNewsletter and announcements of important events from Constant Contact, the organization has to cut and paste every new registrant into its database and again into Constant contact.

2) After some debate, a volunteer organization realized that in a Web 2.0 world, it needed a more meaningful presence at the sites where people visit and would have a hard time attracting traffic to its original volunteer portal idea. Instead, it decided it would expose its data about each (e.g. activities, placement, etc.) back to the volunteer through “snaggable” social networking widgets (Open Social, Facebook, blog) that would allow individuals to post their own data wherever they want to show it off to friends and family. The organization believes this way it will create vastly more visibility, both by volunteers as well as their friends/family/network.

The great news is that these tools are great mechanisms for increasing visibility and are proving to be super for recruiting new people that the organization might not have otherwise reached. The bad news is that it has further complicated an already messy set of places where constituent data lives, making mailing lists for fundraising campaigns, events, and even day-to-day relationship management difficult.

I looked at the Ning site and was pleased to see that it had a decent and well-documented API that will allow the organization to automatically gather new registrant data into an open database like Salesforce, CiviCRM, or Convio. Both Convio and Kintera have developed a collection of social networking widgets for fundraising and advocacy campaigns that feed data back into their respective repositories.

As with any new tools/applications, be aware that they all collect data and keep asking how you'll integrate that with other data you collect.

Comparison of Email Newsletter Tools - Updated for 2008 (ONE/Blog)
Update of ONE/ Northwest's terrific, detailed comparison (with matrix and all!) of a number of blast emailing tools.

Make a Comic (The Bamboo Project)
This is fun: it's a list of tools that can help you easily create a comic, using wizard-like tools. I've been thinking of comics as potential ways to communicate concepts myself.

Web Apps Failure: A Pain in the SaaS (Small Business Computing)
High level look at what you can do to protect yourself from hosted application downtime and failures - by asking the right questions up front.

Grating Expectations: Sending Constituents the Emails they Expect (Beaconfire)
Thoughtful exploration of what supporters might expect when they join an email list, compared to what we send them - and how to make them match.

Measuring the Effects of Social Media Marketing (e.politics)
Great look at the difficulties and possibilities in measuring ROI of social media

New Metrics for Success: What I Learned from the Drudge Report (NTEN)
NTEN provides a thoughtful look at the online metrics they're using to measure their own efficacy

Salesforce 101: Fun with Campaigns and Workflows (A View from Judi Sohn)
Great case study of how the Colorectal Cancer Coalition is using campaigns in Salesforce to support less obvious processes - like event registration and memorial gifts

7 Ways To Stay Informed And Up-To-Date Online (MakeUseOf.com)
Nice overview of tools that help you monitor what's being said about you or a topic online

It seems like every month or two, I happen across a forum thread about project management tools. What works? Can you do it with a wiki? Are they necessary at all? Often, there are a slew of recommendations (Basecamp, Central Desktop, MS Project) accompanied by some heartfelt recommendations to stay away from all of them. All of these recommendations are correct, and incorrect.

Project software naysayers make a very apt point: Tools won't plan a project for you. If you think that buying and setting up the tool is all that you need to do to successfully complete a complex project, you're probably doomed to fail. So what are the things that will truly facilitate a project-oriented approach, regardless of tools?

• Healthy Communication. The team on the project has to be comfortably and consistently engaged in project status and decisions
  


• Accountability. Team members need to know what their roles are, what deliverables they're accountable for and when, and deliver them.
  


• Clarity, Oversight and Buy-In. Executives, Boards, Backers all have to be completely behind the project and the implementation team.
  

With that in place, Project Management tools can facilitate and streamline things, and the proper tools will be the ones that best address the complexity of the project, the make-up of the team, and the culture of the team and organization.

Traditional Project Management applications, exemplified by MS Project, tie your project schedule and resources together, applying resource percentages to timeline tasks. So, if your CEO is involved in promoting the plan and acting as a high level sponsor, then she will
be assigned, perhaps, as five percent of the project's total resources, and her five percent will be sub-allocated to the tasks that she is assigned to. They track dependencies, and allow you to shift a whole schedule based on the delay of one piece of the plan. If task 37 is
"order widget" and that order is delayed, then all actions that depend on deployment of the widget can be rescheduled with a drag and drop action. This is all very powerful, but there is a significant cost to defiing the plan, initially inputting it, and then maintaining the information. There's a simple rule of thumb to apply: If your project requires this level of
tracking, then it requires a full-time Project Manager to track it. If your budget doesn't support that, as is often the case, then you shouldn't even try to use a tool this complex. It will only waste your time.

Without a dedicated Project Manager, the goal is to find tools that will enhance communication; keep team members aware of deadlines and milestones; report clearly on project status; and provide graphical and summary reporting to stakeholders. If your team is spread out geographically, or comprised of people both inside and outside of your organization, such as consultants and vendors, all the better if the tool is web-based. Centralized plan, calendar, and contacts are a given. Online forums can be useful if your culture supports it. Most people aren't big on online discussions outside of email, so you shouldn't put up a forum if it won't be used by all members. The key is to provide a big schedule that drills down to task lists, and maintain a constant record of task status and potential impacts on the overall plan. Gantt Charts allow you to note key dependencies - actions that must be completed before other actions can begin -- and provide a visual reporting tool that is clear and readable for your constituents, from the project sponsors to the public. Basecamp, Central Desktop, and a slue of web-based options provide these components.

If this is still overkill - the project isn't that complex, or the team is too small and constricted to learn and manage the tools, then scale down even further. Make good use of the task list and calendar functions that your email system provides, and put up a wiki to facilitate project-related communication.

What makes this topic so popular is that there is no such thing as a one size fits all answer, and the quick answer ("Use Project") can be deadly for all but the most complex projects. Understand your goals, understand your team, and choose tools that support them.

SaaS (Software as a Service) is, most likely, one of the biggest changes over the few years in the way that nonprofits implement software solutions. Of course SaaS has been around quite a while, primarily in the CRM/Fundraising space, with products like eTapestry, Convio, Kintera, and, most recently, Salesforce.com and Common Ground (Convio's fundraising application built upon Salesforce.com).

In the most recent version of the NOSI primer, we added a SaaS column in our software choice worksheet. So how does SaaS relate to Open Source, and, if you are choosing software to implement, how do you weigh the open source vs. SaaS options?

When you implement a SaaS solution, you are, first and foremost, not buying or obtaining software. You are purchasing a service. You are incurring a monthly service fee (sometimes there is a setup fee, sometimes not.) At one level, whether or not the software underneath the SaaS is open source is not really relevant. You are not obtaining the software, and whether or not you can see the code, or modify it, is really not the key issue here. There is a post up on my blog explaining why this is actually more complex than it seems.

Because SaaS is a service, there is nothing to install, and nothing to maintain. There will be, of course, migration of data, customization and configuration, and all of those sorts of things. But you won't have to deal with doing upgrades, or installing security patches, or maintaining the server - these are things that can be a real benefit to nonprofits without many technology resources.

Advantages of SaaS over Open Source:

• Support is generally included in the monthly fee
  
• No installation
• No server to maintain
• No upgrades to deal with

Advantages of Open Source over SaaS:

• You keep your own data and have complete control over it
• There are no ongoing monthly costs for the software itself
  
• You can modify the software
• You control software upgrades
• There is an active developer community to contribute to and tap

Users and developers of Salesforce.com will likely beg to differ on a number of issues here. Salesforce.com is more of a PaaS (Platform as a Service) rather than a SaaS per se.

Of course, in making software decisions, features and such are key, but these are some important components of the decision process.

Interested in conducting online conferences or seminars - for team meetings, or training? What better way to learn about the tools and techniques involved than through an online seminar?

Our first iteration of our Getting Started with Online Conference and Seminar Tools sold out so far in advance that we scheduled another one - and it's on for tomorrow, Wednesday, from 1:00 - 2:30 Eastern Time. The topic is a little meta, but and interesting one - what features might be useful to you in an online conferencing tool? What tools are available? And I'll talk a little bit about some of the differences between these webinars and in-person seminars that I've picked up after doing dozens (yikes!) of these online seminars.

It's $40 per person - you can register online. We cap the registration at 22 people - so there will be lots of opportunity to get your specific questions answered. Or we also have a's also recording of the last time we conducted the seminar, for $20.

Of late, I've been giving a lot of thought into how social media can and should fit into nonprofits' marketing and internet strategies. Like the research geek I am, part of my process has been to read a whole lot of the information that's already out there (and there's a *lot* of it).

There's a ton of information, but surprisingly little about how social media tools and tactics fit into any other marketing activity. In fact, many of the info out there seems to imply (or to assert outright) that social media is a revolution in communications that makes all other marketing obsolete. Certainly in nearly everything there's an implication that social media is a different type of thing, which requires a different mindset and priorities.

I have to say, I just don't find this idea that social media is a whole new thing to be helpful. First off, it just doesn't make much conceptual sense to me. The ideas of guerrilla marketing and savvy branding - which have been with us for decades now - focus on crafting a compelling story that supporters will pass on. Familiar, huh? And to me, a really useful base on which to build the case for social media.

And the idea that nonprofits need social media to save them from a broadcast-only marketing strategy, and that otherwise they don't listen to anyone... this is nonsense. Nonprofits have always been particularly good at engaging constituents and listening. Community meetings, pledge-a-thons, house parties, bake sales, volunteers canvassing door to door to spread your message.... all great tactics to engage and listen, all conceptually similar to social media techniques. You don't need online tools to listen to people or to engage them (though they can help, no question).

Not to mention that it's clear that nonprofits need to do more than simply listen. They do have messages that they do want to put out into the world. Social media doesn't replace the need for a very solid website and email strategy. I don't think any credible authority would say differently, but when there's so little focus on how social media fits into these established methods, and so much on how social media is a wholly different thing, we give nonprofits the impression that they should focus their time accordingly: lots on social media, little on websites and email.

And lastly, the social media "revolution" that folks identify links suspiciously to shiny and nifty new tools. Why is creating an online video and posting it on YouTube one of the hallmarks of social marketing, while creating a terrific report which is widely discussed and promoted an old school method? Why do we talk a ton about FaceBook groups as important online communities, and hardly at all about email discussion lists (which often reach a much wider audience)? I don't see any fundamental paradigm shift between these things - the tactics and strategies at work are very similar, it's only the tools that change.

Don't get me wrong. There's no question to me that social media - and the shiny new tools - can provide compelling benefits for many nonprofits. And they engage different audiences than more traditional techniques, which is useful in of itself.

Isn't it more useful, though, to help nonprofits understand how these new tools and tactics fit in, how they're similar, how they can build on what they're already doing, rather than to focus on how *different* social media is from everything else?

In America right now it's impossible to get away from news about the upcoming election.

There are lots of reasons for that, but everyone agrees that it is a really big deal. And it's gotten me to thinking about democratic participation and voter registration. We all know the old saw "If you didn't vote, you can't gripe" (or words to that effect) and although its not enforceable, I tend to subscribe to the theory. A quick peek at recent government data shows about 1/3 of citizens aren't registered to vote. That's a lot of people, and some of them may be your supporters.

No matter what side of the issues you support or whether or not your organization does advocacy, I believe that supporting voter registration online can be a great opportunity for any organization. Thanks to the high stakes this year, youth engagement and some sweet technology, voter registration is even kind of sexy. Think of it as fresh timely content, a chance to engage your supporters in a new way or just a way to provide a helpful tool for site visitors, who will leave you their name and emails as a thank you.

If you are saying, that all sounds great but we're too busy, we don't have high-end tech staff or what will it cost me? I have good news.

Years ago I worked on the design and development of an online voter registration widget for Rock the Vote - and I have to say I thought it was pretty neat. So I took a look around the web to see what's available these days. It quickly became obvious that in this election year RTV/Credo (used to be Working Assets) has gone all out and is the now indisputable king of all voter registration widgets. And that's ok, because the widget is free, easy and brand-able to boot.

What it is - a piece of code you can add to your site to allow voters in any state to fill out their registration form, print it and mail it in. Right on your site. And you get to ask your own questions and collect contact information. Read more about how it works in a great summary at e.politics.

Sign up and grab a widget here: http://registertovoteonline.org/site/signup/

You don't have to spend a lot of time setting it up (I did one in 10 minutes including sign up, custom logo and custom questions). And if you can copy and paste and have access to your HTML you are ready to go. The admin includes some nice tracking info (for list building and thank you's) and options to make this play nice with any web site.

Adding the widget link on your site doesn't have to mean starting a major voter registration campaign - although it could if that fits with what you do. More like a quick and easy home page sidebar feature showing your awareness and good citizenship as an American based organization.

One last thought - Are all the US citizens on your staff registered? Might be a good time to find out and maybe even kick-start your widget with some familiar names.

It's taken me two years to convert, but now I love my Macintosh. Many of the nonprofits I work with do too. However there is no getting around the fact that there is only a limited set of options for business software that runs on a Macintosh. While I would love to have all my nonprofit friends upgrade to the fancy new Mac laptops that will run Windows too, the cost and performance is still prohibitive.

I wanted to share one struggle of mine to find appropriate business software that runs on Macintosh systems. Recently I was challenged to look for a document management solution for a Mac based office. They have approximately 250,000 documents currently being imaged to PDF format. The main criteria are:

(1) $2000 budget
(2) 6 users
(3) Must handle about 8GB of PDF documents without crashing
(4) Can store some basic document descriptive information - such as Title, Author, Category.
(5) Should provide some kind of preview feature when browsing documents

Focusing on hosted solutions - I looked at freely available online systems such as Magnolia CMS (magnolia.info) and Alfresco (alfresco.com) - they could definitely do it, but I needed a brilliant and horribly underpaid software engineer to build it for me within budget. I looked as some online file storage solutions, such as Box.net, Xythos (xythos.com) and DocumenTree (documentree.com), but these focused on storing files in folders and provided very limited ability to store basic document descriptive information.

Eventually I turned to locally installed systems. FileMaker was out - the license costs + server software alone would break the budget. I found a raft of locally installed systems recommended by various companies who do document scanning, but all of these were PC only and most were quite expensive.

Do I just need to admit that my requirements are unrealistic, or are there more options I am missing?

So far I have found a few options that come close, but I am still looking for other leads. The best match so far is DEVONthink (devon-technologies.com). These are the same folks that built EasyFind - a very cool Macintosh OSX file search tool. DEVONthink can handle the larger amount of files, offers a preview function, and some basic document description data and a promise to do more on this point. I should be able to pick up licenses for about $900. Another possibility was Papers (mekentosj.com/papers/) - this is more for researchers who are gathering articles and other publications from online resources, but does has features that come close to what I am looking for.

If you man the support desk, or are the accidental techie for an org of ten or more people, chances are that you get a lot of questions about smartphones. And these generally aren't the "what should I get?" questions as often as they're the "how do I get my email and schedule on my new [Blackberry/Iphone/Treo/Razr/MotoQ/Sidekick/Android Dream]?". If the state of computing technology were akin to smartphones, you'd have Commodore, Leading Edge, IBM, and Apple computers, along with IBM Selectric typewriters to support, all running different operating systems and different applications. It's somewhat insane.

So how can you politely impose some sanity on the smartphone madness? People love THEIR devices; the choice of an Iphone vs a Blackberry is as heated as any political debate. But there are some commons sense arguments that IT can make for a modicum of standardization, without totally denying your users some choice.

It all boils down to email. While smartphones feature a range of operating systems, email platforms tend to support cross-smartphone access. So what's your email system?

Microsoft Exchange includes ActiveSync. If you run an Exchange server, ActiveSync-capable smartphones can connect directly and wirelessly to it, providing contact, calendar, email and (on some phones) task synchronization. Any Windows Mobile phone includes Activesync, as well as Palm Treos and the newest iPhones (version 2 and above). Exchange 2007 also includes handy features like remote device wipes and access to network shares.

Google Apps/GMailGoogle makes a GMail for Mobile application that works on most smartphones capable of running java applications, which includes all of the major variants (Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone and Palm).

If you don't use GMail or have an Exchange server (you either run Outlook or Outlook Express without your own server, or you use a different system), Blackberries offer the ubiquitous solution. RIM, the company that makes them, runs their own server that can act as a gateway for your email service and forward the mail to your phone. Before Microsoft figured out how to support mobiles, this was a sweet, revolutionary offering, but my take is that, compared to Exchange/Activesync, it's now a bit of a kludge. If you use Blackberries with Exchange, you can increase functionality by buying their Exchange add-in server, but that's a significant investment that you're not likely to make without a large fleet of phones. In the meantime, though, here's a tip: when you set up that Blackberry to access Exchange, pick Outlook WebAccess, not Outlook (assuming you also run Webaccess). The integration through Webaccess updates the server when you read messages on the phone; the vanilla Outlook integration doesn't. Outlook should be chosen when you don't offer WebAccess with Exchange.

At my job, we have Exchange and a smartphone policy that states that we support Activesync, as opposed to any particular device. We recommend that our users get Treos or iPhones, because we like them, but don't complain if they get Wings or MotoQ's or whatever, because Activesync works the same way on any Windows Mobile device. The staff appreciates the guidance and flexibility; we enjoy the reduced time figuring every new phone out.

We've got two articles up (yikes! it's a flurry of activity this week)!

First up, Peter Campbell has written a great, detailed guide to Evaluating and Purchasing Major Software Systems. It's the tactical, nuts and bolts stuff that can be so hard to wade through on your own - should you write an RFP? What should go in it? How do you compare? What do you ask a vendor to show you in a demo? What should you look for in a contract?

But if instead, you're thinking about a new method to design your print newsletters, event invitations, or that next annual report, you're going to need software - enter A Few Good Page Layout Tools. We round up the advice from a bunch of graphic design experts on what inexpensive and more robust tools can be useful, and how they differ.

Nonprofits and Photosharing: A Cost-Effective Way to Spread Your Message Online (Michigan Nonprofit Association)
A great summary of what photosharing is, how to do it with a tool like Flikr, and what nonprofits are doing with it.

Simplify the search user experience (Step Two Designs)
Nice look at the key features necessary for a good search experience - particularly for intranets.

NTEN is Listening -- and Learning (NTEN)
Interesting post about how NTEN is following what people are saying about them on the web

Frontline SMS: Great tool for reaching your constituents via SMS (Non-Profit Tech Blog)
Thumbnail review of a product that will let you blast SMS messages to your supporters' cell phones

Contrarian thinking about online organizing (Jon Stahl's Journal)
In a short but sweet post - which got a lot of interesting comments- Jon Stahl postulates that it's too easy to confuse tapping into existing energy as *creating* that energy through online organizing

The Direct Mail Addiction (Nonprofit Online News)
Thoughtful (though perhaps a bit overstated) look at some of the issues involved with direct mail, and some of the reasons that nonprofits may overprioritize it compared to other communication methods

Online Social Networks in Politics: Promise and Frustration (e.politics)
Really insightful look into the opportunities and challenges for politics and advocacy presented by online social networks.

Data Protection and Web Based Applications (ICT Hub Knowledgebase)
I don't know if I agree with the exceedingly cautious tone of this article. But an interesting look at some of the issues with hosted applications - especially free ones.

Google Maps: Seek and Hide (Beaconfire Wire)
Great look at some of the important considerations and challenges when implementing a mashup with Google Maps

Lessons from Katrina Help Media, Volunteer Efforts in Gustav Coverage (MediaShift)
Interesting look at the website and social media efforts geared to help in the Hurricane Gustav efforts

Is it just me, or is everyone redoing their web site all of a sudden? This summer, we had a rash of requests to talk about web site options. I am writing this after a neighbor who has never previously talked tech with me literally stopped me in the street about her organization’s site.

Here’s the problem. A redesign today isn’t that different than it was five years ago. The process is about the same. The time commitment, designer hours, and cost is about the same. Many people still think that’s what they need. Liven up the design, get new content up, and show you have a pulse.

OK, everyone today also wants easier changes to their site. Nonprofits held captive to board members or the founder’s niece for every little change is so 1990s. If you redo your site with Adobe Dreamweaver, at least get set up for easy page maintenance with companion product Contribute. Inexpensive (from TechSoup), easy to learn, and no web designer needed for adding content and keeping up to date.

But these days, it’s really a makeover plus. Once you get talking, most folks want more.

You soon cross a threshold where the choice to just update the site conflicts with the things you really want to do, if not now, then soon. Better cataloging of material; “members only” special content; commenting, tags, ratings, news feeds, tell-a-friend, printer friendly pages, and all the rest to make your site easy to use.

And it’s not just click- to-donate anymore. It is event registration; Analytics; blogging; internal planning, discussion and organizing; community calendar; newsletter signup and on.

If you are not doing a lot interactive yet, you can definitely tackle a couple of new things as add-on services for now. There’s lots of great, free or inexpensive pay-as-you go a la carte services for blogging, events, calendars and more. A la carte often means different visual looks and no shared contact information.

Much better to move to a content management system, such as the big Open Source ones frequently mentioned here--Drupal (our favorite), Joomla and sometimes Plone, as well as the pricey commercial ones like Kintera and Convio, and the many lesser commercial ones discussed on idealware and techsoup. Yet the leap to a full installation of one of the content management/web development systems, including a strong visual design “theme,” and all your content, will cost substantially costly than just updating the site in Dreamweaver.

It is truly worth it because you will now be on a modern platform that can and will continue to evolve as your needs evolve. What’s tough and unexpected for many small organizations is justifying the additional cost to get there, if you haven’t planned on it. These are hard choices for folks with small budgets.

When I have these conversations and it looks like it’s going to go in the direction of a traditional Dreamweaver facelift, I find myself musing on Rick’s words to Ilsa in the final scene in Casablanca. I think to myself, if your new web site takes flight in 2008 or 09, and it’s not on a CMS, then “you’ll regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.” Well, maybe not the rest of your life, but Bogart’s Rick is a lot tougher than me.

It’s hard telling people they should wait. There’s certainly lots to do to prepare for a full blown web upgrade. Focus on your email newsletter so you know your constituents; see how hard or easy its going to be to get new stories on your home page regularly; start a linked blog; study your Analytics; focus on evaluating your contact management.

And there are ways to experiment. Google Sites, Wordpress, wikis and Ning all come up for us as alternative to full blown CMS-driven systems. These are easy, lively, even fun. And they can be done with not just less budget, but less planning time from organizations than building a full Drupal or Joomla site. They may suffice or they could be experimental before committing to bigger project. There’s no universal truth on this matter, and it’s a great time to move forward.

A friend recently asked for some quick advice on Volunteer Management software that a local Obama campaign could use.

I easily fall victim to this kind of request, just as my friend and many nonprofits fall victim to it: asking for a technology silver bullet for a specific problem prior to defining the problem in its larger context. As a victim, I did a quick Google search to find VolunteerHub, Volgistics, and Volunteer2, which all at first glance seemed to have surprisingly solid features and pricing.

Then BAM! I realized my error: my Silver Bullet Pill solution would cause more pain for this group down the road. I started thinking about the fact that many volunteers are donors…which meant that the organization would have a different donor database. Now that would be bad!! And then I thought, many of those volunteers may work for companies or community-based organizations that might be recruited to host issue-focused events. Would that cultivation process be stored in yet a third repository (or Excel sheet), because the Volunteer Management system isn’t built for this? Etc, etc, etc.

The result: A data quagmire that would impair the organizations’ effectiveness down the road. Well, for a campaign only in operation for a couple more months, maybe this is not the end of the world, but for an average nonprofit, it’s a big problem.

The message to nonprofits: When shopping for software, think about how the data in this particular application will interact with data living (really or potentially) in other places. Don’t buy an application that just focuses on one point of pain without thinking about the bigger picture. Like eastern medicine, look at the larger context. Sometimes a pill might be the best solution…but understand why.

The message for vendors: Get out of the data vacuum – it’s hurting nonprofits in the long run. Either: 1) build your best-of-breed application on top of an open, extensible platform like CiviCRM, Salesforce, SugarCRM, Microsoft CRM, etc.; or 2) build a open extensible platform with open APIs and develop a broader vendor ecosystem that provides plug-in components to create “whole solutions” for nonprofits.

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). An LMS, or learning platform, is a system that is designed to facilitate some sort of learning process over the web.

What can an organization use a LMS for? Well, that depends of course, on the organization. Many organizations provide trainings, courses, and varied sorts of learning activities to their constituents. If your organization does this at all, and you are interested in investigating how to enhance or deliver those learning activities through the web, an LMS is for you.

Learning platforms, of course, are varied. They can be very complex course management systems which are designed to do things like quizzes and grading (as well as discussions and have places to store course materials.) Some have fewer features, but all have some basic qualities:

• Ability to handle multiple courses (or activities) and enroll individual students
• Courses can be done either with specific deadlines, or at any pace
• Course calendars
• Messaging (between teacher and students and between students)
• Group discussions
• Document repositories
• Assignments and grading

Most post-secondary institutions are using LMS for management of both regular and distance learning courses. Increasingly, a wide variety of training opportunities are being delivered via LMS.

So what LMS should you look at? There are both proprietary and open source LMS. Most proprietary LMS are geared specifically toward the college/university or corporate training markets, and are thus quite expensive. These include Blackboard, ANGEL, and WebCT (now owned by Blackboard), among others. There are open source LMS, some of which are quite well developed, and some also geared toward (or developed by) colleges and universities.

• Moodle - probably the best known open source LMS. It is very easy to install, and there are an increasing number of consultants and companies offering support for Moodle.
• LAMS - not as much an LMS as a curriculum development tool. Can be powerful if integrated with Moodle
• ILIAS - developed by the University of Cologne, is another open source LMS

I've been blogging here since 2005 - almost three years now. I started by posting about Idealware's challenges and breakthroughs as a new organization, and then more and more, it's evolved into a place for me to post more general thoughts, comments, and news about nonprofit software for nonprofits. When I can. You may have noticed that I'm not the most frequent and consistent of bloggers.

But Idealware has never been about my own knowledge and experience. The whole idea is to gather the huge amount of knowledge that exists from the nonprofit staff, consultants, and vendors who are working with nonprofit software in the trenches.

So I'm thrilled to help launch the next iteration of the Idealware blog - a community blog, featuring the voices of some of Idealware's smartest and most popular contributors. They'll share their stories, opinions, and suggestions from more than 150 years of combined experience.

I'll continue to participate myself - with a similar mix of posts, annoucements, and resources as I've been doing - but a bunch of folks much smarter than me will generously provide more information and more opinions to help nonprofits choose software.

Who's included in this Idealware blog brain trust? In alphabetical order...

Steve Backman, the incredibly strategic and incredibly practical principal of Database Design Associates

Peter Campbell, IT Director extraordinaire of EarthJustice, with a love for the nuts and bolts technologies that really help nonprofits run

Heather Gardner-Madras, of gardner-madras strategic | creative, who helps make beautiful websites and cutting edge internet strategies available to smaller nonprofits

Paul Hagen, the always insightful and practical advocate of effective constituent management and data exchange, now at Kairos Strategies

Eric Leland, of Leland Design, with his nearly encyclopedic knowledge of website and constituent software

Michelle Murrain, who brings her even-handed and astute advice on technology and open source software for nonprofits to MetaCentric Technology Advisors

And then last and actually least - myself, Laura Quinn, Director of Idealware

Read more about these folks from the (brand new!) sidebar for this blog.

So let the Idealware community blog begin! I hope you're as excited as I am.

I conduct an online seminar on online donations, and this time around we got several questions about donations through YouTube. I wasn't familiar with what they offered in this area, so I did a little quick research.

YouTube does support online donations, via Google Checkout. So you can create a YouTube channel that features your videos (or other people's videos), and add a Donate button. That Donate button is supported by Google Checkout - which means there's no transaction fee at all (it's completely free), but at least as of about two months ago the flow was really not friendly to donors - it was geared to people purchasing items (anyone know if this is still true?). See my post specifically on Google Checkout for donations for more...

If you're using YouTube, I don't see any harm in setting up the Donate button, but I don't think this is a substitute for a more general online donations capacity on your website, for those donors who aren't really interested in videos. You could always just put a Google Checkout Donate button on your website too... though there are likely to be better options.

We got a questions about Facebook Causes as well. This seems very similar to me, from an online donations strategy perspective. Certainly it doesn't hurt to setup a Cause for folks who use Facebook already, but it doesn't make sense to me to route all your online donors through it.

And with a number of easy and inexpensive options for online donation tools - for instance, Network for Good and Click and Pledge - if you're going to look for online donations, I don't see any reason not to have an online donation functionality on your website itself.