Last Updated: 12/15/2008
This is a list of best of breed technologies that I recommend for nonprofits in the $0 to $10 million dollar range. I’ve reviewed a lot of these technologies in the past. Consider this the ongoing recipe for a Nonprofit 2.0. I’m quite heavily opinionated so take these recommendations with a grain of salt. However, I think that if you adopt this recipe and make it your own, you’ll be able to do something that nonprofits rarely do with their IT infrastructure: adopt a lower-cost platform in phase 1 and exploit it cheaply in phase 2. The selection criteria for these recommendations are mostly centered around achieving the highest possible return on investment for the technology you select.
Desktop Donation Management System:
MPower Open
Price: Free (open-source but a support contract is available)
CMS:
Wordpress 2.7 for organizations with less than 5 people working on the Website
Price:Free (open-source)
CMS Runners-up:
Joomla
Price: Free (open-source)
Drupal
Price: Free (open-source)
I’ve been meaning to put Wordpress up ahead of Joomla and Drupal for smaller organizations and I’ve just done it (12/15/2008). Don’t bother with the other systems for now. Joomla and Drupal are too difficult to use for most small organizations.
CRM:
salesforce.com
Price: Free if you’re a non-profit and have less than 10 total users for your CRM. Pricing varies after that.
There are no others as far as I’m concerned. They have the momentum, they have the desire and they GET IT. They will penetrate the nonprofit market and Blackbaud, Convio, Kintera will cry as it happens (and RIGHTLY so).
Web Programming Language:
PHP (gulp, I hate working in PHP but I believe that PHP with development frameworks such as Cake or Symfony isn’t so bad after all). IT Directors who are willing to outsource web application work to services such as odesk.com or elance.com would do well to stick with PHP.
Price: Free (open-source) but you have to look at what consultants are charging
Web Programming Language Runner-up:
Ruby on Rails
Price: Free (open-source) but you have to look at what consultants are charging
Too pricey still in development costs but if you’re lucky enough to know how to program or have in-house programmers standardize on RoR instead of PHP. You won’t be sorry. Personally, I prefer RoR greatly over PHP but I just can’t recommend it to my peers at this time because of the cost issues.
Widget:
Chipin.com
Pricing: Chipin takes a small percentage of your donation but the cost of implementation is free.
Clearly the leader in widget development, don’t bother with the other widget manufacturers as that is the road to phishing perdition.
Desktop Suite:
Office 2007
Price: Check out www.techsoup.org/stock for current pricing. It’s low though ($20 a seat for Microsoft Office Professional)
You know the story. Buy it at Techsoup. Pay far less than anyone else. Make CDs of the OEM License CD and sell it on Canal Street. Just kidding. Open Office is still not there yet for enterprise work. Sorry. I’m no longer recommending Office 2003. Office 2007 is now just as cheap and has a lot more functionality.
E-mail server
Yup, with the recent announcement of Google Apps for free at the NTEN Mixer on 7/12/2008, I’ve decided to update this Leaderboard with Google Apps as THE #1 E-mail server and workgroup calendar for nonprofits. Forrester Research echoed my sentiment on 1/9/2009.
Google Apps (Gmail for your domain)
Price: Free
I’m now adding Google Apps to the leaderboard. There are some valid issues that people have about storing e-mail on a remote server but I don’t see those issues being particularly valid for nonprofits. There are also some issues in terms of administration such as e-mail migration but those tools will be available soon. I’m also a current user of Google Apps and I have had a remarkably easy time of manipulating Google Apps to do my bidding. So far, so good. Google does a decent job of hiding the directory services behind their apps since all the apps are wrapped into the login session there’s no need for a sign-on once you’re in the Google Apps space.
BTW, Google Apps works ok for those of you who have implemented a Windows Mobile infrastructure for PDAs. Oggsync would be the best bet for integrating your Google Mail and Google Calendar with your Windows Mobile 5 or 6 PDA.
As of 10/24/2007, we’re starting to see Google offer IMAP downloads of Gmail to your local client. This is still on a limited basis but once it becomes universal, you can safely say that Gmail is well on its way to increasing its lead over Outlook and Exchange.
Runner-ups
Exchange
Price: Check out www.techsoup.org/stock for current pricing.
Sorry, but Techsoup does more to extend the Microsoft hegemony with its low, low prices than almost anything else MS does for our sector. Thank you, Techsoup, can I have another? Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access allows you to zap Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones remotely if phones get lost (which they will). If you have an inordinate amount of data on each phone this could be a plus for you.
With the advent of Google Apps going free, the hosted Exchange Server is no longer an option I would be advocating. Either you host it on your own or you don’t. However, the recent purchase by Postini by Google is putting the hosted Exchange Server option into a bit of a tizzy. I suspect Postini may not be an option in the next year if Microsoft starts to upgrade its Continuity services.
Dark Horse
Zimbra is really intriguing and a great option for those of you unwilling to do Google Apps because of the remote data storage situation. I think of that as a plus but it’s not for everyone. Zimbra is open source and there are already great tools that integrate Zimbra with a VOIP system like Asterisk and yes, there is a Zimbra – Salesforce.com integration. Will Zimbra break out and be the open source Google Apps replacement? Hard to say.
Zimbra was purchased by Yahoo on 9/17/2007. It looks like Zimbra is going to be an open source Google Apps-like candidate and with much bigger backing from Yahoo. I hope Yahoo seriously considers a special pricing structure for nonprofits similar to Google Apps for Nonprofits. That is, FREE. Zimbra currently has a 50% discount for government and non-profit entities but even that is too high a price to pay right now when Gmail is doing an excellent job at an even lower price point.
Dark Horse
Zoho Office is also another intriguing product. Their Office lookalikes for Word and Excel (Writer and Sheet) actually function better than Google’s Docs. Their project management system I think is better than Basecamp. It’s not yet clear if they are going to have nonprofit pricing. I say try it but I’m not recommending until we know what their final policy will be in regard to nonprofits.
Case Management System
I know of no current case management system that has an open API or that offers anything but per seat licensing. This is unacceptable. This was the state of CMS software in 2002. The cost of a typical deployment of $25k per year is so high that it’s almost better to hire someone to build a system for you. Do the smart thing and partner with another nonprofit that has similar operational processes to yours. The minute someone builds a case management system in salesforce.com, I’m ready to put that in this slot.
Source control/versioning
svn
Price: Free (open-source)
Extremely well supported and with the svn client called Turtle works nicely on Wintel platforms.
Software development project manager software
Unfuddle I’ve been using this software to develop socialmarkets which is far and away more complicated than your average nonprofit Web application. I’m totally in love with it. Very highly recommended. Price: Free for one project, $9/mo for three projects. What is Unfuddle’s great feature that I love, svn integration. Yes, it comes with an svn server so you can actually see the code of your developers and berate them online at the same time.
MS Project is way too expensive to give to other users especially if they’re outside of your network. Basecamp has limited functionality and a mindset that seems to dislike user input on their software.
My dream application stack of stacks:
salesforce.com -> Joomla!/Apache/Linux/mySQL -> RoR frontend to salesforce.com via ActiveSFDC/svn -> Chipin.com
Price: Despite the mix of for-profit and open-source vendors, it’s still free. However, this stack requires a lot of programmer know-how and is only recommended if you have in-house programmers. The cost in this solution is the labor cost.
Why the Ruby on Rails front-end? Well, RoR will get you to a clean finished state much faster than you would otherwise if you did a PHP to salesforce.com front-end. This is my dream application stack after all. Notice how I mix both open source and for-profit solutions right into one another. That’s right, this is an ultimately pragmatic stack. Get ‘er done is my motto. I only choose open-source solutions that have strong developer and consultancy support. And all of this would be using Unfuddle as your svn server and project management software.
