DB-based Association Management Software?

BrynM asks: "I work for a professional association that is currently using several Symantec Act! databases to keep track of Membership, Event Registration and Continuing Education. This 'solution' is growing very long in the tooth as Act! is really just a contact database and not a full blown management system and doesn't handle payments for member dues, orders or registration fees at all. I have worked for an Association that used iMIS, which is fully featured but is way beyond my current employer's budget to implement. There's a short list of software in the Google Directory, but foraging the vendor's websites hoping for a demo and trying to get a quote for all of them would be unrealistic. Finding something that uses a database back-end that we can interface other things with would be ideal. I'm OSS agnostic on this one - we just want the most useful and practical solution. What software would you recommend? Do you have any experiences with software to avoid?"

SQL Ledger?

[m0rph3us0]

SQL Ledger [sql-ledger.org] Perhaps this might work? It seems to be more oriented towards billing things rather than maintaining a contact list.

Re:I'd be glad to...

[BrynM]

Maybe the person who posted this is just making the problem so complex, they can't find a reasonable solution?

I made it as simple as I could. I work for a Professional Association [google.com] like the AMA [ama-assn.org], the APhA [aphanet.org], IWA [iwanet.org] (International Webmaster's Association) - hell, the RIAA is an association too! These associations have members who pay money we call dues. In return they get access to a network of similar professionals, continuing education (which is required to keep your license to practice for people like lawyers and doctors), have conventions with seminars, sell work-related publications and lobby for laws that help make the profession thrive. Since we do so many things for our members that involve little bits of data (how many hours of continuing education did this seminar award per person according to which guidelines, who has paid their dues, who is registered to attend the Sacramento Chapter meeting, who is the president of the Sacramento Chapter, etc...), managing it all get's complex and unweildy. We are non-profit and are involved politically, so we have to be accountable to both state and federal regulations for every bit of what we do and go through an annual audit process. Maybe the person who posted the article (me) actually knows what he said and that other people with the relevant experience know what he said, but the subject itself is a niche that you have never been exposed to the complexities of. Enjoy the cold medicine!

MASS

[matthewd]

http://www.membershipadmin.com/

I haven't tried this one personally, but it does have the ability of letting you use different back end databases. A demo copy is available for download. From the FAQ:

"Can this membership software database integrate with other databases?

Yes. The default database engine is dataflex, which has ODBC support. Other backend database engines are also available-at a cost. We support MS-SQL, Oracle, mySQL, Pervasive, IBM-DB2. The worst case scenario is to use the import/export functionality.

Further information on the database capabilities see http://www.dataaccess.com"

Re:Just talking with my wife about this subject

[BrynM]

I told you I'd post if something met your needs... Birdddman posted [slashdot.org] a link to Clubdata [sourceforge.net] just a few minutes ago. It's too rough for what I need, but it looks like a good fit for you. I know I'm re-posting it to the same story, but I want to be sure you get an e-mail letting you know it's there. Thanks again for posting.