Social networking for membership organizations

Long before Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter hit the scene, membership organizations hosted mailing lists, where members could reach out for help and help each other. Today, many nonprofits and associations are recasting their venerable “listservs” as social networking sites.

While public sites like LinkedIn provide free forums, larger organizations with broader constituencies often need more capabilities than a free public site can provide out of the box.

Happily, there are some great options available, both hosted (“in the cloud”) and on-premises (“on your network”).

Hosted Solutions

Four great alternatives for non-profits, especially organizations already using iMIS or Salesforce, are GoLightly, Higher Logic, The Port, and Socious.

• GoLightly [www.golightly.com] is a solid “one stop shop” solution that works standalone or with iMIS and other membership management systems. My professional organization, the IIBA, uses GoLightly. It lacks the “pizzaz” of some other solutions, but GoLightly gets the job done, without getting in the way.

• Higher Logic [www.higherlogic.com] is a forward-looking offering, that stirs the social networking pot with add-ons like Member Ad, an advertising service for community sites. Many features, like microsites and calendars, can be delivered “stand alone”, so you don’t have to buy the whole gorilla if all you want is a banana.

• ThePort [www.theport.com] is a comprehensive solution that rivals systems like Facebook in the look-and-feel department. Not just a pretty face, ThePort offers deep extensibility through its App Portal and Data Exchange platforms. If you’re ready to take the deep dive, check out ThePort.

• Socious [www.socious.com] offers a broad and deep set of social management tools that revolve around four spokes: Social Networking, Online Communities, Knowledge Repositories and Event Management. Socious released a mobile community app in August 2010, optmized for iPhone, Blackberry Storm, Palm Pre/Pixi, and Android 1.5+.

Each of the hosted solutions have their own “flavor” (and price point). The best fit can depend more on your organization’s culture than on a simple feature matrix.

While hosted solutions offer great capabilities with low startup costs, many organizations still look to on premises solutons for tighter integration with an existing site.

On Premises Solutions

Both Ektron and Drupal provide flexible social networking capabilities that can be woven into an existing site, or setup as an independent site. Key advantages of an on premise solution include a consistent approach to administration and a full-site search that can include all resources.

• Ekron CMS400.NET [www.ektron.com] is a general purpose content management system (CMS) with strong social networking capabilities. An Ektron website can be extended to include community groups, where each group has its own set of collaboration tools, including a Calendar, Forum, and Document Library. Using our Ektron/iMIS provider, we can automatically create Ektron groups based on a user’s iMIS profile.

• Drupal Organic Groups [drupal.org/handbook/modules/og] is a popular extension to a leading free open source CMS. Drupal OG is an elegant, flexible solution that is often used as part of a larger enterprise site, such as www.imiscommunities.com and . There are also Drupal offerings that provide full workgroup capabilities, like Drupal Commons and Open Atrium.

The hardest part of today’s social media landscape is that it’s become an “embarrassment of riches”. A good starting point is to study the Social Media Technology Guide by Idealware, and follow its advice to be sure you are getting the most from public offerings. Then, fill any gaps with one the solutions outlined here. Before long, your perfect solution can be “out there”, helping members help themselves.