FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, December 22, 2005

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

NGO to Release Open Source Fundraising Software for Small Nonprofits

(December 22, 2005) - The Boston, MA-based nonprofit group Organizers’ Collaborative announced today it would release version 1.0 of its flagship open source Organizers Database (ODB) software on February 15, 2006. ODB is a free software program for fundraising designed specifically for smaller organizations.

ODB allows nonprofits to easily track members, prospects and donors. Especially during the holiday season, a usable donor database is critical to an organization, allowing it to generate end-of-year appeals and process a high volume of gifts.

ODB was developed at a cost of under $100,000 over a four-year period with input from over 100 community organizations. OC estimates that the software has helped the groups using it -- a number in excess of 350 -- increase their donations by over $1 million so far.

"Small nonprofits often can't afford this critical piece of software. And commercial products on the market, even the lower-priced ones, are not designed for small nonprofits," said Rich Cowan, OC founder.

Unlike other free donor management applications, OC is truly open source -- developed without dependence on commercial products such as Filemaker or Microsoft Access. Today, OC also announced that it was releasing the source code to the current version of its software on the Internet, at http://sourceforge.net/projects/organizersdb .

ODB 1.0 is designed so that a novice computer user can download it, set it up on any Windows computer in under five minutes, and perform major customization without a consultant. The 1.0 version also introduces 50 new features into ODB and improves its speed. The software can be networked on up to 15 computers.

Version 1.0 is currently in use in three pilot groups in Ohio, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. Screenshots of the software are available at http://flickr.com/photos/organizersdb/sets. The current ODB home page is at http://organizersdb.org .

Organizers' Collaborative (OC), the group that created the ODB software, is a membership organization dedicated to making technology easier to use for people working for social change. OC uses the ODB software internally for its own membership management purposes.
OC's work on ODB is funded by individual gifts, and grants primarily from the Boston Foundation. Part of the work on ODB is also funded by support fees from ODB users.