[Odb-help] RESULTS of ODB survey...

[odb-help at lists.democracygroups.org]

Dear ODB help members:

  The ODB survey concluded last Wednesday and here
are the results:

1. What is the name of your organization? 
   75 organizations responded to the survey

2.  What is the primary reason you need a database?

    32% - For generating mass mailings and emails
    21% - For fundraising 
    14.7% - For tracking volunteers 
      1.3% - For tracking attendance
     24% - Other
 
Other responses included "all 3", "tracking giving", 
"tracking sales prospects", "Tracking Membership"
"contact list", "I review them to advise others"

4. Are you currently using database software in your organization? 
    41.9% - Yes, we are already using ODB.   
    21.6% - Yes, we use other, inexpensive software, free or less than $500  
    18.9% - Not really, but we use spreadsheets/ word documents   
    12.2% - Yes, we use a commercial software program costing more than $500   
    5.4% - No, not at all   

5. About how many records do you expect to have in your database within a year? 
   a. fewer than 250 ---  13.3%
   b. 250-1000        ---   29.3%
   c. 1000-5000     ---    40%
   d. 5000-25,000  ---    10.7%
   e. more than 25,000 - 6.7%

6. THE BIG QUESTION: which ODB features do you want?

The following is a table, hope it comes out OK.

12-Easier Way to Exclude Records During Search	46 yesses
11-Ability to Save Dated Notes on Contacts	45 yesses
5-Email List Integration (with email list service)	44 yesses
8-Option: Enter Street Address in One Field	38  yesses
13-Ability to Handle Very Long Addresses	36 yesses
6-Smart Event Codes (registered, confirmed code)	32 yesses
1-Web Form Integration (integrate with popular CMS)	30  yesses
7-More Hooks for External Reports	27 yesses
10-Sync w/central office (Merge When Importing)	25 yesses
2-Email Now Integration (generate email lists for Groundspring)	23  yesses
9-Sync with Palm Pilot or PDA	19 yesses
4-Tracking Code export	19 yesses
3-Donate Now integration (download and merge Groundspring data)	14 yesses

Since some of the people did not understand some of the
questions... so if you account for that and then calculate
the percentages of people who did understand
the question who voted for each option, you get this:

12-Easier Way to Exclude Records During Search	62.2%
5-Email List Integration (integrate with email list service)	62.0%
11-Ability to Save Dated Notes on Contacts		60.8%
8-Option: Enter Street Address in One Field		51.4%
13-Ability to Handle Very Long Addresses		48.6%
1-Web Form Integration (integrate with popular CMS)	46.2%
6-Smart Event Codes (registered, confirmed code)	45.1%
7-More Hooks for External Reports			40.3%
10-Sync w/central office (Merge When Importing )	34.7%
2-Email Now Integration (generate email lists for Groundspring)	34.3%
4-Tracking Code export					28.8%
9-Sync with Palm Pilot or PDA				26.0%
3-Donate Now integration (download and merge Groundspring data)	20.3%
	
Thanks to all of you who filled out the survey.  You have
helped us get a much better idea of what our users and
potential users want.  Obviously, improvements to the
search window and ways to integrate ODB with some kind
of email list service are strong priorities.

We don't really have a full time programmer to do all
of these improvements but if you all want them, well as
they say, when there is a will there is a way.

Actually there exists software out there that lets people
make a "pledge" of a gift towards a feature.  This is an
interesting concept... if we can set up this kind of software
it would help us speed up the development process even
while we continue to spend a lot of time supporting small
nonprofits through training, and developing additional
projects going beyond what ODB does.

Thanks again...

-rich cowan



p.s. below is the raw information for question 7, the free for all. There were
a number of questions, "Can ODB do this" or "I found a bug in XXX".  In almost
all of these cases ODB already does what you want, or the bug you noticed
has been fixed.  Please email odb2004 at organizenow.net directly if you have
a question.   I have marked those comments which are already addressed by
ODB as [done].


Don't know enough to select items to be implemented. Need more information about Groundspring.  
3.  I'm glad to hear that you will implement a salutation field. This will work well for us, when we eventually convert to odb (hopefully in the next 2-3 months). We use a "casual first name" field for insertion into merged documents.  [done]
4.  For our purposes, the user interface needs to be much more intuitive and user friendly so that volunteers with little or no computer experience can learn quickly and easily with minimal training. We ended up switching to Access because of this.  
5.  We receive donations through the National Heritage Foundation (NHF.org) [their site is a must-read!] so my question is whether or not ODB can or will be able to interface with them. Also, please note that I stated above that we are still in the assessment/design phase. If you can refer me to any websites that would have useful information for me as I do this phase I would really appreciate it! I have never set up a database for a non-profit before, so I would like to ease the process by being prepared BEFORE I install and set up ODB.
6.  To be honest, I tried to download ODB once unsuccessfully. I wanted to check it out and see if it meets our needs. I never got around to following up. I'm using Excel now. But I don't do emailing from it. I need a computer geek!!! Maybe at the end of the year I'll have time to try to download it again. Thanks for reminding me!
7.  Hi people! Sorry for not giving some opinion before: I think odb should be integrated in a cross-platform basis (I'm using linux nowadays). It could be, for example, php-mysql based... what do you think? This would also be a great step for accomplishing the first feature cited in the poll: "integrating odb to web and cms". And Rich: I've been too busy till now, but i'm still planning to finish the translation to portuguese! 
8.  I am anxious to download your survey so our attendees/members can sharpen the focus and goals of our local neighborhood association--only about 15-20 attend regularly but in New Bedford that is considered pretty big, according to the mayor's office.  
9.  Thank you for the work you have/are doing the database is great and very useful!  
10.  We recently printed a list of 30 labels per page in .PDF format, to print on another computer/printer. The pages of labels were 15% too small. Next I exported the list, then imported it into MS Word so Word could properly handle the labels. Even then the Word merge operation failed on label number 976 because of an extra long comments field. Just thought I'd tell you about a problem.  [done]
11.  We are hoping to use the software next year and Im making some tweaks to it to help us. Q How do I search the custom field box? I can add the name of it (county)and it appears but how do I search it ie show all records with contents in 'County' ? thanks good work guys  
12.  One thing I have yet to figure out is how to delete/remove ledger entries, particularly for dues. If this is not available currently could it be added?    [done]
13.  I have not started to use ODB yet as I just downloaded it and am not sure of it's capabilities. I hope to explore the manual and its features more this month and start inputting some data. Thank you.  
14.  I haven't been able to explore ODB yet to see if it is right for us. I am hoping that it is "user friendly". I will be diving into it soon. lora at ecoss.org  
15.  More support for GOTV efforts and better export would be great.  [done, wrote a doc]
16.  I'm the Web designer for DSASA and I'm the one who set up their dynamic site. They'd already started using Access, so I set the site up to interact with that DB. I do sites for non-profits for free, though, and I expect others might be interested in ODB, that's why I downloaded it and am interested in it's development, i.e. I may recommend it to other organizations. Good luck with your improvements,
17.  This was not included, but I would like to see odb based on mysql or postgresql, rather than access.  
18.  We would like to be able to add more than one email address  
19.  We need to search and display by ORGANIZATION not only by individual! individuals come and go at many of the organizations on our list!  [right click on search box to search both line2 and line1]
20.  We are currently using Excel primarily with a little Dbase IV, but also use and maintain ODB files for those persons not having Windows capability.  
21.  I've noddled around with ODB a couple of times but never gotten past the problem of importing my data from the spread sheet where it currently resides. Until its easier to get started but importing my existing data, the rest of this is all academic 
22.  As you know, i am still in the infancy stage of using ODB, or using any database well for that matter, having converted from an inherited Access DB that i found too complex to utilize. i am excited about the potential that ODB offers.  
23.  For me, Donate Now is not a good place to start. PayPal is a much more utilized, simpler and closer to free method to collect funds online. With IPN, one could easily convert PayPal payments into a standard format that could then be downloaded within ODB (from an org's own website, which receives the IPN web requests). Also, I would be happy to volunteer for that limited task if you need (at least the web end to convert that to a format that ODB could download).
24.  We have supported your work by donating $ to your org. Obviously, we believe that activist orgs can benefit from ODB. However, we run Filemaker Pro because they support the MAC platform. We await a version of ODB that will run on our MAC system. Thanks! 
25.  Thanks Rich.  
26.  I stopped just short of implementing odb for our agency. I like the software. It's so intuitive that the learning curve is very gentle for casual users but it's also very flexible and easily customized. We are a community crisis line, including the suicide hotline; rape crisis center,including providing forensic medical exams; and we provide emergency shelter and legal assistance to victims of family violence. Much of our support in terms of volunteers and financial aid is provided by groups in addition to individuals. I haven't found away to link donations and volunteers to groups. It's not listed but that would be my number one priority. I did try listing groups as indivuals but group names often exceed the character limits for both first and last name fields. Keep up the good work. I really like what you're doing.  [big fix in 0.9.5c]
27.  I am not sure that you want to use ours, I joined as an individual and am mainly interested so I can refer others to it. I developed the in house database that we use at the Local. Keep up the good work.
28.  What woudl be most usefuol to us*? A web interface for people to sign up and change thier own data and then get emails from us. We use Microsoft's (ug) bCentral "listbuilder" for this at peresent. going back and forth between the tow databases is very hard!