A lot of organizations are either setting up content management systems (CMS) for their websites, or they are hearing a lot about them and want to know if they should move toward using them. From a non-profit technology perspective, I think they make a lot of sense. Green Moon has both evaluated and recommended CMSs to our clients, as well as set them up and then let our clients run with them.

What is a CMS? Simply put, it is a user-friendly system that allows people to update websites without having to know web design, HTML, JavaScript, or other technologies. The user only has to know how to type to add new content.  There are various flavors of CMS -- from free, very bare-bones, less-user friendly but very efficient do-it-yourself kits, to high-end, sophisticated systems that combine customer relationship management (CRM) with e-commerce and other complicated systems, which are often set up and  hosted by large companies (that charge big bucks for their services). 

Which flavor is right for your organization? That depends... how do you use your website now? How do you want it to grow? Do you have people to maintain the site, add new content, keep it fresh? Do you have people with enough technology skills to do the initial system set up? What is your budget? What software is your web server running?

Without getting too technical, I will run through two examples that are toward either end of the spectrum.  Additionally, I am going to assume that an organization will use a CMS for more than just updating its website -- the CMS will need to have some interactivity with users, members, and contacts.

Starting at one end of the spectrum -- meaning less expensive, but still with a lot of sophistication -- there are many choices.  There are quite a few free CMS solutions, many of them are also open source -- meaning the computer code that defines them is available to the public. At this point in time, the leaders in this category are Drupal, Joomla, and Plone (source: my recent discussions at N-TEN and packtpub.com/award).  Each of those systems requires a decent amount of technical knowledge for them to be installed and set up. 

An organization without the technical expertise to set up one of these CMS options can easily contract out that activity, knowing that it will be a one-time effort leaving them with a system that they can then maintain and control for the long term. These types of systems allow for member login spaces, discussion forums, blogs, photo galleries, e-mailing capabilities, and e-commerce capabilities.  There are extensive articles and websites dedicated to helping users understand, evaluate, demonstrate, and select the appropriate CMS. TechSoup has an excellent article on Choosing a CMS. This TechSoup article is more recently written and discusses Comparing Open Source CMSs.  At opensourceCMS.com you can try out many CMSs with their online demonstrations.

There are also many sites that have Drupal and Joomla (and probably others, but I am more familiar with these two) set up as part of their hosting agreement. That means, you pay a monthly subscription and they will set up the CMS for you.  You will have some flexibility as to modules installed and the look and feel of the site, but you won't have the complete freedom that having your own system provides.  However, if you don't want to deal with the installation and setup costs and potential delays and don't need too much flexibility, these options may be for you.  A few systems that I have heard pretty good things about are Bryght (Drupal), MediaTemple (Drupal), and Rochen (Joomla).

The open source systems tend to be PHP/MySQL systems, since that language and database lead the field in open source applications.  Drupal and Joomla are PHP/MySQL based.  Plone is written in Python.  For Microsoft servers, there are fewer open source options.  One system that is actually a portal but can also be run as a CMS is an open source product called DotNetNuke.  A skilled .NET programmer is needed to install and configure the system, but it also is quite powerful and can be maintained by those without technical expertise. 

At the other end of the spectrum are the very expensive, very sophisticated systems. These are all application service providers (ASPs), meaning they host the CMS on there servers. That means you pay a hefty setup fee and monthly subscription fees.  For large organizations with tens of thousands of members (or more) and healthy budgets, such systems may be just the ticket.  The Choosing a CMS article, mentioned above, goes into some of these parameters. Some of the leaders in this area include Kintera's Sphere, Avectra's NetForum, CitySoft's Community Enterprise, and Convio.  (This is not a comprehensive list, but was compiled based on my own independent research and discussions with non-profit staff.)

For nonprofits, many of the commercial CMS products are described as Association Management Software, since the CMS tools often need to manage more than content but also include tools for membership management and donor management. Therefore, doing searches on AMS vs. CMS may yield more relevant hits for nonprofits.

I tried to present two ends of the range of CMS options. There are very low-end and "lite" systems that I did not mention because I think for most organizations, they will need at least the capabilities described in this article. Additionally, not all of the high-end systems need to be hosted -- some (for a very high price) can be purchased and installed on an organization's web server. However, for most of the nonprofits that Green Moon works with, that option would not be cost effective.  There are other arrangements and hybrid systems that can be set up, but I hope that this article provided some information for a nonprofit that is thinking about moving to a CMS.