open source Archives - Tendenci - The Open Source AMS Blog

2024-01-312024-08-01

BECAUSE PER USER AND ADMIN PRICING ENCOURAGES YOU NOT TO GROW YOUR ORGANIZATION

At Tendenci we don’t believe in charging by the user or admin. Tendenci is built on the concept of distributed authoring. There are multiple people on your board and many committee chairs. Shouldn’t each leader in your organization have the ability to post their own articles and manage their own events? Certainly! This sets us apart from other AMS options in the market, as we do not charge any admin or user fees because we want you to grow.

Leverage Tendenci, the only Open Source software solution that enables you to populate your CRM with prospective members, industry contacts, supporting partners, and existing members without worrying. Achieve maximum engagement through your Tendenci website, which offers affordable and transparent AMS options – specifically tailored for Non-Profits and Associations around the world.

2019-12-272019-12-27

Tendenci Clients Doing Good – Hong Kong Response to Mask Ban – Baker Institute

To stop the spread of misinformation, you need actual information, intelligence, subject matter expertise combined with critical thinking. Do that and the result in knowledge. Hence it makes our team happy, not taking a position either way, but to see that our software can facilitate dialog about tech from silicon valley to human rights issues in Hong Kong.

We are the paper the newspaper gets printed on. Some stories need to be talked about in a safe place without the influence of Facebook or Google or Twitter, etc. One of those clients is The James Baker Institute for Public Policy. This post was automatically blocked by our firewalls for a number of IP addresses, I can only assume because of it being a hot topic.

https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/hong-kong-mask-ban/

While I have not read the report in its entirety, it is interesting to see that it IS still possible to have a place on the Internet, free of trolls, where actual thoughts can bubble up, and freedom can be expressed.

The PDF is available at https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/3db31746/bi-report-121819-china-maskban.pdf

Score one for open source, freedom of speech and freedom in general.

2019-11-142019-11-14

Tendenci – The Open Source AMS joins new Stripe Partner Program to bring more commerce online and increase the GDP of the Internet

Tendenci – The Open Source AMS, an international Open Source provider of Association Management Software‘ to global organizations (languages), today announced that it has joined the Stripe Partner Program as a Verified AMS Open Source Stripe Payment Partner. With only 3% of GDP online, Stripe’s goal of the program is to increase internet commerce by helping NGOs and companies start, run, and scale their businesses.

*“We’re thrilled to be one of the first to join Stripe’s Partner Program,”* said Ed Schipul, Founder and CEO at Tendenci – The Open Source AMS.

2019-06-052019-06-05

Dr. Galati’s “Your Health First” Website Gets a Fresh New Look to Promote His Podcast and Book!

Dr. Galati recently launched his Your Health First site upgrade with a fresh, mobile-responsive layout to make his podcasts readily accessible and to cross-promote his practice and his book. His website’s beautiful new theme was chosen to align the branding sites for his podcast, blog, new book Eating Yourself Sick, and his practice – The Liver Specialists of Texas. This ensures consistent branding, which is key to recognition!

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!

2019-05-202019-05-20

2019 SPE Awards and Scholarships Banquet

Hosted by: Board of Directors

Did you know that The SPE- GCS gives over $100,000 annually in scholarships? On May 23rd, 2019, the annual SPE-GCS Awards Banquet recognizes the high school seniors and college students who have received SPE-GCS, Communities in Schools – Houston, or SPE Auxiliary scholarships for the 2017-18 academic year. This is a fantastic opportunity to welcome outstanding students into the petroleum industry and to make a positive impression on members of the community.

Tendenci is proud to have partnered with SPE-GCS for the last 20 years and support their mission to remain at the forefront of technology, leading the way for other organizations in the industry.

Check out the event details here.

2019-02-072019-02-07

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

2018-04-062018-04-06

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.

2017-12-192017-12-21

What a DDoS attack to an Association Looks Like

The following graphs show what a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on an association looks like. The names, rates and volume of the association have been blurred for security reasons. We are thankful to AWS for their own defenses in front of ours, which help us mitigate these issues.

responding to ddos attacks as best we can — active response to mitigate attacks

Note: The graphic above, is filtered for a 24 hour span for one client. The infrastructure is in place, and highly redundant, so we can monitor and keep our clients safe. For clients in the US or hosted in other countries (we have multiple Tendenci clouds as needed.)

Note 2: Make no mistake – If a bad-actor has the budget – they can and will purchase enough bots to take a site down. This is well documented. Even our resources at AWS are limited in what they can handle. Budget (yes BUDGET) accordingly.