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.
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?
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.
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.
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
Dear Board of Directors, Executive Director, long time accountant, and major donors. Let’s all adopt the Unified Chart Chart of Accountsand 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:
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!
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.
And Python is the most Popular Coding Language of 2015. A nice winning streak! This matters to people choosing membership software because open source means it can’t be taken away from you. Lots of options to export from Tendenci as well if a better solution for your particular needs comes up.
Given the Django web framework behind Open SourceTendenci is written in Python, and all of Tendenci’s apps are written in Python, we feel pretty good about the future stability of our technology stack.
In other words, the future looks bright and we welcome more developers to join the Tendenci community!
The current version of Tendenci (7.x) has significant changes which are not compatible with Tendenci 5. This has prevented us from publishing the new code to make it easier for new users to install.
When?
We will begin publishing Tendenci 7 as a package possibly as soon as October 1, less than two weeks from now. It may not get pushed out on October 1, but people who are using the open source version and are on the 5.x release need to be prepared. The actual date Tendenci 7 will be pushed out as a package is when it is ready. But please plan on October 1.
Who?
Well, if you are hosted on tendenci.com’s servers and we manage your web site then you don’t have to change a thing and it will all just happen in the background. Clients on version 5 will remain on version 5 because of the theme changes made between version 5 and 6. Clients on version 6 will be upgraded to Tendenci 7.1
If you have your own developer or you are a developer, maybe jump over to github and the docs and keep an eye on things for the next couple of weeks. Maybe even submit issue requests for features.
Why are you telling us if there is nothing for us to worry about?
Because not everyone hosts with us and we need to try to make sure their IT team knows the upgrades are possible, but will require your technical team to do them. This is important to us even if they aren’t hosting because they are part of the community.
In fact growing the open source community of people using Tendenci is the biggest driver pushing us to refactor Tendenci. We’re geeks and collaborate on github.
Wait, what does “Refactor” mean again?
It means making it easier for programmers to work on the code. Technically from wikipedia they define it as “Code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing computer code – changing the factoring – without changing its external behavior.”
It’s time to refactor so we have more happy programmers. Tendenci is just too hard to install in the wild right now. That isn’t right. Plus Happy programmers means more contributors and it builds on the virtuous cycle that is what makes FOSS (Free Open Source Software) so cool. It truly takes a village.
Can’t you just contact every one who self hosts?
Unfortunately we don’t have a list and Tendenci doesn’t “phone home” so we really don’t know how many people are using it by self installing. But we care about them and we’re doing everything we can to get the word out. Everyone should be backing up their sites of course, but still, if you click “upgrade” and your layout goes wonky that isn’t fun. No data will be lost, but what a hassle.
Over at readthedocs. Click the image below and you’ll be on your way.
What if I self host and I don’t want to upgrade?
You should be fine as long as you don’t try to do an automatic upgrade. And of course you will need to keep an eye on the django project LTS timelines. https://www.djangoproject.com/download/
If you are on Tendenci 5, because of the changes with the django project itself you will need to upgrade from T5 to T6 and then to T7.1. This is all documented at https://tendenci.readthedocs.org
If you need legacy files they are linked at the bottom of this post.
OK, tell me the biggest benefit of refactoring again?
A programmer will be able to type “sudo pip install tendenci” and make a few server configuration changes and they’ll have a site up and running quickly. This matters because ease-of-use changes behavior. If you want to move forward, we have to take care of our programmers first! They care about you, so it is a virtuous cycle.
Wait, I want more technical info!
We’re gonna be pushing the technical details to https://tendenci.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ as soon as we get it all tested. We’ll be able to push the master branch to pypi again and life will be grand!
Wait, this stuff is too technical! (the opposite of above question)
I apologize for the technical stuff, but sometimes when working with software it can be technical. Just know that if you self host, talk to your local programmer and they will take care of you with the documentation we are posting at https://tendenci.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
So if I self host, and my webmaster clicks “update tendenci” and I’m on version 5 my site will break?
Yes. You’ll be able to fix it and you won’t lose any data, but you’d probably want to just restore a backup. And then go to https://tendenci.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ for the technical info.
What if I don’t wanna upgrade ever and my server is completely isolated on a ship in the middle of the ocean?
OK, well, we like an occasional steak so you have our sympathy for a diet of 100% fish. But secondarily we have all of the historic zip files, that are still on github but will be removed, available for download for some time at https://www.tendenci.com/download/release-archive/
First – let’s talk about the NOW. Newsletters are back in Tendenci 6!!
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?)
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!
When event organizers plan fundraising events, they meticulously plan out details regarding location, accommodations, logistics, and fundraising goals, but it’s also important to formulate a strategic plan for connecting with your online community.
In my half, (viewable on SlideShare), I discussed basic tips and tricks to help event organizers make their fundraising events successful.
Three things to keep in mind to make sure your event participants come back year after year are:
Personal relationships drive event fundraising success.
Your organization can significantly influence participant behavior.
Think of the event as an engagement tool to lock in a relationship.
One tangible takeaway for the audience was an event planning checklist for your online strategies. I thought it would be helpful to share it with the rest of the internet! Read on for a detailed explanation of each point. You can download a printable PDF from our website.
6-9 Months Before Your Event
64 percent of participants don’t know to raise funds.
Mobile Optimization
According to Mashable, 17.4% of all online traffic is mobile. If your site isn’t mobile optimized, your event could be missing out on a possible avenue of promotion. Additionally, if participants can’t access basic information about parking and registration on their mobile device, they’ll be less likely to participate again next year.
Template Emails
If you have participant teams fundraising for your event, give them tools to make their jobs easier. Did you know that 64% of participants don’t know that they should be raising funds? Creating email templates for team leaders is a great way to make fundraising easier for everyone involved!
Share Last Year’s Highlights
Past events can be an ill-used marketing medium. Don’t be afraid to resurrect last year’s stories to remind people how great this year is going to be.
Engage in a relationship with your event participants
Share Personal Stories
If your event had beneficiaries, then tell their story. People like to hear about the real people. Show your audience that you’re real and so are the people you’ve affected!
#Hashtag It!
Both Twitter and Facebook use hashtags (#) to aggregate data and content. Establish a hashtag for your event and begin using it to keep track of all your event data and content. That way, you can search for it and event attendees can participate by “hashtagging” posts during your event.
3-5 Months Before Your Event
Pre-Generate Content
Organizing your content ahead of time can really free up your time on event day. As speakers, giveaways, or certain events are locked in, pre-write content about them that you can save and share during the event for increased engagement and exposure.
Continue Sharing
As you continue preparing for your event, continue sharing speaker announcements, past anecdotes, and news. Don’t forget to continue sharing highlights and personal stories. It’s always a good idea to link folks back to your website so they stay engaged with your organization.
1-2 Months Before Your Event
Schedule Your Content
Remember that pre-generated content you’ve been sitting on? Now’s the time to use it. Create a schedule for sharing all those wonderful words online and then put someone in charge of that said sharing.
Photography
Designate, volun-tell, or hire someone to be in charge of photography and create a shot list to document the event. Use photos in your promotional materials and on your website to tell your organization’s story!
Participants are looking for a community, not just to raise funds.
During Your Event
Share Everything!
Just because the event is here doesn’t mean your job is over. Keep using your hashtag and make sure you share announcements and event updates or changes.
Engage, Respond, Act
When people are using your hashtag and talking about your event, you need to be involved. Show that what people are saying is important by responding to what they say. Come up with a plan for how you will respond to social media–both negative and positive feedback need responses!
1 Week After Your Event
We must build relationships of trust.
Say Thank You
Use your online mediums, whatever they may be, to say publicly say thank you to all the volunteers, attendees, and various participants. Send personalized thank you notes to the speakers and participants. It’s a nice extra touch and they be flattered. It show that you put in extra time and that you actually care.
Share Your Photos
Sharing photos should be a two-pronged attack.
Use your social outlets to post a few “teasers” of the photos you took
Store the photos on your site and include full album links on your posts
This way, you’ll share relevant content on social media anddrive traffic to your site.
Share Your Content
If you have any photos, blogs, whitepapers, infographics etc. create a schedule for sharing those to continue exposure and keep people talking about what happened at your event.
1-2 Months After Your Event
Analyze, Analyze, Analyze
Use traffic tools to analyze traffic to all of your sites or online portals. You can use these free tools to ensure accurate results:
Gain insightful feedback from your event participants by sending out a survey. For example, if folks complain about the parking at your event, when it comes time to market your next event, fix the parking situation and let participants know that they helped to make the event better!
Plan Ahead
Use your newly-gleaned analytics to plan ahead for next year by maximizing your strengths and minimizing your areas of weakness.
Additional Resources
You can download a formatted checklist of all these steps in PDF format at on our website.
These 6 experts will go into depth about how to leverage, engage and collaborate with Millennials. If you’re attending 14NTC, you can find the event details here.
What If I Didn’t Go to 14NTC?
Never fear! This talk will be livestreamed at 3:30 EST/2:30 CST so you won’t miss a thing.
“Public relations is about winding a compelling story” – Julie Fix
Successful PR writing comes from good storytelling. Stories simplify the complex, make intricate ideas understandable and accessible and do two important things:
Deliver an organization’s message
Create and reinforce opinions, attitudes and beliefs
With Great Writing, Comes Great Responsibility
As a public relations writer, you have two responsibilities:
Communicate Accurately
Communicate Appropriately
Communicate Accurately
The first step is research.
It’s important to have the pertinent facts about a story before moving forward. If you’re wondering, “Should I include this?”, err on the side of collecting too many facts. You can always put them in a fact sheet if they don’t fit in the release.
Better to over-prepare and be safe, than under-prepare and be caught off-guard. Then, if a question comes your way, you’re equipped with an answer. Also, be clear. Don’t muddle your message with too many words.
People have short attention spans, so if you want an effective message, take time to polish and edit.
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” – Blaise Pascal
Communicate Appropriately
Whether your writing is proactive or reactive, it’s imperative to speak to the situation. Use timely, relevant examples and appropriate behavior. Jokes after a tragedy are not appropriate behavior, but being light-hearted about a family-oriented fundraising event is. Use common sense and think how you’d feel if you heard your message.
You can have good paragraph structure, great sentences and an excellent press release, but if the right message goes to the wrong audience, it still falls on deaf ears. Think about what problem you’re solving and who benefits from your message. Tailor your writing to these people.
Finding the Right Audience
“Everyone is pulled in a hundred different directions at once.” – Ted Moon
According to research, the average attention span in 2013 was 8 seconds. That means if people aren’t interested, they stop reading.
They want to know, “What’s in it for me?”. So next time you write, do two things:
Recommend the solution to a problem
List benefits not features of your product, event or service
What Else Can I Do?
When you write for PR, be sure to practice good PR writing techniques:
Write a great headline
Use good grammar, spelling and punctuation
Communicate clearly
Write a Great Headline
The headline is your first and last chance to grab your reader. If you don’t have a good headline, people stop reading and your message is lost.
Use Good Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation
Nothing says, “I can’t write” like bad grammar, spelling or punctuation. Practicing good grammar makes your writing easier to read, which reinforces your message.
Communicate Clearly
Always polish and edit your writing. Don’t muddle your message by using more words than needed.
“Focus more on the nouns and verbs. Leave out the adjectives.” – Ted Moon
Improve Your PR Writing
The key is practice. By using these tips you can learn to self-edit and consistently produce quality content. You can also improve your skills by reading good writing. Read/subscribe to sources like PRSA, PR Week or PR News.
If you’re interested in more topics related to NPOs, technology or open source, leaf through some of our other categories and feel free to share the knowledge!
