Relationship Building for the Non-Profit Sector
Our software is designed from the ground-up for many people to use it simultaneously. Large organizations like the New York State Senate and the Grammys are using the same platform as we provide.
The system is extremely scalable. Some organizations keep over 500,000 contacts in their database and process thousands of event registrations per day. The main issue when planning for a large organization, is making sure the data center/server that is running the software has enough hardware resources to handle the requirements.
Read about our security measures here
There is NOTHING to install. Each person just needs to use their web browser to access the correct Internet website, which is usually http://www.myorganization.org
We recommend the latest version of Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer, in that order. Websites in general, including our software, run faster under Firefox and Chrome as compared to Internet Explorer.
The web browsers Firefox and Chrome are available for both Windows and Macintosh.
Any computer or laptop manufactured in the last 3 years, that has the suggested hardware configurations will provide a good experience. Older computers will work, but some areas may seem sluggish.
A high-speed Internet connection is also required. For a small office with just 2-3 employees, a business class DSL with 5 mps download speed is sufficient. If there are more employees, or heavy usage of online music/video then faster download speeds are suggested. You can test the speed of your Internet connection here
Read our security FAQ at: http://pogstone.com/content/my-data-safe
You should have a back-up Internet connection for the office. You probably already have this, as most modern smart phones can provide high-speed Internet access for 5 or more computers.
If your office does not have such a smart phone, you can purchase a "personal hotspot" from most of the cell-phone carriers. For example, Verizon sells a "MiFi" device for about $ 50. that works anywhere you can get a cellular signal, and allows 5 computers to get on the Internet. Another company called "Clear" has a small device that will allow 8 computers to get on the Internet, from anywhere there is a cellular signal.
While this situation is extremely rare, you could always go to another location and use an Internet hotspot. If you have frequent issues with your Internet connection, it may be time to switch to a more reliable Internet provider in your area.
In our office, our regular Internet connection ( currently a DSL service ) is down about 1 day per year. During that 1 day, we use a Verizon "MiFi" device to access the Internet. We have never experienced both DSL and Verizon being down at the same time.
When planning for worst-case scenarios, you should also plan for the event that the office loses power, or a pipe bursts and ruins equipment, theft of equipment, or a fire destroys the office, or no one can get to the office due to poor weather.
Yes, of course. You can pull in a backup from the data center to be copied down to a computer in your building. You own your data.
What is different about Pogstone compared to proprietary companies, is that we are one part of a large and robust ecosystem surrounding the CiviCRM and Drupal open source software applications. You can visit the CiviCRM.org website and get in touch with another professional service provider to assist you. ( We are currently a top-tier provider on that list, which we are very proud of. ) CiviCRM is already in use by over 3,500 non-profits. Drupal is powering over 1% of websites on the Internet.
Being part of a platform with a large and robust community and ecosystem is a much safer choice than choosing a product that is tied to the fortunes of a single business.
There are many risks associated with proprietary software. For example, you can only use the software with the permission of the company. In a real world example, I know of a small software company with under 100 employees. Their flagship product was fairly priced and used to run the back-office of many very large financial institutions. That company was bought by another software company. Later on, the new owners informed the clients that they must sign a 5 year contract with prices 5 times the old prices. If they did not sign the contract, they would loose the right to use the software within 6 weeks! Everyone signed, because they could not switch to another product in such a short time frame.
Those clients owned their own data and could export it. However, the raw data was not useful without the software to work with it. With open source software, you can always get the software such as the MySQL database.
We intend to be in business for many years. However, even very old and established businesses close their doors, such as Merrill Lynch, Arther Anderson, and Lehman Brothers.
Our core products are built on the leading nonprofit industry tools, such as CiviCRM which is used by over 3,500 organizations and Drupal, which is used by millions of websites.
Do the math, which has a more stable future:
- A product only in use with less than 800 organizations. One small company is responsible for 100% of the research, development, and support of their product. A product that is only possibly appealing to older synagogues because its primarily a desktop product.
- A product only in use with less than 300 organizations. One small company is responsible for 100% of the research, development, and support of their product. A product that is only possibly appealing to older synagogues because its primarily a desktop product.
- A product in use with over 3,500 organizations, which run the entire spectrum of nonprofits. A large and ever-expanding community of over 35 companies like Pogstone, plus thousands of nonprofits who provide staff, volunteers and other resources to further develop the product. Since the core product is open source, everyone is encouraged to pitch in.
Lets analyze the following hypothetical situation:
Lets pretend a small company is spending all their time and resources on trying to web-enable their antiquated desktop product, as well as supporting their clients using the desktop products.
How much time, resources and energy are they spending adding new features to their product?
How much time are they investing in providing mobile tools or social network integration for their products?
ShulSuite is about 40% customizations that are unique to Pogstone, and do not exist in CiviCRM. We have also heavily customized the CiviCRM configurations so that it can be used successfully by our clients.
Benefits that are unique to ShulSuite:
- Everything is pre-configured for a typical synagogue, including standardized custom fields, standardized groups, tags, and many other Drupal and CiviCRM configurations that we have worked hard to identify as best suited for synagogue processes. These configurations are being continuously improved, as we learn from each new synagogue client.
- Full accounts receivables, batch billing, statements, year-end tax letters, and other related features.
- Yahrzeits, cemetery management, memorial plaques, and related features.
- Features related to the Hebrew calendar, such as calculating bar/bat mitzvah dates based on Hebrew date of birth.
- Reserved seating and facility management capabilities
- Treating related individuals as a single financial entity when appropriate. Such as a single balance for married couples for the duration of their relationship.
- Many custom screens, reports, searches and custom mail merge tokens to handle common synagogue tasks.
- Many custom import tools designed to quickly move data from common synagogue software packages, such as Rakefet, Chaverware, and others. We also have other import tools designed to "fill in the gaps" when importing from any system.
- A fully supported and hosted professional environment. This includes support for bulk email generated from ShulSuite, and specialized/optimized servers configured for ShulSuite. This also includes backups, disaster recovery, help desk, performance monitoring, and more,
- Automatic updates to ShulSuite, including all embedded components.
- Behind the scenes testing of new versions of all included components for suitability for synagogue processes.
- Specialized documentation and training designed for a synagogue, including videos and online webinars. Access to ShulSuite community areas.
- Hot-fixes for bugs in CiviCRM, automatically applied for all clients.
- In testing phase: Purim basket fundraising projects.
Our standard contract includes a privacy section that is acceptable to our existing clients. We can add additional privacy sections and extra privacy contracts that are prepared with your local regulations in mind. This would be no different than your current use of an American company to provide support to your desktop-software application, where a backup of your data is periodically sent to the support staff in order to trouble-shoot an issue. Or if you you allow a support staff member at that company remotely access your local computer in order to support the product.
