Thank you so much for sharing this. Like others, it makes me want to cry and hug my own kids tight. I also deeply appreciate the fact that the Trust has a culture open enough to encourage this kind of personal sharing and vulnerability. It's a long way from the intimidating marble hallways of old time foundations (and, sadly, some current ones still!) Best wishes to you and your son.
Thanks for your interest. Our ideas4oregon update has been delayed a bit, but will be coming early next month and we hope you will find it worth the wait.
There have been a wide variety of submissions, some quite broad and visionary, some quite narrow and focused. I'm curious to know if/when the MMT will announce some sort of decision or follow-up action now that a diverse cross section of ideas has been collected.
Thanks for the article, Marie. I have to take the week off next week because my son's preschool is closed. I've been frantic trying to get all my work done for the week, and searching for things to entertain and exhaust him so he will 1. take a nap and 2. not bother "daddy" who works from home. I'm looking forward to it so much more, now. I'm just going to hang out and enjoy him...even if he doesn't take a nap. :)
I'm so grateful for your comments and observations. It is easy for any of us to feel that life has piled too much on us, that we weren't dealt the right cards. I remember my experience as a seminary intern, sitting beside parents of a 3 month old girl undergoing cardiac surgery. "It's taking so long," I observed after two hours. The father responded, "It took Moses 40 years to get to the Promised Land," and then I realized--drats, I spoke too soon. The parents were Salvadoran refugees, and I was the child of privileged America, and even though my parents had already assumed burdens beyond what they were dealt, I didn't need to show off my impatience. Thank you for reminding me of perspective.
frankly speaking... most retired folks do not want to come out of retirement .
honestly , most people who retire are useless for their last year or two befor they retire .
... and practicaly speaking ....
those who do want to come out of retirement should .
retirement is a death sentance for the vast magority of people , a man with out work is a pitiful creature .
that said ... any one after the age of retirement needs to either stay out of the way , or stay out of the work place . if your not paying for the place you stand , stand where your not slowing things down .
may i add to this , there are quite a number of thinking thinkers in the world who would work for free , just room and board .. ( myself for one ) ... if i was given a place to stand , 3 hots and a cot , and a straight percentage of what the idea makes in income to the business .
frankly , i would delight in a work arrangement where i got [ 1 % gross / 3% net / room and board ]
and was given a accountant , a buyer , submission process for proto type evaluation and concept analyst and most important ... wide ranging businesss contacts ... ( nike , intel , ford , microsoft , gunderson , fred myer , oregon steel .... other ) ... for the proto type to go after it is completed .
if my project , area project budget , and design was based on my past market success , and nothing else ... i think i would be in heaven .
if i was left alone to go in what directions i wanted , all based on my past success... and not on a corp director , a board of directors or some corp statement goal or business profile ... i would cry daily and tremble for fear that this could not last .
honestly... the greatest problem is not building beautiful technology .... out of the box solutions to every imaginable problem .... the real problem is getting them infront of a person who is not a troglidite !
most corprate types are anti technology , they are butt kissing trolls , they succeed by blaiming others for their failures ... and have not the smallest clue .
in venture capital there is a joke... give a vulture capitalist a red rubber ball and a stack of paper discribing single point free energy that will save the planet .... and the guy will go for the red rubber ball everytime .
there is a joke about corprate ... you have 15 seconds to sell an idea , 10 seconds if its fundimental to the servival to this guys job... 20 seconds if it was done befor and worked ... 30 seconds if it has a dirty joke or nakid women in it some where .
... and you have 5 seconds if he is late for the game ...
advice to the little ones ... low cost / fast delivery / high quality ... pick any two that you will do ...you can't do all three
advice to the troops ... dream big , take care of your exit plan , never lose hope .
advice to the big guy ... have fun on the way up , the way down is not worth it .
to the innovator ... frustration is your stock and trade , greatness is your armor , never let go !
the idea that the city of portland could manage "commons" style gardens is a laught . they can't manage parking lots ... or public bathroom laws . it is beyond the scope of corp politics to attempt such a complex set of conceptual models ... it is however totaly reasonable to build enclosures " green house's " with in the parks .
i would not have any level of goverment involved . the crystal palace in england is a good model of what happens to private ventures that have difficult engineering , left in the hands of committee govermental politics .
i think it can be done.. but only on a private owner operator ,
may i suggest... you need to make your boss 3 times what he pays you because ... for every dollor he pays you... he pays the goveerment ( state/ fed / city ) a dollor ... and then there is the product which needs to be paid for .
on the job training is how nearly every person on the planet learns their skill.. but to have the money to train a person... you need a product that serves a function ...
in short.. training people is not very well thought out... unless you have an employment model that is working... which we don't have .
if the concept is sound... the details will work them selves out
you can get govermental grant , there are millions of funding locations and angels for what i am reading here ...
what i can also say is... if you have a real idea , that is not PC or a collage students idea of how to spend money , your out of luck .
i can build a ocean driven system of electrical power gen in 1 week end , i can do this with the money in a single 1ooo.oo limit credit card , and pay the money back in 3 months...
because of the eco freak / govermental nerf world we live in... i would also go to jail if i attempted it .
epa / clean water act requires a permit of 20,ooo .oo to run hydrolic lines into the ocean ... and green peace / seirra club would shake down the project long befor it made any money .
oregon parks and rec would have a fleet of cops and a bucket 'o fines for industral zation of the natural beauty of our coast
... you want green power ... but to do this ***i don't need money to build the system... i need it to buy the politic's , and lawyers to protect it as it is being born ***
i want not a dime
i need a monster to stand behind , who will watch over me ... because what we will try to do ... is show private beach front home owners how to build and install 70 kilowatt genarators on pacific ocean beach ...
from canada to mexico .... 10,ooo private home owners ... building on publicaly owned land ...
i don't care how green it is .. or how good it is for the eco ... or how much money it will make for the economy....
the idea that citizens are off the grid , free power , and independant of the goverment...will send the politicaly correct croud into war mode .
this idea can not be done .
the engineering is simple , the concepts are sound , the ocean currents are easily in the billions of horse power...
wind power is 1/ 1000 the mass dencity of ocean water... and the current never speeds up or slows down. ( so get over it ).... its getting across the beach that is the problem .
and frankly speaking... you candie @ss whimps with plastic plans , and color inside the line ideas are afraid to do real world , bold ideas that we honestly needed
i have 300 inventions that will never see the light of day , i could employ millions ...
but i have long ago given up .. not because the idea are not good... but because there is no one with the ablity to lisen
this is one more exsample...
what do you think would happen if you had a hard idea ...
this is so simple , if it were 1810 ... and not 2010 ... i would be building .
the big problems would be engineering , the real problem would be power lines and transmition ....
i have 300 other inventions... and i can't get any one to even lisen to them .
because they are not .... day care , sport shoes , hip hop music , realestate pump and dump , software or car cup holders ...
one day the world will make a mistake , and give me a chance .
...but you have no right to say a word about the economy ,
you are the problem with the economy ...
... and frankly... this is the single open sourse of funding i have seen in 60 years .
go get a uni grant , go talk to hud , darpa , nasa , or the lottery .
what are you doing talking to an idea venture capital ....
geeze us
Thanks for your well made points. It's fantastic to hear from a techie at another local foundation. It is also a reminder that there are a lot of CMS out there and that they all have their uses.
I have looked into DotNetNuke and have recommended it to a couple of nonprofits who already had Microsoft .NET technology in-house. I believe existing knowledge and resources are one of the most important reasons to pick a CMS. It's a great example of why this is a case by case decision. More than that, DotNetNuke seems to be a quality CMS.
As I said above, we favor open source and I have reservations about CMS with monetized elements as it is hard to know all your hidden costs up front. This is even more so with DotNetNuke because, even though DotNetNuke is open source, the software it is built on is not free, meaning that at a minimum nonprofits first have to pay for ASP.NET Framework and SQL Express/SQL Server. Further, my understanding is that the free portion of the CMS is not as powerful or reliable as the paid versions, so a nonprofit could theoretically find themselves needing new features that only the paid version has and having to unexpectedly have to pay for the CMS after all.
A fully open CMS, especially one as powerful as Drupal or Plone, gives you more power than most other CMS out there, but there are no hidden costs because it is built using FOSS languages and FOSS databases, and you can even use FOSS server software. All of these are free, super reliable and immensely popular. This makes it hard to recommend DotNetNuke to nonprofits who do not already have ASP.NET software and skills.
It sounds like you have a very similar outlook, but you might have a different perspective and I'd love to know your thoughts on this. Always keen to expand my knowledge base through conversations as you just can't try them all.
I might have misunderstood, but I have to disagree about Drupal being mainly for Linux or internal hosting. The way I see it, you're either going to host it yourself, in which case you have a one-off install of WAMP or WIMP that should not tax your sysadmin much, or you're going to host it with a paid hosting service, in which case you can host your site almost anywhere and the OS your host is using matters to few. In fact, it's hard to find hosts that can't host Drupal sites. Most hosts out there handle the AMP stack and in fact it is this very popularity of AMP that has driven the popularity of AMP-based CMS like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and many others.
Distros like Acquia even have a Windows installer that you can use. Certainly there are loads of Windows users in evidence at our local Drupal user group and Microsoft themselves have a number of Drupal sites and sponsor many Drupal events. Microsoft even feature a Drupal page on their site. Drupal would not be as popular as it is if it were not able to work easily on most platforms.
Of course there is a lot more to all this discussion on the techie end, as we both know, and I've probably gone in to too much detail already. It would be great to sit and chat to you some time and maybe exchange demos.
I am the Information Systems Manager for The Ford Family Foundation, and we too use an Open Source CMS called DotNetNuke. Just about everywhere I have worked, one of my first projects is to move clients to a Content Management System to manager their web content.
As Grant excellent points out, decentralization and reduction of costs being the two most important reasons. Decentralization in the sense that you can usually give "permission" to certain people within your org to update their own content, rather than sending this to a "central" person (either the tech guy inside your org, or to a web consultant) which tends to be the bottleneck of getting material published. Reduction in costs comes from the fact that a CMS already comes with a certain framework of "tools" with which you can customize your website, rather than pay an outside vendor to build from scratch. The savings can be dramatic (the difference between $5,000 and $50,0000). In fairness, the drawbacks are that you might have shifted some of the web work internal, but in my opinion it is usually the correct course of action.
We use an Open Source CMS called DotNetNuke (already in place when I arrived - although we recently redesigned), which can be freely downloaded and installed (they do have a version for sale as well). I have used many CMS's - Drupal, Joomla, TikiWiki, Windows Sharepoint Services (free with Windows 2003 server). An advantage of DotNetNuke is that it is primarily Windows operating system based (most CMS's are Linux based, although most have a "trickier" path to install on Windows) and might be easier for some techs to install and maintain within their orgs (I love linux though. More stable in my opinion, and free! But, the pool of techs who can maintain is smaller). If you plan on "hosting" your website outside your org though, this would be of no concern to you. Another advantage of DotNetNuke is there is a tremendous library (see a website called SnowCovered) of "modules" that you can purchase to extend the features of your website. A disadvantage of DotNetNuke is that there isnt a large community of developers building "free" modules for your use, as other CMS's do.
We are mainly using DotNetNuke CMS because it was already in use when I got here, and we are a Windows OS environment. But, if I was going to install a CMS at a non-profit which they were going to host internally, I would use Linux and Drupal would be a fine choice for a CMS.
Drupal isopen-source softwaredistributed under theGPL("GNU General Public License"). The simplified way of looking at this license is that you can use the software freely and without paying for it and you can even change it and add your own code, if you need to.
The only aspect of this license that you have to be worried about is if you release that actual code back into the world (e.g. as a product or a service, or just to give back), in which case it has to have the same GPL license. And to be clear, if you put a website live then that is only the website, not the code. In other words, most nonprofits use Drupal to get a website like this and never worry about licensing or fees, and the same is true of us.
And don't worry about questions. There are no lame questions. We posted this because we wanted to share what we've learned and the only way to learn is to ask questions. Please ask anything you like.
Thanks for this posting, Grant. It is timely for us and very informative. Am I understanding correctly that Drupal is the free open source software option? Sorry for being rather lame about this subject. :) Thank you for clarifying.
I know that the contest is over. And I would like to see MMT do something similar to www.Ted.com where the best minds in the state are given 20 minutes to talk about their expertise. It's recorded and people can watch older recordings. Only your website would contain topics that would range from feeding the homeless, youth employment, how to grow a garden to feed many, youth leadership programs, disaster preparation, economic development, mentors, etc. People could learn in a short period of time information about that topic/project/activity. And maybe replicate programs. I'd be interested in learning from several of the projects that MMT has funded.
Vic, you should be able to submit up to 10 ideas. I tested the service to see if it let me add several, and it did. If you do have issues, you can also manually sign an anonymous entry and add your contact details to the text of the idea.
Also, if it is okay with you, I'll leave the comment up for others to benefit from the answer as well.
Grant:
I'd appreciate it if you would go ahead and delete this comment after reply, but couldn't figure out a good way of reaching you otherwise.
Do we only get to suggest one idea? I'd logged on through by Google account and submitted an idea. When I tried to submit a second one nothing seemed to work, except logging off and submitting as Anom. , even then the description could not be very long and I had to supplement with a comment.
Is this a common problem and a software issue, or just my dumb luck?
Thanks
My company, Vizitnow3D, has developed technology that can replicate college campuses online in a navigable interactive 3D environment and include nearby business clusters and entertainment districts as well.
The technology includes real time communications that empower students and other users to access daily up-to-date information on campus activities / information and off-campus activities within the community.
The 3D environment empowers merchants with full control (24/7) over their own advertising management system (text, links, photo galleries, video, audio) connected to a 3D replica of their business.
The 3D environment offers students and visitors an innovative method of familiarization with the campus and surrounding attractions. Vizitnow3D connects related communities, like merchants and target market consumers, within an interactive 3D environment, accessible via Web browser or mobile device.
Vizitnow3D's build of navigable interactive 3D college campuses will advance the marketing efforts, enrollment and recruiting of Oregon universities while also uplifting Oregon businesses. The environment is scalable and can start with a single structure or campus or region and continuously add more. Universities across the country will want 3D navigable interactive environments.
Building 3D navigable, interactive replicas of the OSU and Oregon football stadiums can attract millions of sports fans across the state and nation to check out the Beavers and Ducks online. The ability for users to engage in e-commerce in real time within the 3D stadiums means sales of tickets and merchandise. It also means real time promotions of events, contests, polls, surveys, etc. It also means advertising revenue. The marketing of the university sports teams can help recruiting, boost enrollment and invite more national attention to Oregon schools.
The best part is that more universities will want their sports facilities and campuses built inside a navigable, interactive 3D environment. That means more job creation here in southern Oregon (home base for Vizitnow3D), more revenue coming into Oregon and more development of Internet technology companies that can take advantage of multiple unique verticals that our technology is generating. We have identified more than a half-dozen innovative separate vertical opportunities we can immediately bring to market with the proper capital investment.
We've already established strong partnerships and have entered a major race to develop an exploding new online frontier. We are prepared to introduce a paradigm shift in the Internet experience for both users and advertisers. The Meyer Memorial Trust's challenge for out-of-the-box ideas is met by Vizitnow3D.
The next step is for us to work together with MMT to move our technology forward. We've already invested and proved the concept in our demo. Now, we need to fund a working prototype and introduce what we do to the public. The Meyer Memorial Trust can build the launch platform upon which Vizitnow3D can blast into the future, forging a path into new frontiers that benefit all of Oregon.
But this is a race. Waiting for rounds of funding opportunity is a challenge we face, while large-scale companies have the means to quietly experiment and make gains.
We're ready now. We're leading the race. We just need a funding partner to be first to market.
Hi Karen. Remember that your comment here is just a comment on a blog post. To submit your idea for consideration you need to post it at http://www.ideas4oregon.org/
If you sign if first, then the idea will be associated with you, or you can post it anonymously.
My suggestion for the million $ is to buy vacant lots or lots with buildings that need to be demolished in low-income areas and turn them into community gardens. This would address a number of issues:
1. Low income folks would have access to fresh produce
2. It would get people outside more
3. It would promote increased community
4. For some, it would introduce new skills.
5. It would provide a source of income for those skilled enough to produce surplus food.
If there were sufficient resources, some of these lots could also have small flocks of hens which would produce fresh eggs for the community and fertilizer for the gardens. An organization that helps communities do this is Urban Farm. urbanfarmonline.com.
Thanks for submitting your idea, Kristin. We love seeing them all. I could have posted it for you, but I wanted to let you decide whether you wanted to post it anonymously or not.
Hi Kristin. Remember that your comment here is just a comment on a blog post. To submit your idea for consideration you need to post it at http://www.ideas4oregon.org/
As a member of the non-profit community who is faces the uphill task of finding sponsors and development sources for programs, I would laud the idea of MMT producing a Fundraising "Prom" if you will, where everyone has a date! I'm thinking of a day where non-profits and funders/sponsors come together, in order to find each other. Often when looking for $$, it feels a bit like a needle in a haystack - this way funders/sponsors can see all the choices of programs in need of support, and non-profits can speak to individuals directly and find the funders/sponsors that are most attracted to what they do, whether it's the arts, education, environmental, you name it.
Thank you so much for sharing this. Like others, it makes me want to cry and hug my own kids tight. I also deeply appreciate the fact that the Trust has a culture open enough to encourage this kind of personal sharing and vulnerability. It's a long way from the intimidating marble hallways of old time foundations (and, sadly, some current ones still!) Best wishes to you and your son.
Hey Michael,
Thanks for your interest. Our ideas4oregon update has been delayed a bit, but will be coming early next month and we hope you will find it worth the wait.
Best,
Grant
There have been a wide variety of submissions, some quite broad and visionary, some quite narrow and focused. I'm curious to know if/when the MMT will announce some sort of decision or follow-up action now that a diverse cross section of ideas has been collected.
Thanks for the article, Marie. I have to take the week off next week because my son's preschool is closed. I've been frantic trying to get all my work done for the week, and searching for things to entertain and exhaust him so he will 1. take a nap and 2. not bother "daddy" who works from home. I'm looking forward to it so much more, now. I'm just going to hang out and enjoy him...even if he doesn't take a nap. :)
I'm so grateful for your comments and observations. It is easy for any of us to feel that life has piled too much on us, that we weren't dealt the right cards. I remember my experience as a seminary intern, sitting beside parents of a 3 month old girl undergoing cardiac surgery. "It's taking so long," I observed after two hours. The father responded, "It took Moses 40 years to get to the Promised Land," and then I realized--drats, I spoke too soon. The parents were Salvadoran refugees, and I was the child of privileged America, and even though my parents had already assumed burdens beyond what they were dealt, I didn't need to show off my impatience. Thank you for reminding me of perspective.
frankly speaking... most retired folks do not want to come out of retirement .
honestly , most people who retire are useless for their last year or two befor they retire .
... and practicaly speaking ....
those who do want to come out of retirement should .
retirement is a death sentance for the vast magority of people , a man with out work is a pitiful creature .
that said ... any one after the age of retirement needs to either stay out of the way , or stay out of the work place . if your not paying for the place you stand , stand where your not slowing things down .
may i add to this , there are quite a number of thinking thinkers in the world who would work for free , just room and board .. ( myself for one ) ... if i was given a place to stand , 3 hots and a cot , and a straight percentage of what the idea makes in income to the business .
frankly , i would delight in a work arrangement where i got [ 1 % gross / 3% net / room and board ]
and was given a accountant , a buyer , submission process for proto type evaluation and concept analyst and most important ... wide ranging businesss contacts ... ( nike , intel , ford , microsoft , gunderson , fred myer , oregon steel .... other ) ... for the proto type to go after it is completed .
if my project , area project budget , and design was based on my past market success , and nothing else ... i think i would be in heaven .
if i was left alone to go in what directions i wanted , all based on my past success... and not on a corp director , a board of directors or some corp statement goal or business profile ... i would cry daily and tremble for fear that this could not last .
honestly... the greatest problem is not building beautiful technology .... out of the box solutions to every imaginable problem .... the real problem is getting them infront of a person who is not a troglidite !
most corprate types are anti technology , they are butt kissing trolls , they succeed by blaiming others for their failures ... and have not the smallest clue .
in venture capital there is a joke... give a vulture capitalist a red rubber ball and a stack of paper discribing single point free energy that will save the planet .... and the guy will go for the red rubber ball everytime .
there is a joke about corprate ... you have 15 seconds to sell an idea , 10 seconds if its fundimental to the servival to this guys job... 20 seconds if it was done befor and worked ... 30 seconds if it has a dirty joke or nakid women in it some where .
... and you have 5 seconds if he is late for the game ...
advice to the little ones ... low cost / fast delivery / high quality ... pick any two that you will do ...you can't do all three
advice to the troops ... dream big , take care of your exit plan , never lose hope .
advice to the big guy ... have fun on the way up , the way down is not worth it .
to the innovator ... frustration is your stock and trade , greatness is your armor , never let go !
the idea that the city of portland could manage "commons" style gardens is a laught . they can't manage parking lots ... or public bathroom laws . it is beyond the scope of corp politics to attempt such a complex set of conceptual models ... it is however totaly reasonable to build enclosures " green house's " with in the parks .
i would not have any level of goverment involved . the crystal palace in england is a good model of what happens to private ventures that have difficult engineering , left in the hands of committee govermental politics .
i think it can be done.. but only on a private owner operator ,
may i suggest... you need to make your boss 3 times what he pays you because ... for every dollor he pays you... he pays the goveerment ( state/ fed / city ) a dollor ... and then there is the product which needs to be paid for .
on the job training is how nearly every person on the planet learns their skill.. but to have the money to train a person... you need a product that serves a function ...
in short.. training people is not very well thought out... unless you have an employment model that is working... which we don't have .
if the concept is sound... the details will work them selves out
you can get govermental grant , there are millions of funding locations and angels for what i am reading here ...
what i can also say is... if you have a real idea , that is not PC or a collage students idea of how to spend money , your out of luck .
i can build a ocean driven system of electrical power gen in 1 week end , i can do this with the money in a single 1ooo.oo limit credit card , and pay the money back in 3 months...
because of the eco freak / govermental nerf world we live in... i would also go to jail if i attempted it .
epa / clean water act requires a permit of 20,ooo .oo to run hydrolic lines into the ocean ... and green peace / seirra club would shake down the project long befor it made any money .
oregon parks and rec would have a fleet of cops and a bucket 'o fines for industral zation of the natural beauty of our coast
... you want green power ... but to do this ***i don't need money to build the system... i need it to buy the politic's , and lawyers to protect it as it is being born ***
i want not a dime
i need a monster to stand behind , who will watch over me ... because what we will try to do ... is show private beach front home owners how to build and install 70 kilowatt genarators on pacific ocean beach ...
from canada to mexico .... 10,ooo private home owners ... building on publicaly owned land ...
i don't care how green it is .. or how good it is for the eco ... or how much money it will make for the economy....
the idea that citizens are off the grid , free power , and independant of the goverment...will send the politicaly correct croud into war mode .
this idea can not be done .
the engineering is simple , the concepts are sound , the ocean currents are easily in the billions of horse power...
wind power is 1/ 1000 the mass dencity of ocean water... and the current never speeds up or slows down. ( so get over it ).... its getting across the beach that is the problem .
and frankly speaking... you candie @ss whimps with plastic plans , and color inside the line ideas are afraid to do real world , bold ideas that we honestly needed
i have 300 inventions that will never see the light of day , i could employ millions ...
but i have long ago given up .. not because the idea are not good... but because there is no one with the ablity to lisen
this is one more exsample...
what do you think would happen if you had a hard idea ...
this is so simple , if it were 1810 ... and not 2010 ... i would be building .
the big problems would be engineering , the real problem would be power lines and transmition ....
i have 300 other inventions... and i can't get any one to even lisen to them .
because they are not .... day care , sport shoes , hip hop music , realestate pump and dump , software or car cup holders ...
one day the world will make a mistake , and give me a chance .
...but you have no right to say a word about the economy ,
you are the problem with the economy ...
... and frankly... this is the single open sourse of funding i have seen in 60 years .
go get a uni grant , go talk to hud , darpa , nasa , or the lottery .
what are you doing talking to an idea venture capital ....
geeze us
readerone
Hi Shawn,
Thanks for your well made points. It's fantastic to hear from a techie at another local foundation. It is also a reminder that there are a lot of CMS out there and that they all have their uses.
I have looked into DotNetNuke and have recommended it to a couple of nonprofits who already had Microsoft .NET technology in-house. I believe existing knowledge and resources are one of the most important reasons to pick a CMS. It's a great example of why this is a case by case decision. More than that, DotNetNuke seems to be a quality CMS.
As I said above, we favor open source and I have reservations about CMS with monetized elements as it is hard to know all your hidden costs up front. This is even more so with DotNetNuke because, even though DotNetNuke is open source, the software it is built on is not free, meaning that at a minimum nonprofits first have to pay for ASP.NET Framework and SQL Express/SQL Server. Further, my understanding is that the free portion of the CMS is not as powerful or reliable as the paid versions, so a nonprofit could theoretically find themselves needing new features that only the paid version has and having to unexpectedly have to pay for the CMS after all.
A fully open CMS, especially one as powerful as Drupal or Plone, gives you more power than most other CMS out there, but there are no hidden costs because it is built using FOSS languages and FOSS databases, and you can even use FOSS server software. All of these are free, super reliable and immensely popular. This makes it hard to recommend DotNetNuke to nonprofits who do not already have ASP.NET software and skills.
It sounds like you have a very similar outlook, but you might have a different perspective and I'd love to know your thoughts on this. Always keen to expand my knowledge base through conversations as you just can't try them all.
I might have misunderstood, but I have to disagree about Drupal being mainly for Linux or internal hosting. The way I see it, you're either going to host it yourself, in which case you have a one-off install of WAMP or WIMP that should not tax your sysadmin much, or you're going to host it with a paid hosting service, in which case you can host your site almost anywhere and the OS your host is using matters to few. In fact, it's hard to find hosts that can't host Drupal sites. Most hosts out there handle the AMP stack and in fact it is this very popularity of AMP that has driven the popularity of AMP-based CMS like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and many others.
Distros like Acquia even have a Windows installer that you can use. Certainly there are loads of Windows users in evidence at our local Drupal user group and Microsoft themselves have a number of Drupal sites and sponsor many Drupal events. Microsoft even feature a Drupal page on their site. Drupal would not be as popular as it is if it were not able to work easily on most platforms.
Of course there is a lot more to all this discussion on the techie end, as we both know, and I've probably gone in to too much detail already. It would be great to sit and chat to you some time and maybe exchange demos.
Thanks again for your thoughtful comment.
Thank you, Grant & Shawn! Very helpful. -Kim
I am the Information Systems Manager for The Ford Family Foundation, and we too use an Open Source CMS called DotNetNuke. Just about everywhere I have worked, one of my first projects is to move clients to a Content Management System to manager their web content.
As Grant excellent points out, decentralization and reduction of costs being the two most important reasons. Decentralization in the sense that you can usually give "permission" to certain people within your org to update their own content, rather than sending this to a "central" person (either the tech guy inside your org, or to a web consultant) which tends to be the bottleneck of getting material published. Reduction in costs comes from the fact that a CMS already comes with a certain framework of "tools" with which you can customize your website, rather than pay an outside vendor to build from scratch. The savings can be dramatic (the difference between $5,000 and $50,0000). In fairness, the drawbacks are that you might have shifted some of the web work internal, but in my opinion it is usually the correct course of action.
We use an Open Source CMS called DotNetNuke (already in place when I arrived - although we recently redesigned), which can be freely downloaded and installed (they do have a version for sale as well). I have used many CMS's - Drupal, Joomla, TikiWiki, Windows Sharepoint Services (free with Windows 2003 server). An advantage of DotNetNuke is that it is primarily Windows operating system based (most CMS's are Linux based, although most have a "trickier" path to install on Windows) and might be easier for some techs to install and maintain within their orgs (I love linux though. More stable in my opinion, and free! But, the pool of techs who can maintain is smaller). If you plan on "hosting" your website outside your org though, this would be of no concern to you. Another advantage of DotNetNuke is there is a tremendous library (see a website called SnowCovered) of "modules" that you can purchase to extend the features of your website. A disadvantage of DotNetNuke is that there isnt a large community of developers building "free" modules for your use, as other CMS's do.
We are mainly using DotNetNuke CMS because it was already in use when I got here, and we are a Windows OS environment. But, if I was going to install a CMS at a non-profit which they were going to host internally, I would use Linux and Drupal would be a fine choice for a CMS.
Hi Kim,
Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL ("GNU General Public License"). The simplified way of looking at this license is that you can use the software freely and without paying for it and you can even change it and add your own code, if you need to.
The only aspect of this license that you have to be worried about is if you release that actual code back into the world (e.g. as a product or a service, or just to give back), in which case it has to have the same GPL license. And to be clear, if you put a website live then that is only the website, not the code. In other words, most nonprofits use Drupal to get a website like this and never worry about licensing or fees, and the same is true of us.
And don't worry about questions. There are no lame questions. We posted this because we wanted to share what we've learned and the only way to learn is to ask questions. Please ask anything you like.
Thanks for this posting, Grant. It is timely for us and very informative. Am I understanding correctly that Drupal is the free open source software option? Sorry for being rather lame about this subject. :) Thank you for clarifying.
-Kim
I know that the contest is over. And I would like to see MMT do something similar to www.Ted.com where the best minds in the state are given 20 minutes to talk about their expertise. It's recorded and people can watch older recordings. Only your website would contain topics that would range from feeding the homeless, youth employment, how to grow a garden to feed many, youth leadership programs, disaster preparation, economic development, mentors, etc. People could learn in a short period of time information about that topic/project/activity. And maybe replicate programs. I'd be interested in learning from several of the projects that MMT has funded.
Vic, you should be able to submit up to 10 ideas. I tested the service to see if it let me add several, and it did. If you do have issues, you can also manually sign an anonymous entry and add your contact details to the text of the idea.
Also, if it is okay with you, I'll leave the comment up for others to benefit from the answer as well.
Grant:
I'd appreciate it if you would go ahead and delete this comment after reply, but couldn't figure out a good way of reaching you otherwise.
Do we only get to suggest one idea? I'd logged on through by Google account and submitted an idea. When I tried to submit a second one nothing seemed to work, except logging off and submitting as Anom. , even then the description could not be very long and I had to supplement with a comment.
Is this a common problem and a software issue, or just my dumb luck?
Thanks
My company, Vizitnow3D, has developed technology that can replicate college campuses online in a navigable interactive 3D environment and include nearby business clusters and entertainment districts as well.
The technology includes real time communications that empower students and other users to access daily up-to-date information on campus activities / information and off-campus activities within the community.
The 3D environment empowers merchants with full control (24/7) over their own advertising management system (text, links, photo galleries, video, audio) connected to a 3D replica of their business.
The 3D environment offers students and visitors an innovative method of familiarization with the campus and surrounding attractions. Vizitnow3D connects related communities, like merchants and target market consumers, within an interactive 3D environment, accessible via Web browser or mobile device.
Vizitnow3D's build of navigable interactive 3D college campuses will advance the marketing efforts, enrollment and recruiting of Oregon universities while also uplifting Oregon businesses. The environment is scalable and can start with a single structure or campus or region and continuously add more. Universities across the country will want 3D navigable interactive environments.
Building 3D navigable, interactive replicas of the OSU and Oregon football stadiums can attract millions of sports fans across the state and nation to check out the Beavers and Ducks online. The ability for users to engage in e-commerce in real time within the 3D stadiums means sales of tickets and merchandise. It also means real time promotions of events, contests, polls, surveys, etc. It also means advertising revenue. The marketing of the university sports teams can help recruiting, boost enrollment and invite more national attention to Oregon schools.
The best part is that more universities will want their sports facilities and campuses built inside a navigable, interactive 3D environment. That means more job creation here in southern Oregon (home base for Vizitnow3D), more revenue coming into Oregon and more development of Internet technology companies that can take advantage of multiple unique verticals that our technology is generating. We have identified more than a half-dozen innovative separate vertical opportunities we can immediately bring to market with the proper capital investment.
We've already established strong partnerships and have entered a major race to develop an exploding new online frontier. We are prepared to introduce a paradigm shift in the Internet experience for both users and advertisers. The Meyer Memorial Trust's challenge for out-of-the-box ideas is met by Vizitnow3D.
The next step is for us to work together with MMT to move our technology forward. We've already invested and proved the concept in our demo. Now, we need to fund a working prototype and introduce what we do to the public. The Meyer Memorial Trust can build the launch platform upon which Vizitnow3D can blast into the future, forging a path into new frontiers that benefit all of Oregon.
But this is a race. Waiting for rounds of funding opportunity is a challenge we face, while large-scale companies have the means to quietly experiment and make gains.
We're ready now. We're leading the race. We just need a funding partner to be first to market.
thanks so much.
mike green, ceo
vizitnow3d
541-730-2164
Hi Karen. Remember that your comment here is just a comment on a blog post. To submit your idea for consideration you need to post it at http://www.ideas4oregon.org/
If you sign if first, then the idea will be associated with you, or you can post it anonymously.
My suggestion for the million $ is to buy vacant lots or lots with buildings that need to be demolished in low-income areas and turn them into community gardens. This would address a number of issues:
1. Low income folks would have access to fresh produce
2. It would get people outside more
3. It would promote increased community
4. For some, it would introduce new skills.
5. It would provide a source of income for those skilled enough to produce surplus food.
If there were sufficient resources, some of these lots could also have small flocks of hens which would produce fresh eggs for the community and fertilizer for the gardens. An organization that helps communities do this is Urban Farm. urbanfarmonline.com.
Thanks for submitting your idea, Kristin. We love seeing them all. I could have posted it for you, but I wanted to let you decide whether you wanted to post it anonymously or not.
Thanks again.
Grant
thanks, Grant (and thanks for deleting all of my dups!)
Hi Kristin. Remember that your comment here is just a comment on a blog post. To submit your idea for consideration you need to post it at http://www.ideas4oregon.org/
As a member of the non-profit community who is faces the uphill task of finding sponsors and development sources for programs, I would laud the idea of MMT producing a Fundraising "Prom" if you will, where everyone has a date! I'm thinking of a day where non-profits and funders/sponsors come together, in order to find each other. Often when looking for $$, it feels a bit like a needle in a haystack - this way funders/sponsors can see all the choices of programs in need of support, and non-profits can speak to individuals directly and find the funders/sponsors that are most attracted to what they do, whether it's the arts, education, environmental, you name it.