Help me decide on a platform for organizing our new media non-profit.
April 27, 2018 9:41 AM Subscribe
I'm helping start up a new group of media professionals in San Francisco (video editors, audio mixers/engineers, agency creatives, writers, producers, etc) who aim to use our professional and technical expertise in generating progressive political messaging. I'm working to set us up on some type of online platform to both facilitate conversation within the group, and ideally, manage the projects that will stem from the group. Plus, I want it to be free.
We're a long way off from being a 5013c and collecting donations and so currently don't have any money to spend because we want all resources to go towards the projects. Ideally we'd work off of something like Asana, but we're already over 15 people large and will likely quickly balloon to a very large number of volunteers, so wouldn't be able to swing the $11.99/user/month. I do realize that the free portion of the request may preclude us from getting an ideal solution that combines the discussion with project management, so we could start with just a community board type solution. Security and anonymity is a concern, so Facebook groups aren't of interest. What are your recommendations? Thanks!
We're a long way off from being a 5013c and collecting donations and so currently don't have any money to spend because we want all resources to go towards the projects. Ideally we'd work off of something like Asana, but we're already over 15 people large and will likely quickly balloon to a very large number of volunteers, so wouldn't be able to swing the $11.99/user/month. I do realize that the free portion of the request may preclude us from getting an ideal solution that combines the discussion with project management, so we could start with just a community board type solution. Security and anonymity is a concern, so Facebook groups aren't of interest. What are your recommendations? Thanks!
I don't have a non-Slack suggestion, but just wanted to say that I might be interested in helping...please send a message if you're looking for more people.
posted by pinochiette at 11:05 AM on April 27, 2018
posted by pinochiette at 11:05 AM on April 27, 2018
Response by poster: @chatongriffes In my experience Slack doesn't work great for anyone who comes into a discussion a bit late and wants to catch up. It sort of feels like discussions quickly get buried. Are there solutions to this I'm missing? @pinochiette, I'll message you.
posted by matt_od at 11:49 AM on April 27, 2018
posted by matt_od at 11:49 AM on April 27, 2018
Best answer: I haven't used it, so I only have their marketing materials to go by, but Freedcamp provides a lot of functionality for free, and adds more for not much money.
posted by cnc at 12:25 PM on April 27, 2018
posted by cnc at 12:25 PM on April 27, 2018
Keeping up with Slack can be interesting; if there are good splits into channels, that helps, and there's an unread indicator for those who are catching up. With Slack, only the most recent 10k messages are visible on the free plan.
I'd consider self-hosting, as that avoids per-user pricing. This is more pointers than recommendations: For chatting, I'd look at Slack alternatives - I've heard about Mattermost and Discord - and for project management, Asana alternatives. Depending on the software, at a small scale, you could host on Heroku for free.
I'm also interested in helping.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:39 PM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'd consider self-hosting, as that avoids per-user pricing. This is more pointers than recommendations: For chatting, I'd look at Slack alternatives - I've heard about Mattermost and Discord - and for project management, Asana alternatives. Depending on the software, at a small scale, you could host on Heroku for free.
I'm also interested in helping.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:39 PM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: @cnc Freedcamp seems great! @pinochiette, I messaged you. Anyone else who is interested in helping, please message me and share a short bit about what sort of expertise you can bring to the table to help. Thank you!
posted by matt_od at 3:27 PM on April 27, 2018
posted by matt_od at 3:27 PM on April 27, 2018
I have worked on the group chat application Zulip, which you should consider -- for small organizations who want a hosted option, there's a free tier with unlimited message history. If you'd prefer to self-host, it's open source and you can host it yourself. Because all conversations happen in threads, people find it easier than Slack for catching up on a past conversation.
posted by brainwane at 3:31 PM on April 27, 2018
posted by brainwane at 3:31 PM on April 27, 2018
I use basecamp - Freedcamp should have similar functionality - to manage a team of about 50 with a pretty flat hierarchy. Basecamp has a "campfire" to let you have freeform conversation, slack style, but also posts under which you can thread conversations. Project management is obviously built in; it's easy to assign people to different projects and specific to-dos, chunk to-dos, and thread conversations based on those taskings. It isn't adapted for financials and spreadsheet-adjacent tasks, though.
posted by ahundredjarsofsky at 1:15 AM on April 28, 2018
posted by ahundredjarsofsky at 1:15 AM on April 28, 2018
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posted by chatongriffes at 10:14 AM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]