Jon Stahl’s Journal

Our database consulting practice here at ONE/Northwest is continuing to boom.  We’re looking to add another database consultant to our team here in Seattle:http://www.onenw.org/about/jobs/CRM-ConsultantCome help us build next generation relationship management systems for kick-ass environmental groups!

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My colleague Andrew Burkhalter has posted the first part of an update on our work to integrate Plone with Salesforce.com. Big props to Jesse Synder of NPowerSeattle and Brian Gershon of the Web Collective for their work to drive this important integration work forward.  Open-source collaboration is really beautiful to see.

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My colleague Steve Andersen just got back from Salesforce’s Nonprofit Roadmap Summit, upon which he reported back favorably. But, ever the modest one, Steve neglected to mention that there was a nice little video of him reporting out from a brainstorming session on the future of Salesforce’s nonprofit CRM platform.  I’m fortunate to get to see […]

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Steve Andersen continues his series of relationship management process maps with a great “donation procesing” map:

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We’re swamped with demand for database consulting work.  So much so that we’ve decided to expand the team here at ONE/Northwest.  My colleague Steve Andersen, our Database Program Manager, has the scoop: I’m not so much looking for someone to work for me, but with me. I want these kinds of skills to help us build […]

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One of the best things about working at ONE/Northwest is the fact that I get to sit across the room from brilliant people like Steve Andersen. Over the past few months, Steve has been doing some amazing work helping our small- to mid-sized environmental organization partners build effective relationship management systems. One of the deep […]

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NTEN recently published a solid little paper by Michelle Murrain and Katrin Verclas that sums up the state of open APIs in the nonprofit CRM sector.  It’s an important read if you believe in the importance of integrating tools.There’s a lot of good stuff in this short paper, and I particularly appreciate that they make […]

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My friends over at NPower Seattle are looking for database and network consultants, both staff and contract. It’s a great opportunity to do meaningful work with one of the most effective nonprofit technology outfits out there.

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The Salesforce Train Keeps Rolling has a nice observation about why Salesforce is so darn interesting. (Emphasis mine.) Salesforce has developed a full function business software utility, and with it an economy or ecosystem of builders, buyers, and sellers that spans the planet. Good for them, but now the hard part starts.Up to now, the market […]

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We cut a “0.9 Alpha” release of the SalesforceConnector for Plone today, just in the nick of time to demo it at Dreamforce.Thanks to the generous support of the Salesforce Foundation, we were able to work with our friends at Enfold Systems to build a product for Plone that allows you to: Authenticate Plone users against […]

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Loyal readers (assuming I have any) will doubtless recall that one of our projects this summer at ONE/Northwest has been building a product to connect websites powered by the Plone content management with user databases stored in Salesforce.com. I’m pleased to announce that Andrew, Steve and I have just finished our initial testing and review […]

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My colleague Steve Andersen recently penned a short article entitled “Some Observations on Nonprofit Software” that lays out a few of the core assumptions we hold about how software tools for the nonprofit sector can and should play nice together. The core of the argument goes like this: Missions are serviced only by […]

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As my colleague Steve Andersen also reports, ONE/Northwest has received a $25,000 grant from the Salesforce.com Foundation to fund the integration of Plone with Salesforce.com. This will allow folks with Plone-powered websites to share data about people, organizations, etc. with the Salesforce.com database platform. You can read more details on the ONE/Northwest website. As […]

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Reading Zack Rosen’s assertion that building applications inside Drupal-the-framework makes more sense than loose integration of complementary applications triggered some thinking that’s been rattling around in my head for a while. I think that the next few years are going to bring tremendous challenges for applications that do not easily communicate with other applications that are […]

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As the Seattle PI reports, Washington State is about to launch its new, federally-mandated, statewide voter registration file. This is good news for grassroots activist groups who might want to “enhance” their membership databases with information from voter registration files in order to do a better job of encouraging their members to get […]

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Amanda “Bee” Hickman offers a great little rant titled The Great Database Caper: There are great databases geared towards non-profit, membership organizations, but there is a catch: most non-profits use their databases (and their members) primarily to raise funds. Organizations that prioritize member engagement want to use their database to look at members as […]

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My colleague Steve Andersen, who started at ONE/Northwest back in July as our Database Program Manager, has been blogging about the process he’s used to evaluate database/CRM platforms and to make the decision to focus our consulting practice on the Salesforce.com platform. Well worth a read. I was a part of the decisionmaking process, and […]

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eWeek reports that the forthcoming OpenOffice 2.0 will include a java-based SQL-backend (HSQL) and “OpenOffice Base” a user-friendly database front-end: Starting with 2.0, however, OpenOffice will include the open-source HSQL database engine. HSQL is a Java-based database. It is an SQL (structured query language) DBMS engine that’s also designed for use […]

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Sonny Cloward has some positive preliminary things to say about using Salesforce.com’s free 10-user nonprofit as a web-based database system for small nonprofits: In short, I have recommended that CERF deploy Salesforce as its data management system. The rational for my recommendation is that Salesforce meets our basic and priority requirements: […]

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Washington State opened the first-in-the-nation digital archive of state government records on Monday. Collections include: Marriage Records, Naturalization Records, Census Records, Death Records, Birth Records, Military Records, Institution Records, Miscellaneous Historical Records. Pretty cool resource for historical research, and hopefully a precedent for other states to follow.

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