Organizers' Collaborative

FOR RELEASE
Wednesday, February 15, 2006

CONTACT: Rich Cowan or Cathy Hersh
EMAIL: odb2006 <at> oc-tech.org

Roxbury, MA, February 15, 2006 – At a session held this morning for local nonprofit leaders, Organizers’ Collaborative (OC) took the wraps off of the 1.0 version of its open source database for nonprofits, the Organizers Database (ODB).

Today's event, at the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, was attended by consultants, trainers, and nonprofit leaders working with over 100 community groups in Eastern Massachusetts. The event included training sessions to show participants how the software can be customized in just a half hour to serve the needs of many small-to-medium sized nonprofits. Attendees received CDs of version 1.0.

We're pleased to announce the upcoming release of the new version of Organizers Database -- ODB 1.0! Our announcement of the upcoming February release was covered on December 22 by PNN Online. You may also view the list of 1.0 features or 1.0 screenshots.

Get the specifications of ODB 1.0, the newest version of the Organizers Database. You can read about what the new program can do by clicking on the attachment at the bottom of the body of this article. If you want to test out 1.0, email us (odb2006 oc-tech.org) and we will notify you when the Release Candidate is ready.

After one more week we now see the light at the end of the tunnel. ODB 1.0 was polished enough to be the centerpiece of a public demonstration in Lexington, MA, last Thursday, organized by a group that is helping nonprofits become more effective locally (see http://nonprofitnet.us/home.php).

Last week's update described some big speed improvements in 1.0; this week we are putting the final touches on new features. You might not notice these at first, so below is a list of the most important ones. To receive a link to the latest build of ODB, please email odb2005 at organizenow.net.

a) More compatibility with longer addresses, international addresses and dates phone numbers, accented international characters. (Some of this new compatibility must be enabled thorough the use of 3 new ODB settings.)

Some really good news:
- The todo list for release 1.0 of ODB is getting smaller! We have been doing quality control work in the last week and a half, eliminating minor bugs and making some major performance improvements.
- The biggest improvement is in the speed of searching on large databases.
- We have also altered all of the pull down menus, to show more of the content.
- There is a new draft of the user manual (volunteers needed)
- Bugs in the new pledge tracking feature have been fixed.
- the ability to do searches and exports on notes and pledge data has been added.

Finally, we posted 20 new screen shots at Flickr:

To all ODB users and prospective users:

Today, we are pleased to announce the release of version 0.9.6e of the Organizers' Database (ODB) software! PLEASE CIRCULATE this announcement to any group with Windows PCs that needs a low cost data management solution.

What is ODB?

ODB is a slick, lightweight database application now in use at over 350 nonprofit groups in the U.S. All versions of ODB are well suited for small groups who want to get started quickly. Most groups using ODB have 1-6 people who need to share and consolidate information on contacts and prospects. ODB easily tracks donations, volunteer history, activities, and membership status. Once ODB is set up, it only takes a few minutes to train other staff and volunteers to use it.