Integration

There are some really great suggestions for scenarios listed here. But I think that a lot of these are things that are still a bit down the road. What is most important right now is integration. Currently there are some usable modules for handling contacts, web users, volunteers and donations. But the problem is that these modules don't really work together.

I can see how the volunteering and contact management are starting to come together, but there also needs to be strong ties to web access control and donating. The user table for the website should not be separate from the contacts table because access needs to be defined based on what groups the contact is a part of.

Another key for small organizations is integration with donations. There are some organizations that because I have donated twice to their organization I am considered to be two different people. This is a major issue for small organizations that can't afford to be sending mailouts to the same person twice.

These organizations also need to pinpoint who are the people that are consistently involved both from a volunteer perspective and a donation perspective.

One key to this is managing the creation of duplicate members. As I start to think about this I'm starting to realize how big of a can of worms that is. In one scenario a person may donate and then later volunteer on a project. It's going to be difficult coming up with rules to determine how much similarity in information is enough for a match. The user can then be prompted "Your information is similar to someone we already have on record. Have you donated to us in the past?". A more difficult scenario is matching of household data. It becomes a privacy issue if you just say "Bill Smith has the same phone number as you, do you live with him?". But perhaps if they have the same last name it's ok to prompt that.

I'm really excited about where this project is going though. It has the potential of being, how shall we say, the epicentre of a major earthquake. Kudos to everyone involved.