Progressive Technology Project Introduces PowerBase.
PTP is creating a database platform, PowerBase, specifically for groups engaged in community organizing. It’s being developed in collaboration with key organizing groups, so PowerBase tracks what organizers want to track. Groups will be able to access it in the office and on the road. PowerBase will make it easy to share information both within organizations and with organizational partners and allies – everyone will be using the same system.
Questions? Get answers by visiting our FAQ section.
Why PowerBase?
The simple reality is that there has not been a good, uniform, sophisticated database for community organizers. The result is the situation we’re in now:
- groups have to live with databases – usually more than one – that have been customized, cobbled together, and entirely inadequate to their needs
- nearly every organization uses a database unique to them, so there’s no easy way to exchange information, or receive technical support
- commercial solutions are expensive and target the ‘nonprofit’ model – community organizers have very different needs
As more groups are tracking increasingly complex information, building memberships of hundreds to tens of thousands of people, engaging in voter participation efforts, and inputting data in multiple languages, the organizing community urgently needs a well-designed, well-supported, uniform database system.
Interested in the development process? Go to our Updates page.
What will PowerBase be able to do?
PowerBase is a web-based platform and is accessible by multiple people in multiple sites at the same time. PowerBase will:
- Track member involvement and leadership development over time
- Track relationships with allies, volunteers, donors, media, etc.
- Track donations
- Interface with voter files
- Track voter contacts
- Track events
- Interact with organizational websites
- Create reports
- Create lists for mass communications
- Accept information in multiple languages; provide a multi-lingual interface
Want to know more? Check out our Features section.
What’s the history of the PowerBase Project?
For over ten years PTP has focused on building the capacity of community organizing groups to use technology more effectively, efficiently, and strategically. For PTP’s entire history, the groups we work with have expressed deep dissatisfaction with their database options.
PTP responded to pressure from groups by taking on a comprehensive scan of database platforms in the fall of 2008. We found that CiviCRM – an open source platform – already had 75% of the essential database requirements for basebuilding organizations.
This spring PTP received a grant from the Ford Foundation allowing us to work directly with representative organizations to develop a version of CiviCRM that meets the needs of organizing groups. We’re currently in the development phase of PowerBase with Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Environmental Health Coalition, New York City AIDS Housing Network, and SCOPE.
We hope to complete the pilot phase by the end of this year and plan to make PowerBase available to the organizing community starting in the first quarter of 2010.
Who’s involved? Visit our About section.
