NonprofitEye

The Limitations of Dashboards By Pam Ashlund I first heard the concept of an electronic dashboard introduced in March 24, 1999. There it was, within the 496 pages of Bill Gates’ book Business at the Speed of Thought . It was so exciting to me that I ran back to the office determined to implement. I attended a Microsoft’s Dashboa rd training and found out that I was sold on an idea that didn’t technically exist. The back-end programming was available, but there wasn’t a commercial product; there wasn’t even a commercial engine to customize. So I waited. It was 2001, with this visionary Dashboard in mind, that I converted from Fundware to Financial Edge . There were other features that met our conversion requirements, but it was the promise of the Dashboard feature that was number one (two and three were: Integrating FE and RE; and Integrated Assets Software). But when we launched, there was a problem. An electronic dashboard may be live, but accounting isn’t—it’s accrued after the fac...

Nonprofit Open Source by pam ashlund I didn't know what " Open Source " was until I left the nonprofit world. In the for-profit technology world "open source" is almost a religion. In the nonprofit world it's almost unknown. If you wanted to understand it at a deep level you could get comprehensive coverage at the Open Source Initiative (OSI) website ... but IF, like me, you just want to cut to the chase... it's been around for almost 25 years, but wasn't known by the name "open source" until 1998. Known as free software before '98 it suffered a public relations problem. The analogy used on the GNU website is: "free” as in “free speech”, not as in “ free beer ”. You can see where there might have been some misunderstandings. "Open Source" communicates the function without confusing newbies. Like most ideas, the concept evolved over time. Fueled by a desire to: do anything to destroy Bill Gates and/or Microsoft; and prove...