Comprehensive Membership Profiles for Your Amazing Members

Membership Profiles Display on iPad

Get comprehensive information about your members using our member Profiles. Including: Contact Info, Professional Affiliations, Invoicing, Groups, and Contributions.

Profiles Example from Tendenci.com

Profile Images

Make a personal connection with your members by knowing who they are!  Our profile images are powered by Gravatar, so members don’t have to upload their image more than once!
gravatar logo

Contact Information

You work hard to keep your organization healthy!  Get in touch quickly and easily by having fast access to member contact info.

Professional Affiliations and Personal Relationships

Personal information about your members helps give you information about what they might be looking to get out of being a member.  Members can also attract business sponsorship.  Get to know who works for an organization so that you can thank them for their support and involvement with the community and serve them better!

Invoicing

Keep everything in one place, from event tickets to memberships.  Your members can avoid having to ask if they paid for something by accessing invoices directly from their Membership Profiles!

Groups

Committees, Study Groups, and Groups are all integrated in to the Tendenci platform to cover your organizational needs.  Grouping people together means delivering more targeted content to those users.  You can address groups with things like: Events, Newsletters, Articles, and more.

Contributions

Users can track their contributions on your site.  If they have permissions to write articles, create events, or edit other content, they will be able to find which content they have changed by looking that their Profile’s Contribution Logs!

This is just the beginning, find out more about what Tendenci can do.

NonProfits and Associations Love Tendenci

Tendenci Association Websites

Written specifically for the NPO/Association market, Tendenci has continued to grow and adapt to meet the specific needs of these groups. From building on an open source framework that allows complete freedom  – to mobile responsive software design – to online forums and newsletter features that keep the community involved, Tendenci continues to invest in the NPO sector. And the NPO’s have responded!

We are pleased to continue our relationship with the following organizations that have recently released upgraded websites and extend a warm welcome to those that are new to the Tendenci community.

  1. University and College Designers Association Selects Tendenci for New Membership Website

    UCDA Tendenci Website

  2. Groundwater Resources Association of California Launches Tendenci Membership Management Website

    GRAC Tendenci Website

  3. The Children’s Assessment Center of Houston Releases New Mobile Tendenci Website

    CAC Houston Tendenci Website

  4. American Association of Singapore Launches Upgraded Mobile Tendenci Website For Their Membership

    AA Singapore Tendenci Website

  5. American Citizens Abroad, Inc. Launches Tendenci Membership Management Website

    American Citizens Abroad Tendenci Website

  6. Rice University Energy and Environment Initiative (EEi) Presents Transformative Solutions with New Website

    Rice University EEI Tendenci Website

  7. International Association of Directional Drilling Chooses Tendenci for Fast Launch of Member Website

    IADD Tendenci Website

Tendenci Exports – Plus Easy Ways to Make Static Copies of Your Site

Today’s Tendenci community knowledge share. Here are three very easy free or low cost methods of making a static copy a web site. Use with caution, just know you have the power.

On Windows you can use HTTrack https://www.httrack.com/

HTTrack_Website_Copier_-_Free_Software_Offline_Browser__GNU_GPL_
Download a static version of a web site to your PC

On a Mac computer you can use sitesucker ($5) http://ricks-apps.com/osx/sitesucker/index.html

SiteSucker to download a static site to your Mac Computer
SiteSucker to download a static site to your Mac Computer

On the go? You can also use sitesucker from the app store to download to your iphone or ipad for $2 http://ricks-apps.com/ios/sitesucker/index.html

Use IOS to download your site for $2
Use IOS to download your site for $2

Of course for structured data in Tendenci, there are TONS of ways to export including exporting a copy of your entire database. There are help files on common exports like How to export your membership . There are too many options to list them all, but I’d encourage you to visit the support center or just google “tendenci exports” for more.

If you are on version 5 and want to “kick the tires” on Tendenci version 7, use https://demo.tendenci.com – you can login here https://demo.tendenci.com/accounts/login/ using “admin/admin” or “user/user”. It does reset every hour or so because of spammers but you can still get a feel for it. A HUGE upgrade from version 5.

Tendenci Admin Default Dashboard
Tendenci Admin Default Dashboard

There is also a previous post on making a static copy of your site here that is a bit more technical as well.

Why do we point out all of the ways to copy your Tendenci site (or most sites really)? Doesn’t that make it easier to leave?

Yes. Yes it does. BUT people rarely leave. Or if they do, they typically stay on Tendenci and self host. They’re still part of the Tendenci community which helps us all.

Another reason we promote exports and offsite backups is because we know the more freedom you have, realizing you have that freedom especially on the Tendenci open source platform, makes it less likely for clients to leave.

Think about it. Why would anyone who actually understands their product is open, does far more than other options, is lower cost, and they can self host if they want… why would that person make the decision to leave? It’s illogical.

I mean, who wants to be the President of an Association that takes it backwards in time to proprietary technology or an older open source software built on an unpopular programming language? That’s not in the best interests of the association long term.

Tendenci is written in Python and uses Java and Javascript libraries. This linked chart says it all.

programming-popularity-2016
THE 8 MOST IN-DEMAND PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES OF 2016

Popular programming languages means more coders for open source projects written in that language. And more capable people to modify and customize your install if you choose.

One of our goals is FREEDOM from the tyranny of per-user-licensing, proprietary products that want to own YOUR DATA, long term contracts, sites that post your events on THEIR site so if you leave then the history of that event is gone in the blink of an eye. Companies don’t own your data and they shouldn’t trap you.

We think that is unethical and just wrong.

Membership Management Software should be Open Source, Accessible, Responsive, and Search Engine friendly by default. Tendenci does all of those things.

Further we believe that Open Source Membership Management Software should be written in a Modern Programming Language like Python (watch out for bunnies) and the software should documented and open source (free, as in beer.) Even the US Government likes Open Source!

Want to change something? Get involved! Post on the forums at https://ww.tendenci.com/forums or post an issue at https://github.com/tendenci/tendenci/issues . If you are a programmer or into documentation, submit a pull request.

We make it easy to leave because we hope you don’t. Hence Tendenci has an incredibly low churn rate. That creates stability you can count on.

#peace

UCOA-Unified Chart of Accounts for NPOs

Short version: Unified Chart of Accounts for NPOs

“Hey y’all, let’s all adopt the Unified Chart Chart of Accounts and save time and energy to focus on our causes!

Long version:

Dear Board of Directors, Executive Director, long time accountant, and major donors. Let’s all adopt the Unified Chart Chart of Accounts and save time and energy to focus on our causes!

Wouldn’t it be better if at least reviewing the financials was simplified so you could focus on your cause? Here is a partial solution:

Unified Chart of Accounts for NPOs
National Center for Charitable Statistics UCOA

The big organizations know, but for smaller NGOs, did you know that the National Center for Charitable Statistics has published an open source/free/please-use-it Unified Chart Chart of Accounts JUST FOR YOU!

Like many of the folks reading this blog, living the life of adventure which accompanies working with worldwide NGOs, we serve on a lot of boards and sponsor a lot of activities for the greater good. We love that part of our responsibilities!

OK, maybe we just agree on the need.

A board member must understand their serious and legal responsibility to provide financial stewardship and demonstrate strong fiduciary responsibility to the organization. While not losing site of the goals.  Nothing “returns to your soul” like giving of your time and energy. It comes back to us all big time as long as it is fulfilling.

May your organization never again lose a board member to the tedium of going through financials printed out of Excel that have evolved from double entry accounting as fast as Moore’s law to quantum accounting for no reason at all. Simplify with the Unified Chart of Accounts. Even if the rules are constantly changing on you.

3 Cool Free or Low Cost Tools for NPOs

We like the number 3 and non-profits like to save money and dedicate their funds to their causes. Combine them and you get a super short list of 3 cool things that are free or low cost for nonprofits and associations to control costs.

  1. FREE Google PPC money for those who Qualify. Learn more about Google Grants here:  https://www.google.com/grants/
  2. Tech Soup Stock has super cheap software for NPOs  http://www.techsoup.org/get-product-donations
  3. And the NTEN community isn’t free but will help you save thousands through knowledge sharing.  http://www.nten.org/
#peace

Tendenci Newsletter Generator – It’s Back!

First – let’s talk about the NOW. Newsletters are back in Tendenci 6!!

Newsletter Generator for Nonprofits
Tendenci’s Open Source Integrated Newsletter Generator

Tendenci’s Open Source Integrated Newsletter Generator

A lot of long time clients have resisted upgrading to the responsive-mobile-first-open-source-version of Tendenci 6, or even the responsive designs in Tendenci 5, because of one killer feature in Tendenci 4 (the old Microsoft version) and that was NEWSLETTERS.

We listened. We heard you. It’s back.

The ability to communicate with your membership by study group, by event attendees, to only the board of directors, etc. We heard you loud and clear and the newsletter generator is back in full force in Tendenci 6. To prevent the tragedy of the commons (e.g. another client blacklisting a shared email server) we are requiring clients to use either their own SES or a product like Mailgun.com for the newsletter. This will offload the sending to the third party and each client can manage their own newsletter statistics for the first time.

This also alleviates another area of pain. If one client out of 500 ish purchased an email list and the bounce rate was too high, well, then EVERYBODY got slammed and nobody could even do a “forgot my password” request because another client blacklisted the mail server. It’s just the way the Internet works. Why can’t we all just get along, right?

If you are on Tendenci 6 (not an automatic upgrade from T4 or T5 because we pushed more of the design to the front end … um…. where it belongs and the designers can do their thing. Rock on you artsy folk who make software look awesome. More freedom for you. (just please no comic sans, ok?)

If you are on T4, which is approaching end of life very quickly as I type this (Microsoft, not Tendenci dictated these dates so please don’t send email asking if we can secure something Microsoft isn’t patching anymore).

Turn a negative into a positive. Now is a great time to consider a mobile first bootstrap 3 theme that integrates with Tendenci 6! They’re smart, mobile first, responsive, and make you a rock start. Check out www.wrapbootstrap.com for bootstrap3 themes. They’re kinda awesome like this:

Affordable Themes for Tendenci Sites
Bootstrap3 themes for Open Source Tendenci!

 

Just one of the many new functional mobile-first capabilities that have been built into open source tendenci since we started the rewrite in 2009.  This is functionality we have been able to bring back with the help of the Tendenci community.

After 17 years we know the functionality the people who use the site to register for events need, as well as the needs of the people on the board-of-directors and the person functioning as Executive Director. It just takes a while to rewrite 10 years of code in a completely different technology. And we’re just getting started!

Check the help file for the Tendenci Association Newsletter Sending Tool for more detail and edits over time.

An Events Calendar Tool Powerful Enough to Handle 2013 – Twelfth Day of Christmas Gifts from Tendenci to You!

merry christmas frame spegcs calendarComing to Tendenci Websites in 2013: Event Management and Registration Features You’ll Love for Your Festivals, Galas, and Fundraising Events!

2013’s going to be a Big Year, and Tendenci’s working on new updates to your online calendar and event registration module because we want to make sure this is your biggest year yet!

On the 12th Day of Christmas, Tendenci’s Gift to You: Twelve New Updates to the Events Calendar Module!

Here’s 12 new features and updates we’re making this year to the Tendenci Events Calendar module to help you manage online registrations for your association programs and fundraising Gala’s.

** We’ve got even more event module updates planned for Tendenci’s 2013 Roadmap, and this list is just to give you a taste of the delicious treats we’ll be adding to Tendenci in 2013!

You’ll Love Creating New Events With These New Features

1) Import and Export Events

events import option coming soon
Soon You Can Import Multiple Events with a CSV Template!

We’re super excited about this feature because it will make it faster for you to create multiple events simply by importing all of the text and dates in a spreadsheet, instead of having to create and type in all of this information manually for each event.

2) Default Custom Event Registration Forms

Now you have the choice of using  the default event registration form, or our improved custom event registration forms. We listened to your feedback this year and the new custom registration forms now have predefined  fields that integrate with the website’s database and user records for reporting and simplify the time it takes you to create and customize a new registration form.

custom event registration form
We’ve simplified custom event registration forms for you!

If you want to use a custom registration form now, you already will find a default form with the standard contact information handy to add or remove to your form simply by checking a box. You can also customize which fields on the custom form also display on the event roster. Now you can ask what t-shirt size or special meal requests your guests have without the time involved with creating a brand new form.

3) Schedule Automatic Email Reminders to Attendees

email reminders automatically when you create event
Upload Images and Format Event Reminders to Match Your Association’s Brand

When you create new events, you’ll find a new option that enables you to send email reminders to your attendees that you create and schedule. Tendenci will automatically send the reminder for you, so you don’t have to remember to remind your registrants!

4, 5, & 6) Three New Ways to Promote, Search and Display Your Eventspriority groups and event type filtering new options

4) More Search Options

We’re adding more searchable field filters to the events module so your members can find the events most relevant to each of them. You’ll be able to search your events by date, event type, membership and user group permissions, and more!

5) New Priority Event Feature

You’ll soon find a new Priority checkbox on your new event forms. When you check this, Tendenci will keep your events on top of your events search list, and add a Star icon to your month view calendar. Now you can highlight your main events each month to help your members decide which events to attend.

priority events search and month views
Tendenci Makes Your Top Events Our Priority Too!

Here’s some fun ideas on how you can use the new Priority Event feature:

  • National Associations can feature a different Chapter’s programs and events each month to increase engagement from your different local chapter members!
  • Use the Priority events to promote membership engagement and offer prizes for those who attend every featured event this year!
  • Increase Corporate Sponsorship and Corporate Membership dollars by offering to add your supporting partners’ events to your calendar with the Priority feature setting for higher level packages.

6) Group-based Permission Settings for Displaying Events

This feature will enable you to designate certain events as “belonging” to certain user groups or membership types and allow you to do some really fun things with how events are displayed on your website. For example, one of your study groups could have their monthly study meetup on your event calendar and you’d assign the event to their study group.

Then, you could create a sidebar or box that would only display upcoming events from your event calendar that are assigned to that study group on the study group’s main information page. Members of the study group could visit the study group page and also see upcoming events specific to the group and you only have to add the event once to your calendar to share it in multiple places on your site!

Better Registration Experience for Your Users!

You want your website to be fun for your users and members in addition to your staff, and we’re making big changes across our website to provide better user experiences for your online community members. Here’s some of the ways we’re making registration for events simpler for attendees.

7) Fewer Steps to Register and Pay for an Event

We’re streamlining our registration form so that event registrants can go through as few clicks as possible when purchasing tickets and RSVP’ing for your association events. For most events, your users will be able to add multiple event attendees, select member versus non-member pricing, and view their total all from one registration page.

Adding new registrants is as easy as clicking a button – literally! Just click “Add Another Registrant” and a new section for the registration form will appear below the first registrant. Click to add as many registrants as you need and then submit just once to register and pay for everyone.

registration form for events default
We’re Streamlining Event Registration Process for Your Attendees!

8) Your Users Can Find and Manage Their Events for You!

With the new “My Upcoming Events” option, your members and regular event registrants can now search for events they’ve signed up for, update any of their registration information, cancel events, and add the event to their calendar using the Event ICS option from one place.

new my upcoming events feature
Your members can find and manage their event registration information!

Bonus for You and Your Staff:  this empowers your members to manage their own event registrations, view outstanding balances, and make payments on your website. This means your event manager doesn’t have to handle as many of these admin tasks and she can focus on all of the important tasks!

9) Updated Email Template for Event Registration Confirmations

We’ve made a few small updates to the default system email template that your website sends to registrants and confirms their registration along with their receipt for paid events.

The new email template includes an image and uses more of the formatting from your events’ description fields to give your event confirmation emails a look and feel that more closely matches your website’s Event Page. We’ve also made some updates to the helpful links section of the email to ensure your event registrants can find all the information about your event details as well as manage their outstanding balances and registration information.

images in email confirmation
We’re Updating the Look and Feel of Event Confirmation Email Templates!

10) Your Event Roster Now Tracks Attendance

Your event roster has a new “Attend” checkbox where you can mark who attended an event from the roster on your website. If you don’t have internet and a web browser at your event, then you can also print the roster with the Attend checkbox. After the event, take your printout and update the roster on your website with who attended so you can better track and measure attendance for your events.

event roster screenshot
Tendenci Event Roster to Manage Registrants

This is a huge benefit for large events where you have a team of volunteers handling check-ins. They can all be logged into your website and click to check off the people who they’ve confirmed at the event simultaneously!  The next day, you can log into your site and see at a glance who attended and didn’t. You can even view what time they were checked in.

11) Search and Manage Event Registrants Individually

The Event Roster is more intended for you to use to manage all of your event registrants in a batch, and when you need to find a specific registration to cancel or edit – you’ll be seeing some updates here also. We’re adding more information about the registrants to the view, and we’re integrating the event registrant’s contact information and site activity with their user profile on your website.

event registrant search
Manage Individual Event Registrations in Tendenci!

12) Improved Batch Management for Events

On the 10th Day of Christmas, we shared our updates coming to your site’s Admin Backend. You’ll love the updates we’re making that enable batch filtering, editing, and deleting event types, custom event registration forms, and discount codes from the Admin Backend.

Here’s a preview of a new feature that will let you reassign event types:

reassign and manage event types
Keep Your Events Calendar Up-to-Date with Your Association’s Many Changes!

You can quickly change all of the events of one type to another type. Most associations experience lots of changes as they grow and we see features like this helping you keep your website fresh and reflecting the latest changes without demanding lots of time from you and your staff.

Sign-Up for Tendenci 2013 Updates

Keep an eye out on the Tendenci Events Calendar because in 2013, we’re adding new training and workshops for our Advanced Tendenci users. We’ll also start posting scheduled maintenance and software updates, speaking events, and major announcements to help keep you in the loop with what we’re doing at Tendenci.

We are constantly exploring new ways to keep you in the loop with what we’re changing here at Tendenci. Let us know how you like to find out what’s going on here at Tendenci!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!

We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website! Visit our Twelve Days of Christmas Main Page to find new gifts for each day from now until January 5th!

We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.

Advanced Tour of Your Admin Backend – Tenth Day of Christmas Gifts from Tendenci to You!

Coming in 2013: We’re updating several features in the administration dashboard to give you easier control over your site’s advanced management tools. 

When we rewrote Tendenci in Python and Django in order to release an open source version, we also updated the Administration Management Dashboard that we commonly will refer to as your “Admin Backend”.  The Admin Backend is intended for Tendenci Super-Users to manage the more advanced site and user functions, as well as give our open source users quick access to developer and theme documentation and tools.

ON THE TENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS… TENDENCI’S GIFT TO YOU: Awesome Updates to Your Admin Backend!

access admin backend

Until now, most users have probably never seen this part of your site, and because we’re going to be adding tons of pretty awesome new features to your Admin Backend this year – I thought I’d offer y’all a tour.

If you have any questions or comments after the tour, please post in our comments section below or email me.

Your Administration Dashboard aka “The Admin Backend”

You can easily navigate to your site’s Admin backend two ways:

  • By adding /admin to the end of your site URL in the browser address bar
  • Navigating using your Blue Top Bar Admin Nav Menu through the dropdown menu under “Quick Links”

** You’ll need to have Super-User level access to the Tendenci website in order to access the Admin Backend regions.  

Sneek Preview of Upcoming Awesome Admin Backend Updates

Here’s a screenshot the site Administration Dashboard Homepage that you’ll see when you first log into the admin backed. You’ll see the full list of modules under Site Administration installed on your site.  If you install any plugins, such as the staff or videos plugins, you’ll find those listed here as well.

admin backend tendenci contributions
Your Admin Backend Dashboard Gives You Access to Advanced Site Features.

The Admin Backend dashboard also shows you your “Recent Actions” where  you can see recent items you’ve added (marked with a green plus icon), and edited, (marked with a pencil icon). The actions are linked to the content enabling you to quickly access the most recent content you’ve been working on.admin backend tendenci contributions

New Batch Management Tools

If you click through to one of the modules, for example the Files module, you’ll find the batch organization tools to make it faster for you to update, add, delete, and manage your site’s content and users. The batch organization tools give you the ability to effect multiple files at once.

Here’s a preview of some of the new batch management features we’re adding:

Click to filter and view Contributors and Owners of Files, Pages, Articles and Other Site Content

Filter content and files by the creator of the item on your site with a single click. The updated Filters let you see which users have added content as well as filter by active or inactive files.

files admin backend updates to sort by file owner
Filter and View Content based on the User who Added the Content

You might use this if you’re trying to find the original content for something that a former Staff member or Volunteer had created. You can even combine the filter by owner with the active filter option to see all content that’s currently active or inactive.

Inline Batch Editing for Titles, Tags, and other Fields

With the new inline editing option, you can quickly edit certain fields like we’re showing here for the stories module. Without having to click and wait for the full edit page to load – you can update tags, titles, categories and other fields just by clicking in the field, typing your changes and pressing enter or clicking out of the box.

stories in admin backend have more edit options
Inline Editing Options for Stories in the Admin Backend
drag and drop re ordering in admin backend
Just hover over the Reorder icon and then click and hold your left mouse button to change the ordering.

Use the drag and drop re-ordering feature to rearrange the order of content inside your admin backend. This is really great for content such as stories, photos, and video galleries where you may want the content to display to users in a different order than you originally uploaded the content in.

For example, when we initially uploaded a series of Membership videos to the website, the videos were displaying out of the series’ order on the video gallery page.  By going to the Admin Backend “Videos” dashboard, we were able to drag and drop the videos into the right order, and display the Membership Module 9 Video Series in order from start to finish:

video gallery re order display series
Simply Drap and Drop to Display Your Videos in Order!

Advanced Sorting Options

The new sorting options will enable you to quickly sort a module’s files using one or more of the header Fields. You can select which header fields to include in the sort and rank them in order for sorting.

For example, let’s say that you’re reviewing content on your website to make sure everything’s up-to-date for the new year. Using the advanced sorting options, you can search your Articles by the last date they were updated so that the most recently updated articles showed up first or last. You can also select to filter out inactive and pending articles by clicking the “active” filter. This way, you can easily start sorting content by starting with content that you know is publicly visible.

admin backend sort and filter field headers
Click to Sort and Filter Content in the Admin Backend

As you update content, the “Last Updated” date will change, automatically creating a way for you to keep track of your content that’s been recently edited and see at a glance what content is out of date.

Advanced Site Documentation from Docutils

We also integrated Tendenci with Docutils, an open source document management tool.  New Tendenci sites automatically will include advanced documentation and resources for those of you working on Tendenci as a developer or designer and you’ll access these tools from your Admin Backend dashboard.

template and site documentation
Find Advanced Documentation and Resources in Your Tendenci Admin Backend

Our developers have packaged up helpful code snippets, in-depth information about Models and Views, and more!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!merry christmas 12 days tendenci frame

We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website! Visit our Twelve Days of Christmas Main Page to find new gifts for each day from now until January 5th!

We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.