I am looking for services or software for the following, and am hoping someone here may have some ideas.
I'm involved with a
USABDA, national non-profit (read: small budget) organization for ballroom dancing. We have 23,000 members in 150 chapters all across the country. Communication is poor, at best. There are no standard email lists, or message boards. When an event occurs which should be open to people in many states, not everyone hears about it. Chapters often face similar issues, but don't communicate with each other to share ideas.
We recently put up a web site, but the tools are poorly made and limited in both current and future functionality. Each chapter also has its own tools (e.g. email lists and web sites) which have no standardization (e.g. personal web servers, and email lists saved in a personal address book). Any solution must include compatibility with these systems, or a compelling reason to switch to the standard solution.
Ideally, what I would like is listed below. (Note: most people are non technical, although I am willing to set some non-trivial threshold, like being able to create HTML pages; but familiarity with telnetting to a Unix system might be asking too much.)
Web siteDocument and resource libraryEmail lists for all chaptersEmail aliases for all chapter and national officerslarge scale distribution lists (includes multiple chapters, or individuals) for different types of events
Bulletin board system, with private discussion groups for officers, and public groups for all members
Calendar system for listing events Does anyone have any ideas for doing this?
Some tools and services I already know about:
UBBMailman and similar open source mail serverswww.getactive.comhttp://www.runmyclub.com/aboutus.aspAlphashop (current vendor) I appreciate any ideas people have to offer.
--Mark
[ July 16, 2003: Message edited by: Mark Herschberg ]