Association Management Software Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Tendenci Blog

2019-08-072019-08-08

The NYSSPE Westchester / Putnam Chapter Unveils Brand New Tendenci Site to Connect Local Engineering Community

Houston, TX —

The New York State Society of Professional Engineers, Inc. Westchester/Putnam Chapter supports their State (NYSSPE) and National (NSPE) Associations in protecting and promoting professional engineers in all disciplines and areas of practice, with a focus on the local needs of Westchester and Putnam County Professional Engineers.

The Westchester / Putnam Chapter chose Tendenci – The Open Source AMS to help connect local engineers through their events, as well as to provide current and prospective engineers with a wealth of knowledge and resources needed to further their training and education. The engineering association’s new Tendenci website was updated with a fresh contemporary layout to complement their messaging and to provide an engaging mobile-responsive interface to their users in the local engineering community.

NYSSPE-WPC’s new website utilizes many of Tendenci’s CMS features, including an array of Event Types from networking to professional development, to reach their constituents. Their new Customized Forms allow members to apply for sponsorship opportunities, nominate exemplary engineers for awards, and even apply for scholarships!

In addition, the chapter is able to showcase their corporate sponsors in the Directories Module, as well as incorporating them into the homepage layout, as a way to give thanks for supporting the engineering community.

Tendenci – The Open Source AMS is proud to partner with NYSSPE-WPC on their mission to promote and defend the lawful and ethical practice of engineering, enhance the professional development of local engineers and future engineers, and to preserve and sustain the future of local engineering practices.

We look forward to seeing their positive effects on the local Westchester Putnam County engineering community!

Visit the Westchester Putnam Chapter of the New York State Society of Professional Engineers’ Site

OUR MISSION IS TO CONNECT AND ORGANIZE THE WORLD’S PEOPLE. DO GOOD.

2019-08-012019-08-02

Let’s remember Richard Stallman’s wise words

Why? Because Tendenci – The Open Source Association Management Software is open source and available to the world.

Richard Stallman asked himself a simple question. What does society need?

“What does society need? It needs information that is truly available to its citizens — for example, programs that people can read, fix, adapt, and improve, not just operate. But what software owners typically deliver is a black box that we can’t study or change.
Society also needs freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to control part of their own lives.
And, above all, society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary cooperation in its citizens. When software owners tell us that helping our neighbors in a natural way is “piracy”, they pollute our society’s civic spirit.
This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not price.”
— Richard Stallman, Why Software Should Not Have Owners

Serious question: What differentiates Tendenci from all other AMS?

Well, what other MAJOR AMS can you self deploy on the servers of your choice? In the data center of your choice? In the country of your choice? With the encryption and firewall restrictions of YOUR CHOICE. That’s just the beauty of open source.
The price starts at zero. It. Is. Fully. Open Source. Here is a list of alternatives to Tendenci AMS (hint: almost all aren’t open).
We take security very serious. Tendenci is the strongest and most secure web-based software platform for NPO’s globally. We also understand there are no “perfect” or “completely secure” systems. But we do more than just try. Transparency is the key to Open Source AMS – no in-betweens. So there’s that.
Languages? Ok! You can translate your AMS into the language of your choice. Although, you might find someone has already done this for you – 70+ languages of them.

OUR MISSION IS TO CONNECT AND ORGANIZE THE WORLD’S PEOPLE. DO GOOD.

2019-07-162019-07-16

Tendenci AMS Gains Ground in Global Market Share

Tendenci – The Open Source AMS Gains Ground in Global Market Share

It is great to see an independent third party rank Association Management Software from a global perspective. As a part of the Tendenci AMS Community, we will let the summary from HTF on market growth and Tendenci’s Global Share speak for itself:

Source: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/1722509-global-association-management-software-market-3

From the report:

HTF MI has added the report on Global Association Management Software Market for the forecast till 2025, the report comprises of the estimation of the Global Association Management Software Market. The following Industry is shown to progress with a noteworthy rise in the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) during the forecast period owing to various factors driving the market. Some of the key players mentioned in this research are “Cvent Event Management, TOPS Professional, in1touch, Raklet, Book-It Membership Software, Tendenci, Personify360, Aptify, Dashboard & MASS”, etc.

And:

The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The numerical data is backed up by statistical tools such as SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Analysis, PESTLE analysis and so on.

Company Profiles: Cvent Event Management, TOPS Professional, in1touch, Raklet, Book-It Membership Software, Tendenci, Personify360, Aptify, Dashboard & MASS
Global Association Management SoftwareMarket by Types: , On-Premise & Cloud-Based
Global Association Management SoftwareMarket by Applications: Small Business, Medium-sized Business & Large Business

Rapid Growth Factors in the Global AMS Software Market

In addition, the market is growing at a fast pace and the report shows us that there are a couple of key factors behind that. The most important factor that’s helping the market grow faster than usual is the tough competition.

Tendenci – The Open Source AMS continues to grow globally, we believe, because it is a community much more than anything else. All of the code is on github, documentation on readthedocs, and translation is crowd-sourced on Transifex. Self host or host with us, your choice, your data, your association.

THANK YOU to all of the developers out there who are contributing, translating, updating and maintaining a very complex piece of software. AMS software that is inclusive of other languages and cultures, and a team that believes in security and privacy.

OUR MISSION IS TO CONNECT AND ORGANIZE THE WORLD’S PEOPLE. DO GOOD.

2019-05-292019-05-29

Tendenci | Global Association Management Software Market 2019

Tendenci – The Open Source Association Management System – amongst other AMS systems – is the leading open source software. OUR MISSION IS TO CONNECT AND ORGANIZE THE WORLD’S PEOPLE. DO GOOD.

Check out the new study released by HTF MI on Global Association Management Software Market, which covers key business segments and wide scope geographies to get deep dive analyzed market data -and a historical data from 2013 to 2018 forecasted till 2025.

Cheers to the Open Source Community!

2019-05-072019-05-07

The Society of Petroleum Engineers – Gulf Coast Section Upgrades to the Latest Version of Tendenci to Support Their Growing Network

The most active section of SPE International, SPE-GCS has recently upgraded to the latest version of Tendenci software, relying on the feature-rich Tendenci Association Management System (AMS) to deliver a dynamic, responsive online community that serves their members with timely information on events and webinars hosted by the organization.

The Brooks Law Group Celebrates Rebranding with a Revamped Tendenci Website

Houston, TX — January 21, 2019

The Brooks Law Group, based in Houston, has offered its expertise in legal and attorney-client privileged consulting services to healthcare providers throughout the country for over 20 years.

As The Brooks Law Group went through the rebranding process last year, they relied on the feature-rich Tendenci Content Management System (CMS) to build a fresh modern look and an engaging interface that makes information readily accessible.

In addition to the fresh, mobile-responsive design, they are currently implementing Tendenci’s groups and newsletter mailing features to streamline the accessability to their legal and consulting services, as well as to disseminate information to individual subsets of clients.

We are proud to partner with The Brooks Law Group as they achieve their vision to provide aggressive representation and creative solutions for home healthcare and hospice providers throughout the country.

View The Brooks Law Group Site Live

2018-05-032018-05-03

The EU GDPR – the General Data Protection Regulation

RSA Conference in San Francisco — GDPR as seen by a vid from the RSA Conference

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation starts May 25, 2018. This is mostly an FYI as Tendenci “the Company” does not engage in cross site monitoring. It creeps us out a bit.

Yet while Tendenci does not do cross site tracking or individual tracking, it is possible that YOUR site does if you are using Google Analytics, DoubleClick or any number of third party add-ons and plugins.

It is up to YOU to reauthorize and comply with the data protection policies associated with third party add-ons on your site.

What DOES Tendenci do that might allow you to make a mistake in GDPR compliance?

If used as designed, it would be hard to become out of compliance as every site is in an isolated database and container. Yet there are security functions that log activity on your Tendenci site, that if you were to use it for tracking with AI or sell your data, it could potentially be against the GDPRs regulations. Talk to your attorney about this.

For example PCI best practices require dual logging and analysis of the logs for security reasons. There is no direct identifying data in web logs, but they would obviously include things like the IP address to block DDoS attacks.

These logs are never sold or accessed by anyone but our security team to trouble shoot the application and provide feedback to the administrators. Remember, you have the same user interface and front end functionality that our team does if you host with us. Zero difference. And the logs do not contain any identifying information such as an email or name.

We are NOT lawyers, Thus it is up to YOU to determine how you manage your data. We do not, nor have we ever, sold client data to third parties.

2018-04-062018-04-06

Tendenci Transparency Report – Why isn’t Wild Apricot Posting One?

Yup, AMS transparency reporting is critically important. And perhaps also equally a bit boring. After all, you are looking for what is MISSING.

In Tendenci – the Open Source AMS’ latest transparency report, yup, nothing has changed. Yea!

And given Tendenci AMS is fully open source and still building for the future , well, it’s pretty clear what our position is. We believe in open source and transparency.

What other MAJOR AMS can you self deploy on the servers of your choice? In the data center of your choice? In the country of your choice? With the encryption and firewall restrictions of YOUR CHOICE. That’s the beauty of open source.

And the price starts at zero. It. Is. Fully. Open. Source.

What is Wild Apricot’s transparency report? After all, they are recently touted as the new kid on the block. Welcome! Yet what is their position on transparency?

Disclaimer in defense of Wild Apricot – in all fairness, AMS systems take a solid 10 years to write. They really are doing a great job catching up, I’m only addressing transparency in this post. Plus at Tendenci, we love a good strong new competitor adding value for NPOs/NGOs and Associations. We love that they are leveling up. All we’re saying is, let’s see their transparency reports? Why not be open source?

And yes, that is a challenge. Step up people!

Regarding Open Source – hey, why not support local: Tendenci pricing starts at ZERO ($0.00). Many people host in the Tendenci Cloud at AWS because we’re a good fit. Yet, our hosting pricing might not work for you in your country, right?

If so, then why not support a local developer in your community? Help build your home country’s tech sector by supporting your local developers!

Back to the business stuff – we have updated our latest transparency report. No changes. (check mark in the “no changes=good” column folks!)
https://www.tendenci.com/transparencyreporting/

Even though the competition is (mostly) NOT truly free and open source, that doesn’t mean they can’t be responsible and tell you if they have turned over your data. It does mean that any proprietary vendor offering free services is selling your data.

Is your AMS handing over, or monitoring, all of your data? Perhaps to the highest bidder or to the country of origin? You have a right to know.

Seriously, if any sector in the world needs responsible disclosure, it’s the association and non-profit/NGO sector.

Truly AMS (association management systems) / association management software in our opinion. Thus, the small team, and the large community at Tendenci, challenge our competitors to be transparent!

Yes, we understand that warrant canaries aren’t completely cut and dried. But at least a good faith effort? Why are other AMS systems not posting transparency reports?

If the FBI stated that NGOs/NPOs/Associations were the first target of the Russian propaganda campaign to influence the US elections, then I personally take issue with this.

NOTE: Propaganda and motives of foreign countries does NOT mean collusion. Collusion, and hopefully there wasn’t any, is not a topic we are addressing at all. (That’s for the politicians and the courts to figure out. We’re just programmers trying to do good.)

Thus the CHALLENGE to other AMS SaaS providers: Post your Transparency Reports!

Really, we call on all of the alternatives to Tendenci to adopt a transparency reporting policy.

Why not? Even proprietary companies can be transparent, right?

Why hide anything from your clients, open source or not? We don’t get it. End users don’t have to, and shouldn’t, tolerate hidden data disclosure.

Transparency reporting is just one more reason we’re passionate about helping associations and non-profits with their causes! We try to take the high road. Yet now, it’s not just about data collection, data mining, cross site tracking, Russian to popular AMS systems, it’s about just having integrity to tell people what is going on.

Associations, and therefore association management software, is important in every country. That’s why Tendenci is Open Source and currently supports 75 languages!

Yes, stay with your trusted local developer. Just please fast check them and demand access to your code, access to all of your data, demand access to your rights. And yes, demand transparency.

That’s how we roll at Tendenci – brutally open and honest, full access, association management. You know, kind of like WordPress is for blogs and CMS. Open!

At Tendenci, we recognize the value of the work you do. And we believe you deserve OPEN. In fact, we think open is baseline.

We hope you do too. Because Associations matter. You matter. #rockon #demandTransparency #ams #associationmanagement #asae #associationchat

2018-02-272023-10-26

Tendenci AMS API Integration

OCT 2023 UPDATE: For information on accessing Tendenci data via API please see our GitHub discussion at https://github.com/tendenci/tendenci/issues/1023

For more on The Open Source AMS integration via API visit our AMS API Helpfile

Tendenci – the Open Source AMS is unique in that it is fully open source. However at times people would prefer to use an API to pull specific information. For that Django has several API integrations for your Association Management System such as:

django-tasty-pie is a REST based API to your AMS
https://github.com/django-tastypie/django-tastypie
The Django Rest Framework is also something the Tendenci community has been discussing switching to it as well.
http://www.django-rest-framework.org/

API’s aren’t mutually exclusive after all, right? You have options.

There are legitimate reasons to use an API. Examples include integration between a legacy mainframe system, ecommerce, or a development team that has chosen a different platform such as .NET or PHP.

Tendenci doesn’t meet all of the functional requirements for everyone by design. Instead we work with great technology like machine learning. The open AMS community isn’t focused on reinventing the wheel. It just doesn’t make economic sense for a non-profit, or even a for profit company, to reinvent Amazon.com or Ebay.com. This is particularly true if you are causes-based association or non-profit given the expense.

Does Tendenci AMS work with other providers? Absolutely. Any provider with an API or that supports SSO or RSS or has their own technology like google tag manager.

Non profits don’t have money to waste. Therefore we aligned our product to major industry supported technology.

Our technology stack as of 2018 is:

Tendenci
Django Web Framework
Javascript and jquery
Bootstrap CS
Python Programming Language
Postgres Database with GIS
Docker Containers
Ubuntu

For more on The Open Source AMS integration via API visit our AMS API Helpfile or read up on everything Tendenci Works With. Or if you aren’t into open source, there are definitely alternatives to Tendenci.

If you do pick an alternative, we suggest you consider Security FIRST and go from there.

2017-09-092017-09-09

The Incredible Growth of Python – StackOverflow

Python, the language used to program Tendenci – The Open Source AMS, continues it’s meteoric rise in the world of developers. And where the developers go is where the rest of us go. Thus Python’s rise matters. And it benefits every Tendenci user, self hosted or hosted with our small company (same software either way).

IEEE Spectrum rates the languages by its readers as follows:

Python has continued its upward trajectory from last year and jumped two places to the No. 1 slot, though the top four—Python, C, Java, and C++—all remain very close in popularity.

StackOverflow, a go-to site for pretty much every programmer and sysadmin out there, has a new blog post up on the incredible growth of the Python Programming Language. Python is of course the programming language used in Tendenci – The Open Source AMS. From the Stack Overflow post:

June 2017 was the first month that Python was the most visited tag on Stack Overflow within high-income nations. This included being the most visited tag within the US and the UK, and in the top 2 in almost all other high income nations (next to either Java or JavaScript). This is especially impressive because in 2012, it was less visited than any of the other 5 languages, and has grown by 2.5-fold in that time.

They have numerous charts to back up the data, but these two in particular paint a telling picture.

From Stack Overflow – the current tag questions viewed:

Perhaps even more impressive is the projection on the continued growth of Python. Just WOW!

The above graphs should give you confidence in your choice of using Tendenci as your AMS as the developers are not only there, but growing. Given Tendenci is fully open source (this is different from “free trial” AMS systems which are NOT actually FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). Wikipedia describes the difference as:

(FOSS means) anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.^[3] This is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright and the source code is usually hidden from the users.

Many of our competitors who are NOT Open Source and not true FOSS which can sometimes confuse people. I’ll do a future post on examples of sometimes misleading representations by AMS systems that are not “actually” Free and Open Source (FOSS) as defined on Wikipedia.

The good news is with the growth of Python, it only make sense that developers will look at and many will join in to help the community improve the software as they join associations themselves.

We’ve written about why we chose Python over PHP to develop Tendenci open source several times. Correctly choosing the open source stack gives us, and everyone in the community, confidence to see the trends predicted correctly. It wasn’t rocket science – we just listened to our team, we listened to younger developers, and most importantly we listened to our clients on what the future was/is going to be.

And associations are kind of a big deal and they can’t use minimum viable products.

Why are associations unwilling to accept apps that meet only minimal requirements? Um… because they started as Guilds and go back to Medieval times. From Britannica on Guilds and Trade Associations:

Guild, also spelled gild , an association of craftsmen or merchants formed for mutual aid and protection and for the furtherance of their professional interests. Guilds flourished in Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries and formed an important part of the economic and social fabric in that era.

and Britannica goes on….

… associations are known to have existed in ancient Rome, however, where they were called collegia. These craft guilds seem to have emerged in the later years of the Roman Republic. They were sanctioned by the central government and were subject to the authority of the magistrates.

This is a huge topic of course. Just know that Tendenci is the ONLY top ranked AMS system that is truly FOSS. Unlimited admins, users, contacts – you can self host or if hosted with us we only charge for processing power. Got 1M users and contacts and 50 admins? No problem. And the growth of Python assures your continued freedom from vendor lock-in no matter what.

#peace and happy (Python) programming y’all!