[Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble

[Kelly Martin]

On 6/13/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Giving people gifts for donating would complicate that equation. The current system simply can't
> handle that can of tracking. Something I'd like the fundcom to tackle. We need people familiar
> with php, HTML and/or MySQL to work that out.

There are several good software packages out there for donor
management.  Unfortunately, none of them are open source.  There are
no such packages in the open source world (while there is a
rudimentary open source CRM solution, it is primitive at best and is
not specifically designed for the needs of a non-profit).  Our problem
is that we need a solution now, today, not in the two to three years
(if ever) it would take for the open source community to develop such
a package.

Perhaps the Foundation would care to hire a few developers to write
such a package; if they're not up for that, I'd strongly urge them to
consider using one of the commercial packages, ideological differences
about nonfree software aside.  (Hey, we use Cisco hardware, which runs
on the very proprietary IOS, and I suspect you'll find that a majority
of Wikimedia contributors run either MacOS or Windows, neither of
which is free either.  We have no real claim to ideological purity.)

Kelly