[CS-FSLUG] Missionary Contacts Program - Come Help :-)

[Tim Young]

Excellent! Glad to see you joining missions...

There is another product out there, besides TNTMPD that is called 
"DonorManager." It is written in foxpro.

Another one that is web-based, can be found at servantsite.com.

There is a book titled, "friend raising" by Betty Barnett, that has some 
really good information in it that explains a lot about why these three 
"products" are so complex. It is more than just trying to track an 
address, it is trying to maintain a friendship over distance and time. 
Most of the complexities in these programs are put in there because 
trying to have a tool that helps the missionary relate to their 
supporters, must work like the missionary thinks, must contain the 
information that the missionary needs, must interact with devices 
(handhelds, laptops, etc) to be be portable, and needs to have certain 
levels of security depending on the status of the missionary.

In short, it is not a simple project unless you are just making it for 
yourself. :) The developers of these three projects all do it on almost 
a full-time basis. They are missionaries in their own right, but some of 
them put a number of hours per day on their project. A lot of that is 
because missionaries keep getting more technology that needs to be 
interoperated with, etc.

My advice: If you build something. PAINSTAKINGLY STAY WITH OPEN 
STANDARDS. There is a tool, multisync, that you could build one 
interface for and sync with LOTS of stuff. People are forever 
reinventing a sync tool, a mail-merge tool, etc. Open standards are your 
friend.

(Not surprising advice to get from someone on this list, eh?)

If you could work with ServantSite, I would probably recommend going 
that route before building your own. Shawn Parrish (of servantsite) has 
been a missionary for years, and knows a lot about what it takes to keep 
up with your donors. It is a bit complex, but it is a rather cool site 
with a lot of thought behind it, and is very much an opensource project.

Blessings,

- Tim

Ritchie, Josiah S. wrote:

> For those not following my blog, I’m a candidate missionary with 
> Fellowship International Mission (FIM). I’d be taking over the support 
> of their website and all things technical. That means I’m doing the 
> deputation thing, raising support in the form of prayers and funds. 
> Details on all that are at the site I put up for the occasion: 
> http://missions.ritchietribe.net <http://missions.ritchietribe.net/>.
>
> (snip)
>
> I have started using my limited ruby knowledge on a Ruby on Rails 
> program that would seem to fit the bill, at least to start. I’m 
> calling in theMCP (Missionary Contacts Program. Yes, that’s a 
> reference to tron also. J I’m wondering if there are any other 
> rubyists on the list that might take interest in this sort of a 
> project. If so, I’d look into sticking it online. I’m still trying to 
> figure out how to get certain boxes to look certain ways and stuff.
>
> (snip)
>

> The long-term vision would be to see this reused as a service FIM (and 
> other mission agencies) could provide to their missionaries, so we’d 
> need to build in the ability to authenticate users and also identify 
> certain information as belonging to the user. I have no idea how to do 
> this from a programming standpoint so my current structure is based on 
> an individual.
>
>