Non-profit organisation looking for a CMS. Topic is solved

[Manaz]

Hello all,

I'm involved in a project for a non-profit organisation to investigate various options to replace our existing website(s) with a new (single) site.  Joomla is one option I am considering, but I have some requirements that I need to know if Joomla or extensions to Joomla can handle - I realise that some of these probably depend (at least in part) on the upcoming ACL enhancements:

We currently

1.  Public website (no brainer).  This is probably the most urgently required section, as the existing public website is looking a bit "dated" and really needs a revamp.  I'm sure Joomla can easly cope with this requirement right now, but in the future we want to have a single site for both the public and members, with functionality dependant on who's viewing the site.
2.  Member database management.  We have an administrator who manages our membership details.  We'd like to give her a membership management section, which allows her to manage all aspects of our membership, as we as produce various reports.  This is one of those ACL things I think, at least in determining who has access to these tools.  We'd like members to be automatically emailed when their membership is due, as well as letting them submit renewal information online (payment details included).
3.  Mailing list management, including the ability for users to change their individual subscription details on the webpage and the administrator to change any particular user's subscription details, as well as give the users access to the archives they're entitled to.  Again, I expect a lot of this would rely on ACLs.
4.  Membership polling (I believe modules for polling already exist) with each member allowed to submit only one answer per poll.  The ability to schedule start and end dates for polls, and the ability to have a series of polls queued would be a bonus.
5.  ACL-based pages.  There are various elected positions in the management of this organisation, and those elected to certain positions should have access to certain extra functionality relevant to their position.
6.  Event management functionality, including registration, functionality for keeping track of dates, milestones, deadlines, resources, presenters, submission of presentation material (including version control), etc.

Are there modules to achieve these requirements?  I believe a lot of what we want to do relies on the upcoming ACL functionality, as long as that's likely to happen some time this year, then I think Joomla may well suit our requirements, but if we're talking 18 months before the ACL functionality is implemented, this may be a bit late for us, and I'd rather avoid using Joomla for the public site if we end up needing to change to a different system to implement the member functionality.

Cheers!

[RobB]

Besides the Management/Board site - all the functionality is there. Either as joomla standard Open Source components or as paid plug-ins (e. g. payment reminder processing, etc.).

I would look seriously at the Community Builder with an add-ons for the payment/reminder function. I saw the other day a component for membership sites/associations, but I can't remember where...

The joomla standard gives you straight away the option to view a page to all visitors or alternatively only to registered and loged-in members.

For the event management you need to look what you actually want. I am not sure if you look for something like a registration or more like a project management. There are components for both.

You can get around the management access if you install in the meanwhile a second joomla and put it into a sub-directory. Just put the basic info there what you need for them (e. g. minutes, procedures, etc.). You can use the same template, so quite easy to set-up. There are hacks out there to get the ACL functionality now already, but after checking it myself and given the benefit versus the problems in keeping the hacks manually during upgrades I opted gladly against them.

Have a look at http://forge.joomla.org/sf/sfmain/do/listProjects, you'll find there loads of great stuff to add on the standard.

Robert

[geilhufe]

From your general requirements, you probably want to look at CiviCRM. CiviCRM is a constitutent relationship management system designed for common nonprofit & non-governmental needs. You can see a demo at http://www.openngo.org/

1. Public website.
Joomla can certainly accomplish the task.

2. CiviCRM can handle this. It will take a little configuration and then training of you membership person. Right now, permissions integration between Drupal & CiviCRM is a bit more robust than Joomla/CiviCRM, but Joomla is catching up quickly and Joomla integration is a focus of our upcomming 1.4 release. Basically you would create a group called members, and you populate that group by hand or via some automated process (which might require that you code something with the CiviCRM API). Reporting is done via an export of CiviCRM data to excel and then do whatever you want with it from there. Auto emails when membership is due... can be accomlished with CiviMail (high volume mass mailer integrated with CiviCRM) + custom code. The best approach would be to do a canned search of members expiring in 30 days. The membership coordinator runs this every month on the first and then emails the resulting group a reminder.

3. Mailing list managment. We are still looking for integration between CiviCRM groups and a mailing list solution. This is in the future for us. We would be very happy to help anyone that wanted to make this functionality a reality. Would be accomplished through CiviCRM APIs.

6. Event management. At least in Drupal, Eventfinder has been integrated with CiviCRM. Hopefully as our Mambo integration improves, there will be integration between Mambo solutions and CiviCRM.

[speleo]

Manaz,

I'm looking for pretty much the same functionality as yourself. Right now I've got a site built around Joomla and don't want to ditch it. I’m assuming that your association is not purely an online group but has real members as well - such as a sports club.

What I need to do is integrate a membership management function with Joomla asap. Not too worried right now about getting multi layered ACL as this should come in time with Joomla. There is JACLplus but I’ve been resisting the temptation to go down too many branches to make things simpler for the future.

I would be very interested to hear what route you go down and any experiences (good or bad) that you have.

Cheers!