Comments on: What sort of database for a non-profit training organisation?

Question: What sort of database for a non-profit training organisation?

harriet vane — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:51:34 -0800

I need to organise some kind of database for my non-profit training organisation, to track students, courses taken, etc in Moodle, and possibly to integrate with a Joomla site as well. I've been told that Access will not work for us. Will a Customer Relations Management thing suit us, or is something more required? If so, what should we be looking for? Requirements and constraints inside.

Staff: < 10 with me being the most tech-savvy, but I've never worked with a database before.
Budget: free is great, cheap is acceptable, enterprise-level is out of the question.
Customer-base: a couple of thousand and growing.

Requirements:
- GUI or other easy-to-use interface
- tracking which courses our clients have taken, contact details, organisation/department, etc.
- can be used as an external database for Moodle authentication (requires mapping of tables, I believe)
- push a training/events calendar to Joomla

Bonus points:
- can be used as an external database for Moodle enrolments (more mapping?)
- can be used to create a single-sign-on between Joomla and Moodle
- integrates with Outlook or has email capability

I think this means I'm looking for a database which can run on the same server as our Moodle and Joomla, but has a GUI too. If that GUI isn't all about following up sales leads (or can be modified, have plugins, whatever), that'd be lovely.

Recommendations so far:
Access - doesn't have a GUI when run on a server, I think? Can I get one for it?
SugarCRM (community version) - good for the CRM part, but will it integrate with Moodle/Joomla?
and
A billion dodgy-looking software sites - I think I'm not using the right Google terms!

Suggestions or recommendations for software, useful articles or better search terms are all welcome :)

By: Doofus Magoo

Doofus Magoo — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:06:03 -0800

You can set up Access so that the frontend (the GUI) is on each user's individual computer, while the single backend (containing all of the data) is on a centrally accessible server. Each front-end will then have a series of "linked tables" connecting it to the backend.

By: Stewriffic

Stewriffic — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 05:36:24 -0800

My grant funder just set us up a database using CiviCRM, which is open source. The company that designed the database is called Giant Rabbit (i know! squee!), and they work with nonprofits exclusively, I believe.

They customized it for our needs, but if you look at the (LONG) floss manual I linked to above, you can get an idea of how or if it would work for you.

By: harriet vane

harriet vane — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:27:50 -0800

Thanks! I've also been recommended to look into Filemaker Pro - anyone got experience with that?

By: johnsu01

johnsu01 — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 23:02:00 -0800

I'll second the recommendation for CiviCRM. Sounds like a good fit for your situation.