Is anyone out there using Past Perfect for membership tracking and administration. I noted on their website that one of teh modules tackles this area. I am looking for feedback.

Thanks in advance.

We use PastPerfect at the Walker Transportation Collection/Beverly Historical Society & Museum, though we primarily use it to catalog our images and artifacts. I have no complaints in using the program and find it easy to use, especially the latest version. It allows you to practically write a book on a particular photograph or artifact. It will allow you to not only put in information of what the photograph is, but a history of how the photograph was taken, the ownership and how you received it into your museum/collection. You can write a biography of the photographer, the location of where it is located in you museum/collection and of course you can create a word search criteria. You can also put in information on the donor. There are also some nice filters on it so if a researcher is looking for something, you can hide donor information or the location of an object/photograph within your building, etc.

We have also used it to keep track of borrowed items and donations of material, but are using another program to keep track of our membership. From dubbing around with it though, it will link your members with donated material and allow you to create thank you, fund raising and appeal letters. Once the information is in the database, it allows you to link member information to other modules as well.

As we get more into using it, we will be probably use more of the membership module. As you probably know getting that information in there takes the most time. The one caveat is that if you have an existing database that needs to be transferred to PastPerfect, you have to send the file to the PastPerfect people and for a fee, they will convert it to fit within PastPerfect. That is the only thing we don't like about it.

Hope this helps you.

Funny this should come up. We've been using PastPerfect Ver. 3.5 for cataloging museum inventory AND our membership and donor contacts, etc. I'm not the person that does this, however, I've been evaluating Ver. 4.0 as we are considering the upgrade. I've spent almost all my time working with the "Contacts" module. It is quite powerful and useful. The new version also lets you save to a MS Excel file if you choose to do so.

Ver. 4.0 Contacts (aka member, donor, volunteer) has seperate tabs for lists & notes, pledges, donations, membership volunteer, gifts in kind and planned giving. you can include a person or persons in various mailing and Email lists and track what activity, program and events have been attended.

Only slight shortfall I've found so far (disclaimer: I'm no expert at this stuff) is for Emailing. It'll do HTML by cut and paste, but it uses it's own text editor which is very much like MS Wordpad. In otherwords, to my knowledge, you can't create a MS Word or MS Front Page document and send it via Email.

I'd suggest You download the evaluation version of Pastperfect and play with it like I've been. It's available at:

http://www.museumsoftware.com

Fred
Steam Railroad Institute
Owosso, MI
www.mstrp.com

Revisiting this thread to follow up on Past Perfect, but also ask if anyone else has been using alternative software to track donations, organize members, etc. There's a few out there in the marketplace, but they all seem unrefined in the UI department and would prefer some real-world experience with it if your organization has it.

While not as museum/collection specific, this is an intriguing solution too:

http://www.donorsnap.com/

Nowadays I don't want any software which runs on a physical PC in your office.

Why? Security. The cloud is many times better. Really.

I know many don't accept that, so let me break it down.

Data loss... I've run server rooms. Getting backup right is HARD. Offsite backup, rotation strategies, doing test restores (without blowing the active system)... it's way beyond what volunteers will do. Your best hope is cloud backup, but that means putting the PC on the Internet, which is even worse.

Because a PC exposed to the Internet cannot be secured by any means we here possess. Silly little software products like McAfee or Windows Firewall can't even do their jobs fully let alone cover the rest of the risk spectrum. What happens when Microsoft's support dept. calls to advise your volunteer of a virus on the PC, and walk her through the removal process?

Even USB flash drives are tainted.

It is simply hopeless.

Realistically all security is a compromise between convenience and protection. You have to recognize that fact and make sensible choices... and when you do, the cloud makes more sense.

Cloud: Backups happen by nature. Security is much more workable. By nature, user logins are necessary, which allows assigning of limited access privileges to each user.

For instance our PayPal account has 1 master login and 3 user logins, one of which is mine. I use it routinely and if a hacker got that, it doesn't have withdrawal privileges.

Login and activity can be analyzed for unusual patterns. It can also use 2-factor authentication. Even if your PC is hacked, the hacker can only see what you see, not all the data. However because it runs on a Web browser or app, you can use all sorts of devices. For instance a tablet- cellular data plans are as low as $10/month.

What about internal security? On a PC accounting system, it's easy to "cook" double books simply by swapping out the data files and messing with the PC's clock. Because you have total control of the PC. It's just like games on your PC, where you can "undo" a grisly death or use a cheat code to become invincible. That doesn't work on a cloud-based game like World of Warcraft. You CANNOT cheat because the relevant data lives on the server and you don't have access to it. Once, a guy got a cheating device... and got nailed by the server logs. Your embezzling bookkeeper will have the same problem.

So yes. The cloud makes a lot more sense than anyone figured, because while not 'perfectly secure' it is a damn sight better than your PCs. And more versatile. Try to access QuickBooks from your phone lol!

OK Robert, that's all Good Stuff to know, but are there offerings in the Cloud yet that do collections and donor management? Past Perfect itself doesn't appear to be.

I agree, Rob. With several of our directors and managers needing access, the cloud is also extremely beneficial.

OP's goal is to manage member lists. I can think of three ways to go: low, high, or sideways.

Low is to just do it in an Excel document or cloud equivalent (google drive). Heck you could even use a Wiki page for its excellent journaling.

High is software designed for that purpose, or rather the larger purpose, CRM (Customer Relationship Management). There are plenty, on and off the cloud, not necessarily cheap.
http://www.techsoup.org/support/article ... h-techsoup
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbett ... r-company/

Or you can go sideways and use software not intended for that purpose, but which does it as a side-effect. OP asked about PastPerfect, which is actually to track assets in your collection ( including data about donors, and thus, donor/member lists.) Constant Contact sends email newletters, they want to host your entire customer database so you'll use them for emails. I know my Boone IA membership auto-renews via PayPal, so there are systems (largely online) which let you do that.