Benefits

Our offering is in active development and will not be complete until at least Q3 2005 but is already serviceable and in active use by many organizations. To find out if AmeriSpace is ready for you here is list of the current functionality and the status of its development.

Currently available

Website management

AmeriSpace has a flexible and powerful CMS capable of running all kinds of websites. It comes with a WYSIWIG editor and it is extremely simple to learn how to update and submit content on your site. A selection of sample themes are included with AmeriSpace and the theming system gives you complete control over the appearance and layout of your website.

Community Tools

Blogging – All the features you would expect in a top tier blogging tool (WYSIWYG editor, trackback, image and file upload, syndication) plus peer moderation and peer publishing tools. You can give every user on your AmeriSpace site the ability to post and manage an individual blog.
Podcasting – Our software steps you though the entire podcasting process, from creating a show to publishing it as a subscription for your constituents. Says Jeff Aldrich, "That is a huge deal...it gives candidates the ability to snuggle up to their supporters without having to be at the event. And the hosts will beam with pride and feel very connected to their candidate as they play that personalized podcast for their friends and neighbors...
Forums – Create as many discussion forums as you want. You can even enable your forum to accept and send email messages just like a yahoo group.
File storage – Attach files to any post as easily as attaching files to emails.
Photo Galleries – Create and maintain as many photo galleries as you want. You can even give users access to mantain their own personal galleries and comment on any picture.
Polls and Surveys – You can easily create polls and surveys to collect information from your users and reach consensus.
Social Networking – Users can search for other users with similar profiles, add them as buddy list, and track their participation on the site.

Event Organizing

The event system allows users to submit and maintain event listings on your site. You can send and track invitations to events and find and manage volunteers. AmeriSpace was used by groups like the Microtution Foundation to organize events across the country this past election cycle. We are currently overhauling the event system to be even more powerful, flexible and easier to use. It will be available in our upcoming release.

Under heavily development

Contact Management and CRM – Currently you can dynamically create a user registration form to collect all manner of constituent information. You can import contact data from CSV files, search your database of contacts, and set permissions to access them. A much more powerful and easier to use CRM system (AmeriSpaceCRM) is currently in development and will replace our current solution by Q2. It will have a much more powerful data model that will make it possible to use AmeriSpace as your main donor and volunteer database and will feature simple but powerful searching, permission, data importing / exporting, and reporting tools. More information on the project is can be found "here".
Mass Mailing – Our current solution allows you to create multiple mailinglists, manage subscribers, and send thousands of emails at a time. Our improved version due in Q2 will support bounce tracking, open rates, tokens, and HTML templates.
Donations – You can currently use any number of third party donation services on a AmeriSpace site. We are working towards making it easier to get started taking donations and more tightly integrating donation systems and the data they collect into AmeriSpace.

Future development...