Day #4: 16-Dec-2008

Planning on visiting Ramallah site today. Yesterday spent afternoon, about 4 hours, discussing membership record-keeping (excel spreadsheet; 1 line per member only about 15 columns of info). Have about 1,000 (Active & Inactive) members in that spreadsheet. Fundraising/donors all tracked by hand and anonymously -- which is VERY important in this culture. Deciding not to touch automating philanthropy at this point. Instead explore integrating Membership and Program participants tracking via a simple stand-alone system (or perhaps a simple jump-start on-line system -- depending on how reliable telecommunication connections to the internet are). Considering reaching out to 2 known & trusted providers, albeit stateside. Most of today's findings will depend on the real/perceived extremely HIGHER volumes of members and program participants that have been alluded to regarding the pending, soon-to-be-opened Ramallah location.