How international?

[Steven Sackett]

Hi,
I think this is a really worthwhile initiative and hope it succeeds.  If 
it is possible to arrive at a solution that has application outside the 
USA that would be great.

The first thought I had when reading the introductory press release was 
that the not-for-profit entities will not all have the same 
requirements.  Some will just want simple accounting and others will 
want a system to manage an enterprise that just happens to be a NFP. 
That's quite a gulf to bridge with one application.

An example of the latter: a charity provided day care and multiple work 
opportunities/programs for handicapped clients in multiple locations. 
They already had a very commonly used accounting system but it no longer 
met their needs. Their challenge was that the funding climate was 
becoming far more sophisticated and funds were being applied for and 
received on a 'per client needs' basis to pay for that client's 
participation in the various programs the charity managed. Sometimes 
funding for the client's participation in a program would come from more 
than one source, typically another charity or a government grant and 
then there may also be a top-up from the parents of the client. They 
needed to be able to model all of these income sources and claim/invoice 
for it at the right time. They also needed to measure if the 'revenue' 
for various activities covered the activity's costs. That meant being 
able to allocate funding received, staff costs, operating expenses, 
overheads and asset utilisation charges (for buildings/rooms buses etc) 
across all their programs. Their needs were actually quite complex.

The above info is just to make the point that, as in 'for-profit' 
businesses, you probably won't find a 'one size fits all' solution 
unless, perhaps, it's a huge beast that you can successfully cut down to 
satisfy the simple use case.

I was prompted to do some reading to see what was happening in my own 
country AU and came across
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https://wiki.qut.edu.au/download/attachments/91556423/Project+Description+update+January+2012.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1326853866000
The message I got from it was that, to achieve a widely adopted 
solution, there appears to be a lot more stakeholders and issues to 
consider than which code base is most likely to allow a good solution to 
be developed.

btw .. I am an accountant and have been implementing ADempiere ERP/CRM 
(and previously Compiere) for 10 years. If ADempiere appears on your 
list of 'possibles', I would be happy to provide information if it helps 
with the surveying of existing solutions.

regards
Steven