LWVC.org has a new look and improved technology!

We want you to be empowered to make democracy work. Our new streamlined, integrated systems were chosen to support Californians, just like you, in being active and informed in civic life. Our goal is to make the League of Women Voters a training ground and support for what a strong, vibrant, and safe democracy should look like.

We are pleased to announce that we have chosen NonprofitEasy and Drupal for our new database, email and financial platforms. We have been working for several years to convert all our various systems and sites to flexible, open and often open-source platforms that can communicate with each other and with you more easily.

• If you have suggestions, questions, or want to get involved (we love tech volunteers) then please contact us.
• If you experience problems on the site, then please contact us. We're working out the kinks and need to know if something isn't quite right.

We are implementing improvements over time. We are going to begin with a few functions and then add on more as we learn what you want and need. The launch of our Education Fund site CAvotes.org went well, so we're now rolling out this LWVC.org site (which combines everything from the CAvotes.org site with our advocacy and membership work). If all goes well during this phase, we will be raising funds to implement the special members only site in 2013. Throughout 2013 we will be putting together recommendations for the LWVUS to consider for implementation nationally, for local Leagues via our League Easy Web project.

Do I need to do anything to sign up with the League?

If you're already a member, donor, or other contact in our database, you'll just need to complete a few simple tasks to review your account. We recommend you ask the automated system to send your password to you in email and then follow the instructions.

We'd love for you to become a member or become a donor, but it isn't required. Just click Sign Up in the upper right corner, enter your contact info, and you can take it from there!

Will you provide assistance during the transition?

To get you up to speed quickly, we are making this announcement and video. You're welcome to post comments or questions to our Facebook page. You're also welcome to privately contact us.

The video, which shows you how you can manage your email address, name, mailing address and newsletter subscriptions, is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bkAdICOMr4

What is NonprofitEasy? What is Drupal?

NonprofitEasy helps nonprofits develop and manage stakeholder relationships (volunteers, donors, members, staff, board, foundations, government agencies, service partners) within one simple, integrated application. It lets you log into our site and update your own personal information (address, email, telephone) as well as set preferences for what emails you want to received, what donations you want to make, and more.

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world. We were able to build a system which is simple enough to use that we can quickly and easily train key volunteers to maintain our content online, yet complex enough that it could meet the expectations for excellence that is associated with the League.

Why did the League choose NonprofitEasy and Drupal?

We looked for a solution that could provide with us the following benefits:

• Easy Maintenance -- This system is not only easier for our staff and volunteers to maintain, but also easier for our members to work with. Now you can keep your contact information and preferences up to date simply and quickly.
• Value -- For the functionality, this price couldn't be beat. We've made choices to use tempates or other "ready to use" options so that we wouldn't spend as much time (and money) on custom design. Sometimes this limits our choices, but we get to choose whether improvements are worth the investment.
• Scalability -- we wanted a system which could expand over time and could integrate with new technology. In particular, we wanted the opportunity to share content with other levels of League, as well as government, nonprofits, think tanks, and other like-minded entities.
• Access to services from anywhere, anytime -- A key benefit of the hosted solutions is that we can access both our database and the administration of our Web sites from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, anywhere in the world.
• Support for multiple devices -- Our site adjusts to suit whatever you're using to view it. For example, when you're on the road on a web-enabled mobile device like an iPhone or Blackberry.
• High availability -- we contracted to have our database and sites hosted on servers by experts. This minimizes the risk of downtime or data. It also means that during high traffic periods, like right before elections, we can add additional resources but not have to pay for them year-round. And since we are using a backup system, we are even more prepared in the event of a disaster or accidental deletion of email.
• No contracted advertisement space -- You will never see an auto-generated outside advertisement on our Web sites. Many email providers, social networks, and bloggers sell advertising space to outsiders; are you familiar with ads on Facebook or ads that appear in the banner of your web email system? We want to control what is associated with our name. In particular, we want to prevent having ads for a candidate or political party appearing next to our name. We can't control it everywhere on the web, but we can control what appears on this site.
• A green approach -- By moving more of our communications online to a hosted system, we will be reducing our energy consumption and carbon footprint. So we will be helping the environment as a whole as well.
• Improving support -- Because these services are hosted, we will not need to support the physical machines our content is hosted on. This will allow us to focus our support on what adds value to you - content, user experience, and fun interactions like answering questions!
• Innovative solutions -- We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of the NonprofitEasy and Drupal platforms to provide new powerful, easy-to-use tools for making democracy work.
• More collaboration features -- With next-generation technology, you can collaborate with colleagues, volunteers, and partners more easily and efficiently than ever before. You'll see this really come to life when our sites for members and local Leagues are ready! We're better integrated with social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr. We're excited to be sharing information through technologies like RSS feeds.
• Accessibility -- ca.lwv.org and cavotes.org were built with accessibility guidelines in mind, with Drupal as the core framework. Our sites are currently on Drupal 6; Drupal 7 has made significant advances in accessibility that we would like to include, and we plan to upgrade to Drupal 7 as our budget allows. For more information on Drupal 7 and accessibility, please see: http://drupal.org/about/accessibility. If you are someone relying on our compliance with accessibility standards and are having difficulty using either of these sites, please contact us to let us know more about your experience so that we can directly address areas where we fall short.

What exactly does this new system include?

These are just highlights of the services the new LWVC.org includes:

• Manage My Subscriptions -- You can change your contact information, email preferences, and other communications settings right from the internet.
• RSS Feeds -- We are setting up an assortment of RSS feeds for you to use to receive information from us.
• Act Now -- Our Act Now page has great ways for you to raise your voice for the issues you care about. Did you know that online surveys are not very effective, particularly when they're created a random times and sent to random officials? We are committed to making the most of your time, and so we work hard to focus our efforts on timely issues, with the right people in power, in a format that gets them to take notice. Read more about advocacy impact in "The Advocacy Gap" report from Englin Consulting.

Can I share content with LWVC's site?

Yes! We've already started talking to several local Leagues (Berkeley/Albany/Emeryville, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) about sharing content. We're also talking with the national League about sharing content. You can use our RSS feeds to put our content on your site and  contact us if you'd like to learn more or to request specific feeds be set up!

If you're not a League member and want to share content, you can display our RSS information on your site. We'd love to know if you think we should subscribe to your RSS feeds or receive content from you in other ways. Contact us to share your ideas.

What about all the content on the old site?

We have kept an archive of the old site.