Online collaboration for non-profit peer organisation
April 30, 2017 6:20 PM Subscribe
I am a panellist for a non-profit, peer-review performing arts awards organisation. We currently use Basecamp Classic to maintain our schedule and calendar, notate meetings, and review work we've seen that is eligible for award. It works - kinda - for what we have to do, but isn't really a great fit. I've been tasked to find a replacement, and I'm looking for some recommendations. Specific requirements inside.
Our organisation is comprised of several panels for different art forms: Dance, Musical Theatre, Contemporary Performance, Opera, Theatre Companies, and Independent Theatre. Each panel handles its own processes differently, because the requirements for each are slightly different. My panel, Independent Theatre, has a large group of panellists (12 or so) and registrations for work we have to see (upwards of 150 every award year). We're the largest and most complex panel by far!
When a show registers for the awards, that registration is sent to the overall organising committee, which verifies the registration and processes the fee. It's then sent to the convenor of our panel for input into our system. We are required to have at least 2 panellists see the show and report back. Every quarter, we schedule a meeting to discuss the works seen in the preceding months and cover off any other administrivia.
We have meeting minutes, criteria documents and other external documentation to store, and online discussions take place around each work we see.
So, what we need is:
- Easy admin and end-user tools (it won't always be me administering it, and high-level IT skills are uncommon in performing arts!)
- A Google Calendar-compatible schedule tool that can handle multi-day events.
- Discussion forum/channel per event (this seems to rule out Slack)
- Wiki/Knowledge Base
- Document storage
- A low-cost or free hosted solution that does not require our own server or instance.
What would be nice is:
- A good mobile app (iOS and Android)
- User-friendly interface for web and mobile, with as simple a learning curve as possible.
- Document management functionality (version tracking, etc.)
Thanks!
Our organisation is comprised of several panels for different art forms: Dance, Musical Theatre, Contemporary Performance, Opera, Theatre Companies, and Independent Theatre. Each panel handles its own processes differently, because the requirements for each are slightly different. My panel, Independent Theatre, has a large group of panellists (12 or so) and registrations for work we have to see (upwards of 150 every award year). We're the largest and most complex panel by far!
When a show registers for the awards, that registration is sent to the overall organising committee, which verifies the registration and processes the fee. It's then sent to the convenor of our panel for input into our system. We are required to have at least 2 panellists see the show and report back. Every quarter, we schedule a meeting to discuss the works seen in the preceding months and cover off any other administrivia.
We have meeting minutes, criteria documents and other external documentation to store, and online discussions take place around each work we see.
So, what we need is:
- Easy admin and end-user tools (it won't always be me administering it, and high-level IT skills are uncommon in performing arts!)
- A Google Calendar-compatible schedule tool that can handle multi-day events.
- Discussion forum/channel per event (this seems to rule out Slack)
- Wiki/Knowledge Base
- Document storage
- A low-cost or free hosted solution that does not require our own server or instance.
What would be nice is:
- A good mobile app (iOS and Android)
- User-friendly interface for web and mobile, with as simple a learning curve as possible.
- Document management functionality (version tracking, etc.)
Thanks!
The Organization for Transformative Works switched from Basescamp chat to Slack; they make private channels for each sub-group, often multiples per group - one private for the group itself, and one public with the group prefix and "-public" for anyone interested in that group.
So, f'rex, the Fanlore group has a fanlore-gardeners (that's "advanced wiki editors") locked channel, a fanlore-meetings locked channel for our weekly meetings, a fanlore-public channel where anyone can talk to fanlore people, and a fanlore-special-events channel for upcoming events. There may also be a fanlore-staff private channel; I'm not staff, so I wouldn't see that one.
Slack can work well for this; it requires careful arrangement of prefixes so all a group's channels show up together, but it works nicely to give everyone a place to connect with other parts of the org.
OTW also has a staff wiki; I have no idea what the hosting setup is, but private wikis are not difficult to arrange. (It's harder to push staff/volunteers into using it.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:41 PM on April 30, 2017
So, f'rex, the Fanlore group has a fanlore-gardeners (that's "advanced wiki editors") locked channel, a fanlore-meetings locked channel for our weekly meetings, a fanlore-public channel where anyone can talk to fanlore people, and a fanlore-special-events channel for upcoming events. There may also be a fanlore-staff private channel; I'm not staff, so I wouldn't see that one.
Slack can work well for this; it requires careful arrangement of prefixes so all a group's channels show up together, but it works nicely to give everyone a place to connect with other parts of the org.
OTW also has a staff wiki; I have no idea what the hosting setup is, but private wikis are not difficult to arrange. (It's harder to push staff/volunteers into using it.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:41 PM on April 30, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by prismatic7 at 8:57 PM on April 30, 2017