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Creating Communities from Databases

By Lisa Thyer

Most organisations have already spent a great deal of time and energy in creating a database community for internal/office use. This article explores some of the reasons why it can be valuable for smaller not for profit organisations to share this information more widely, and the possibilities, both open source and commercial for doing so.

Introduction

Even the smallest of organisations is likely to have an existing contacts ‘database’, whether they perceive of it as a database or not. Individuals in most organisations will have email packages and address books; some organisations will have intranets or a few computers networked; many will use Microsoft Office packages such as Excel or Access to store a list of contacts or membership.

There are several potential advantages in voluntary and community sector (VCS) umbrella organisations harnessing and sharing this type of information for the good of the local sector (VCS).

 “Knowledge is power. If you have high quality information about your local voluntary and community sector – its composition, activities, strengths, weaknesses and support/development needs – you will be able to do your job more professionally and to greater effect.”

From: ‘Getting to know your local voluntary and community sector’

NAVCA/Audit Commission report 2006

 

A publicly accessible database for your local Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) can:

• Raise the profile of sector
• Facilitate communication both within the sector itself and between sector and others.
• Provide information for funders.
• Provide information for volunteers and supporters.
• Create a sense of community.
• Build a sense of purpose and leadership within an area.
• Build ICT skills in the sector.
• Allow shared ownership of the data and shared responsibility for its upkeep
• Provide marketing and publicity value

The difference between Contact Management and Community Building

The development of a publicly accessible online community from an existing contacts list does not need to be an enormous leap, but there are fundamental differences between contact management and the construction of an online community.

Contact Management comes in many forms: an organisation may have a simple Access database, or just an address book with emails, but most contact/membership management software is designed primarily for interoffice use, and not necessarily for creating public access information.

How can a list or database of contacts become the basis for an online community? The key factor lies in interactivity. Contact management becomes community building when a community is able to take ownership of a database and facilitate its development as an online resource. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, from simple information sharing techniques to high level software solutions.

What exactly constitutes a database?

A database is anything that helps to organise and structure data or information (usually electronically). Databases come in many shapes and sizes, but can be divided into two main groups: single and relational databases. As their names suggest, a single database comprises a single table, whereas a relational database allows the creation of multiple tables, all related to each other if necessary.

What databases are commonly used in the sector?

A small organisation might well use Microsoft Access, but they will almost certainly only be using it as a single database, for while Access does have the capability to create relational databases (multiple tables or data lists, related to each other), the level of skill required to build such a facility is high, and many organisations will not have the time or skills to meet the challenge. So they will perhaps have a master list of contacts or membership that is maintained by one person on a single computer.

The amount of time required to keep such a list up to date is enormous and yet it is often not being valued or utilised to the extent that it could be. It is also inherently unsafe to keep such a list on only one computer, and not time or cost effective to have a single person responsible for its upkeep: indeed, they might be the only individual in the organisation that knows how to access or edit the database.

What databases are used in commercial or online solutions?

The term SQL might sound rather techie, but an SQL (Structured Query Language) database forms the backend of a large proportion of online and remote services. Why would a small organisation need to know this? That’s exactly the point. They don’t need to. Because there are so many user-friendly applications, both open source and commercial to choose from, that the organisation need never have to touch the actual database.

Solutions that can be used to create online communities:

Off the Shelf Contact Management Software

There is a bewildering variety of solutions for contact management, and it becomes ever more confusing when you extend the requirement to online or remote services. But in reality most software will be using a relational database of some sort (usually SQL), with either a commercial or an open source front end to use the database.

Some of the major commercial players include ACT and Razor’s Edge and Salesforce, but depending on what a charity needs they can be overkill, besides being expensive. The latter two are aimed at managing fundraising as well as contacts; all are aimed squarely at service users and supporters rather than a facility for a given local voluntary and community sector to come together.

Amongst the Open Source players, CivicSpace, eBase and SugarCRM stand out. All three offer unsupported open source use of the basic software, alongside supported/hosted solutions. What they all have in common, however, is that some degree of customisation will almost certainly be involved in adapting the software or service for a particular community/organisational use; being ‘off the shelf’, they will be all things to all people, hence will only be suitable in part.  Also to be considered is the hosting and maintenance of particular software. The IT skills required are often tremendous, and may disappear with an individual employee or volunteer.

A compromise: hosted solutions of high-level software

Many Contact Management software solutions provide a hosted option for a minimal fee per month; besides all of the solutions already mentioned, there are more basic information sharing services such as BackPack, Joyent Connector and Wild Apricot. All of them can be trialled for free for a limited time, and provide a reasonable solution to data sharing, although with varying degrees of public access (Wild Apricot and CivicSpace for instance allow for the creation of a complete online community whereas Joyent Connector is designed for an extended and more secure office database space). However, the advantage of using a hosted service lies in not having to worry about software upgrades and site backups.

The ultimate solution: Customised Software?

To an extent, all software is customised. A simple Access database is a customised solution. Many of the above solutions will need substantial customisation to work, particularly for the smaller not for profit groups. Commissioning a custom application will of course be dependent on budget and finding a developer that you trust.

Many of the larger commercial and open source hosted solutions do indeed offer customised database services, and the cost is not necessarily prohibitive. It is easy to forget to factor in the cost to a small charity of an employee desperately trying for days to come up with a suitable Access database for office use alone! Some budget is inevitable, even if it is only staff time, and although it is not always necessary to go for the most expensive option, the hidden cost to an organisation of not utilising an existing community database efficiently, will ultimately prove to be the more expensive option.

Sharing the data

Is there a way to utilise existing technical data, knowledge and skills around the list of contacts/databases (i.e. communities) that have already been created in an organisation?

A database is only a container for data. Data can be extracted and shared in a wide variety of formats from within Microsoft Office packages. From within email packages, contacts can be shared via VCards, or a whole address book or mailing list can be exported as a CSV file (‘Comma Separated Values’), which can then be used in Microsoft Excel or Access.

The ability to import Vcards, CSV files and XML files (Extensible Markup Language, used in RSS feeds) is also a feature of many of the online solutions discussed above. The key factor to remember is that the information belongs to the organisation and to the wider sector, and can and should be moved around and shared.

Conclusion

At present there does not seem to be one clear software solution for the not for profit sector to aggregate data from disparate sources. This situation might change as demand increases. There are however many ways to utilise existing technology and skills (in particular with regard to CSV and XML files: XML in particular offers an exciting way to move data around and can be easily published to the web in a variety of ways, e.g. RSS feed).

Databases can be put into the public domain relatively easily and cheaply; even an Access database can be exported in a wide variety of formats, such as a text or Word file, and the possibilities for sharing become endless.