I offered my advice to a correspondent who asked for advice on data mapping between old and new data models for a membership system. They are a smallish non-profit. I did some research which I hope you find interesting or useful. My advice is shaped by my experience which includes as you can see, a lot of time in corporate IT. My attitude and judgements are shaped by this experience. i.e. my judgements might be too expensive for a charity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I strongly recommend the use of a data dictionary. When I say strongly, I mean it. Do not do this with spreadsheets, or other desktop MIS, it will <\/strong>break. I have spoken of aristotle meta data repo<\/a> which has a very expensive cloud hosting options but the code is free. I had second thoughts and so had a brief poke around and found this catalogue of data modelling tools<\/a> on wikipedia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of what I found implies using Azure or AWS. AWS is more popular and flexible, Azure is in my view easier to use, particularly if you have Microsoft administration skills inc. AD. You might also consider the use of Office 365 and Azure probably integrates better than that. Microsoft now offer a CRM solution, Dynamics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was at the time a big fan of SugarCRM as it was open-source and widely adopted, so the cost of enetry and availability of professional\/volunteer support was easier. I ran a query for free CRM software<\/acronym> and came across an article, at capterra.com, which documented that SugarCRM have issued an “end of life” notice for their “Community Editon” i.e. the free one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Things I found in 2018,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I returned to this in Apr 2024 and remediated the broken links, retired some obviously over aged text and ran a query, “crm for small businesses and charity”<\/a>. This pointed me at, Top 10 CRMS for charities & non-profits by fundraising.co.uk<\/a> which has a great requirements statement too, they point at what they see as the uniquely free, insightly<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By adding the word ‘free’ to the above query, I found this<\/a>, which includes ads for the host, g2 and a bunch I have never heard of and yet includes Nationbuilder, which I have heard of. (I wonder if these are focused on the US market. Their 5* picks include DonorDock<\/a>, & BreezeCHMS<\/a> , optimised for churches, Raklet<\/a>, & Continue to Give<\/a>. Perhaps I should look for a site specifically supporting non-profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also found this review<\/a> for charity software recommending Freshsales <\/a>as the best overall and monday.com<\/a> for volunteer management; they also mention Hubspot<\/a>, which comes up in most reviews. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At PoliticalTech Summit 25, I came accross these packages presented my the LP, which may have ambitions of greater scale and cost than this was originally written for, <\/p>\n\n\n\nCheap or free packages<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Political Tech Summit 25 (Jan 25)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n