Looking for someone to build a Base database for nonprofit

Just a meeting place for professional offers & requests
Forum rules
Disclaimer: this section of the forum is just a meeting place for professional offers & requests. We do not and cannot insure the liability of the proposal made publicly in the forum or privately after contact has been made in the forum. Therefore, please take up the offers made here at your own risk.
Post Reply
africk
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:40 am

Looking for someone to build a Base database for nonprofit

Post by africk »

Hello. We are starting a new nonprofit animal rescue in St Louis, MO, USA (tenthlifecats.org), and are potentially interested in using Base to manage all contacts, animals, volunteers, donors, etc. I have a basic familiarity with Base and other database software but need someone truly skilled to lay the groundwork.

Since we are a new nonprofit we are looking to find someone who can donate their time to help us build this database. It would need to include:

- basic people management information; donors, volunteers, fosters, employees
- donor tracking information; date of a person's last donation, all donations by a person in a single year, all donations from a certain fundraising campaign
- animal tracking information; shot records, surgical records, adoptee information
- manage applications for various people - adoptees, fosters, volunteers. ideally would like to capture information from online forms into Base.

and reports ranging from basic mail merges to donation reports (see above) to application views to per-animal or per-month costs and income.

We know its a big project, but again if someone could help us get the basics laid out, I could take over little tasks (hopefully) like adding fields as it grows. As the organization grows there would be the potential for paid support or further development of the database.

Please reply here if you are interested.

thanks!

adam frick
Last edited by africk on Fri Jan 23, 2009 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
OOo 3.0.X on Mac OSx other
User avatar
TheGurkha
Volunteer
Posts: 6482
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:13 pm
Location: North Wales, UK.

Re: looking for someone to build a Base database for nonprofit

Post by TheGurkha »

Hi and welcome to the forums.

Unless you have a never-ending appetite for spam, I'd go to your first post and use the Edit button, and edit out your email address. No one will reply by email, they will reply here in the thread so other forum users can see the discussions.

Why not use one of the ready-made open source CRM packages? That would get you a lot closer a lot faster. And be a lot better too - Base isn't anywhere near as mature as the rest of OOo.
Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, LibreOffice Version: 4.3.3.2
Gurkha Welfare Trust
africk
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:40 am

Re: looking for someone to build a Base database for nonprofit

Post by africk »

thanks gurkha - wasn't sure if people would reply here or prefer email, better to avoid the spam!

we're looking at existing options but we are hands on and would love a custom app. but interesting to hear that Base may not be as mature as it needs to be.

thanks.

adam
OOo 3.0.X on Mac OSx other
User avatar
TheGurkha
Volunteer
Posts: 6482
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:13 pm
Location: North Wales, UK.

Re: looking for someone to build a Base database for nonprofit

Post by TheGurkha »

There are some who have persevered with it and managed to get it to perform well.

Here's a free example: Free Business System Update.

I just wonder whether something like the very configurable SugarCRM might not get you a head start.
Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, LibreOffice Version: 4.3.3.2
Gurkha Welfare Trust
User avatar
Villeroy
Volunteer
Posts: 31269
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:35 am
Location: Germany

Re: looking for someone to build a Base database for nonprofit

Post by Villeroy »

Follow TheGurkha's path and get in touch with a more professional system. If the system supports data access protocols ODBC or JDBC you may later access your data with this office suite or another set of tools. Think of serial letters and printable reports of all kinds including spreadsheets. Everybody wants to see that Base competes with MSAccess like Writer with MSWord. But this is auto-suggestion.
Base is best when you have a database already and want to use it's content seamlessly in office documents. Some people may even create forms to write back manually entered data into the database. Such input forms are attached to office documents.
The type of database Base can create newly from scratch is a nice toy. Much better than using spreadsheets as database, but it is a database wrapped in a single file, accessible by one almighty user, inaccessible by any software other than OOo, lacking the performance and safety you would expect from a database.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
Ubuntu 18.04 with LibreOffice 6.0, latest OpenOffice and LibreOffice
Post Reply