Non-Profit Tech Blog

As you may have guessed, I have seen the demo of Mpower Open and I was very pleased. So pleased, in fact, that it’s now on the Leaderboard. I’ve had to create a new category — Desktop Donor Management System as opposed to an Online Donor Management System which will be populated soon. For a long time, I’ve looked for a good system with the following criteria given to me by a lot of nonprofit users.

• Cheap to install
  • I usually mean less than $500 to roll out.
• Effective
  • Has the usual suite of donor management tools like a database and business rules regarding contacts management, etc
• No per seat licensing fees
  • Can’t stress this enough as I think it’s a terrible model going forward for nonprofits. The real value of information is in its distribution throughout your organization. Buying a fancy donor management program that’s so expensive that it leaves you with one seat is a prescription for slow growth in the future. Just wait until you have to hire someone to cage your checks — you WILL cry on the seating issue.

I also added my own criteria:

• Open source
  • This just lets you add your own extensions and to add cool little doodads. Also, it means that the system will grow in time as other developers add their doodads to the system. MPower Open has fully committed to open source both internally for their line of business apps that they use and for the app that they build. To that end, they’ll be adopting more open source tools like Jasper, an open-source business intelligence tool instead of Crystal Reports.
• Has a good support plan
  • You can buy a support contract from Mpower Open.
• Lower TCO than existing systems
  • More on this later but with only a support contract to pay for, it compares very well against Raiser’s Edge but not so well against GiftWorks.
• Uses known database backends
  • This is a huge issue to me. I don’t want nonprofits to end up supporting some horrible version of CenturaSQL or worse DBase. Good candidates are: Foxpro, SQL Server, Oracle, mySQL for a backend.
  • MPower Open uses SQL Server Express which is the free edition of SQL Server.

Here is a cavea. You need to know how to install SQL Server Express and have decent system administration chops to install. It’s not for the average user. In fact, the vast majority of people who have downloaded the application end up asking MPower Open for help.

Mpower Open is difficult to install because it’s an enterprise class application. With SQL Server as its backend, it’s designed for heavy multi-user usage just like Raiser’s Edge. My guess is that it’s also easy to host in a Terminal Server environment allowing for third-parties to enter data even though they’re outside your firewall.

Is MPower Open a Raiser’s Edge-killer? No, not yet. Could it be? Yes. Raiser’s Edge is costing nonprofits an arm and a leg right now in terms of licensing fees. If MPower Open’s developer community takes off, Blackbaud will be very hard pressed to match the firepower of a large developer community. The dual pressure of higher licensing fees plus a more desirable feature list with MPower may persuade nonprofit CTOs and CIOs of the need to move to an open source platform just like they have with CMSes.

MPower Open has all the usual donor management tools. There’s enough firepower in the package to handle 80% of what Raiser’s Edge does now. That’s MORE than enough for nonprofits to consider MPower Open before they look at Raiser’s Edge.  Here are a couple of screenshots:

Gift Entry screen shot from Mpower Open

Add Account screen for MPower Open

If you’d like more screenshots from the system itself, I’ll be more than happy to accomodate you. Just place your requests in the comments below. For more information on MPower Open, check out my earlier podcast. Josiah Ritchie also has blogged about MPower Open.