I often hear from association executives (particularly from very small associations, e.g., under five staff) that they can’t afford to buy an off-the-shelf association management system (AMS). Thus they will continue to use with a homegrown Access system or a bunch of separate Excel lists and Outlook distribution lists, and suffer the consequences of the […]
I’ve posted a new white paper on my website, entitled “The Three Primary Data Management Systems WIthin Associations and How They Are Related” When working with clients, as we discuss things like the association management system, the financial management system, and the website, I’m often asked how these systems are related and which system should
New White Paper Released: How Three Primary Data Systems are Related Read More »
I recently spoke at a meeting for the Canadian Society of Association Executives on how to use my seven step process for selecting a new association management system. While discussing the seven steps, a member of the audience asked me where the step was for choosing a consultant. I demurred, thinking he was joking, but
I like to give props to AMS vendors when they do something really smart. I’ve written about Avectra’s publicly available wiki here. The wiki alone is pretty cool. But here is some content which I think is extremely useful and demonstrates nice transparency on Avectra’s part. The wiki entry explains how the transition from implementation
I track nearly 40 different software companies that provide association management software of some form or another. And I chuckle every time I read one of their press releases, because they typically say the same thing: “Company X is the leading provider of…” or “Company Y is the leader in association management software…” One even
I’ve always thought the CRM for Members product that Protech Associates has built on top of the MSCRM product was a good AMS product. But the software and implementation has traditionally been rather pricey, so up to now it hasn’t been appropriate for “smaller” associations (e.g., those under 15 staff). But now Protech is offering
Protech Begins Offering Hosted Solution for Smaller Associations Read More »
I’ve posted a new white paper on my website, entitled “Nine Keys to Long Term Success of Your Association Management System” The paper is based on extensive interviews with eight associations who feel they have had successful long-term AMS implementations. The nine key findings: …a successful, long-term relationship with the vendor. …a stable staff. …buy-in
New White Paper Released: Nine Keys to AMS Success Read More »
CiviCRM is an open source CRM package designed specifically for the non-profit market. CiviCRM integrates with Drupal and Joomla, two open source CMS packages. CiviCRM includes modules for contributions, events, membership, and broadcast email. I’ve been aware of CiviCRM for several years now, but have only recently spoken with an association that is actually implementing
Back in May of last year, I wrote the following post, which in essence said “There’s a lot of talk about dashboards, but I’ve encountered very few myself.” Well, while attending the Aptify Users Conference a few weeks ago, one of the speakers was demonstrating the dashboards available in the Aptify product (which are, quite
I’ll be speaking in Chicago next Thursday, October 2, for the Association Forum of Chicagoland. My presentation will be on “Data Mining and Business Intelligence.” You can get all the details here.