Randy McCabe, MPower Open

A bad economy can be one of the best things to happen to a marketing professional.

That may seem paradoxical, but times of constraint -- when revenues fall or simply do not meet budgeted expenditures -- force hard decisions that do not even seem like options during periods of prosperity and largesse. As Samuel Johnson, the celebrated 18th century English author, once said, "There is nothing like the prospect of being hung in a fortnight to concentrate a man's mind."

There is a powerful opportunity here. With the limitation of lower revenues and the pressure to cut costs, this is an ideal time to innovate around your operations and systems costs while still funding programs and activities and, yes, increasing investment in donor development.

NTEN's yearlong focus on Free and Open Source Software continues with "Setting up a Joomla! Organizational Website": great software, questionable punctuation.

Does an ! really make a word more exciting? Let's see: Waffles! Hmm, that's not quite fair -- waffles are already exciting. How about: Sand! Huh, maybe it does work. Those Joomla! folks must know what they're doing.

They've certainly made a very easy to use CMS system. The webinar, presented by FOSS expert, NTEN board member, and all around good person Michelle Murrain, will take you through the installation and basic setup of Joomla!, and what you'll need in order to make your new Joomla! site a success.

Flickr Photo: El Negro MagnificoWe like to hear about our members in the news and acknowledge their activity online. Last week, I happened to see the following about NTEN members:

> NTEN member Nancy Schwartz, of Getting Attention, announced the 12 nonprofits with the most votes in her 2008 Nonprofit Tagline Award Competition, including NTEN members UNICEF and the American Lung Association. Congratulations! Look for her full report on nonprofit taglines in September.

> Several members were cited in the recent NonProfitTimes article about Facebook's Causes: read about how Network for Good, Rick Christ of NPAdvisors, PETA, and the American Red Cross have incorporated Causes into their fundraising and outreach strategies.

> Convio's Connection Cafe highlights NTEN member Farra Trompeter and her relatively new firm, Big Duck.

> Convio gets some love in the news, too, with the announcement that Susan G. Komen for the Cure is deploying Convio's SaaS tools to integrate their communications, fundraising, and relationship management.

> Two members weigh in on what "open source" really means when it comes to deploying FOSS software at your organization. Michelle Murrain, current coordinator of NOSI (Nonprofit Open Source Initiative), says open source solutions are usually free, as in "free kittens", while Randy McCabe, founder and CEO of MPower, an open source CRM provider, takes a crack at defining what "open" really means when it comes to open source CRM solutions for nonprofits.

> If you didn't get to attend the 2008 BlogHer conference, NTEN member Amy Sample Ward has you covered. She couldn't go either, but decided to connect via Second Life. Amy did some live blogging to keep you all tuned in.

Flickr Photo: Darwin BellOK, NTEN Members: this is your chance to step up to the mic and ask those burning CiviCRM questions!

Join us Tuesday, July 15, at 11am PT/ 2pm ET for a live conference call and online chat with Dave Greenberg, from the CiviCRM Team.

> Register Now - FREE for NTEN Members!

Good deeds do get rewarded! If you know someone who’s been toiling in the open source vineyards, developing software that’s helping nonprofits succeed, check out the Tides Foundation Pizzigati Prize, a $10,000 annual award for outstanding contributions to software in the public interest. The competition, judged by a panel of national leaders in public interest computing, is now entering its third year. The application deadline for this year’s prize: September 1, 2008. You can find out more at www.pizzigatiprize.org.

The last winner was announced at the NTC in New Orleans.  

Michelle Murrain, NOSI

Constituent Relationship Management systems are one of the bread and butter tools of nonprofit organizations: tracking donations, constituents, activities and the like are critical to accomplishing mission.

It makes sense then, that CRM and fundraising software are the most plentiful and mature software product vertical in the nonprofit sector. And there is an increasing amount of change and innovation in this realm: from open APIs on such stalwarts as Convio and Kintera, to newer open source alternatives like CiviCRM and MPower Open

The question is, how do the newer open source alternatives stack up to the long standing proprietary packages that people have gotten used to?

When I worked in West Africa a few years ago, GeekCorps Mali had just started on the project that became MoulinWiki, an offline version of Wikipedia that could be burned onto a CD and taken to schools and villages without Internet access. (I didn't work on it; I was just visiting because GeekCorps had a pool and it was incredibly hot out.) The project was possible because the software that runs WikiPedia is Open Source, and so freely editable and redistributable.

A number of factors contributed to the inspiration for MoulinWiki, not least of which was an awareness of the availability of Free and Open Source (FOSS) software. More nonprofit organizations might make use of FOSS as a springboard for projects, if they only knew more about the movement.

In fact, you may already be using more Open Source software than you realize.

John Kenyon, Nonprofit Technology Strategist

While open source software is a great concept, people don't just relate to concepts, people relate to people. Most of the people who make open source software for nonprofits do it to make your life easier in support of achieving your mission. While often portrayed as pale, anti-social "geeks" working in basements and living off junk food, like all stereotypes, this is false.

Dave Greenberg has worked in the nonprofit sector as Psychiatric Counselor in a Community Mental Health clinic, and has a Masters degree in Social Work. He also has experience engineering/developing large software systems for the electronic commerce and banking industries. Combining his skills and values, he is now part of the international core development team for CiviCRM, the built-for-nonprofit open source CRM software.

I talked to him about his work with open source software. His insights are important for everybody interested in nonprofit technology.

AdamNicholson's NTENny DisplayI'm composing this weekly round-up differently this week, for two reasons: 1) there's a LOT of buzz in the blog- and twitter-spheres from and about NTEN members because of last week's conference, so I'll be truncating the summaries; and 2) I want to take this opportunity to share my thoughts about the conference and the NTEN community -- and thank everyone for the great experience.

First up, here's an abbreviated round-up of the 08NTC-related posts from members:

Join Michelle Murrain and NTEN for the webinar, "OpenOffice.org: The Free and Open Source Office Suite".

OpenOffice.org is a free and open source office suite with the same (and in some ways more) functionality as most of MS Office. It reads and writes MS Office file formats, and has a native file format that is an open standard, which protects data integrity and access forever. Learn about how you can use OpenOffice.org today in your organization.

When: Tuesday, February 26th, 11 am PT / 2 PM ET

Cost: $25 for NTEN Members, $50 for Non-members

Presented By: Michelle Murrain, NOSI

> Learn more and register today!