Middleware is a type of computer software program that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system . It can be described as "software glue".
73-533: Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement communication and input/output, so they can focus on the specific purpose of their application. It gained popularity in the 1980s as a solution to the problem of how to link newer applications to older legacy systems, although the term had been in use since 1968. The term is most commonly used for software that enables communication and management of data in distributed applications . An IETF workshop in 2000 defined middleware as "those services found above
146-542: A financial endowment . Two characteristics set capital campaigns apart from other forms of fundraising activities. First, "the gifts solicited are much larger than those generally sought during an annual fund". Second, "pledges are emphasized as commitments payable over a number of years convenient to the donor or through the transfer of appreciated real or personal property ". Various types of capital campaigns have been identified. The traditional " brick and mortar " campaign, focused on building construction or improvements,
219-508: A connection with donors, often younger, engaged, and loyal. There are two dimensions to Fundraising – Donor Acquisition and Donor Retention. Donor Acquisition refers to acquiring or addition of new donors. Donor Retention, as the name implies, refers to retaining of existing donors. The efforts of the Fundraising team should be primarily focused on acquisition, while also ensuring that acquired donors are retained as happy repeat donors. It
292-414: A credit or debit card, while 12% prefer to give by bank/wire transfer, and only 8% choose to donate in cash. 51% of donors are enrolled in a recurring giving program with 87% of recurring donors opting to give monthly. Worldwide, 45% of donors donate to crowdfunding campaigns that benefit NPOs, 13% create online peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns to benefit NPOs, and 60% have donated to an NPO in response to
365-412: A deadline. Software analysis begins with a requirements analysis to capture the business needs of the software. Challenges for the identification of needs are that current or potential users may have different and incompatible needs, may not understand their own needs, and change their needs during the process of software development. Ultimately, the result of analysis is a detailed specification for
438-574: A fundraiser) is an event or campaign whose primary purpose is to raise money for a cause, charity or non-profit organization . Fundraisers often benefit charitable, non-profit, religious, or non-governmental organizations , though there are also fundraisers that benefit for-profit companies and individuals. Special events are another method of raising funds. These range from formal dinners to benefit concerts to walkathons . Events are used to increase visibility and support for an organization as well as raising funds. Events can feature activities for
511-454: A longer fundraising program based on a long-term analysis of the organization's needs and direction. This form of campaign can wrap together capital projects, endowment and operating expenses as its purpose, and use a variety of fundraising activities, such as annual gift drives, which are "slower-paced and lack the intensity of the traditional capital campaign". Some non-profit organizations demonstrate greater accountability by showing donors
584-403: A popular fundraising method over the last few years due to its accessibility. Fundraising organizations are developing technical options like mobile apps and donate buttons to attract donors around the globe. Common online and mobile fundraising methods include online donation pages, text to give , mobile silent auctions, and peer to peer fundraising. Since 2016, online giving has grown by 17% in
657-449: A public appeal. Many non-profit organizations solicit funds for a financial endowment , which is a sum of money that is invested to generate an annual return. Although endowments may be created when a sizable gift is received from an individual or family , often as directed in a will upon the death of a family member, they are more typically the result of many gifts over time from a variety of sources. A fundraising event (also called
730-508: A series of categories based on the amount and frequency of donations. For instance, annual giving and recurring gifts represent the base of a fundraising pyramid. This would be followed by mid-level gifts, planned gifts, major gifts, and principal gifts. More sophisticated strategies use tools to overlay demographic and other market segmentation data against their database of donors in order to more precisely customize communication and more effectively target resources. Research by Peter Maple in
803-525: A way to recognize and promote employee volunteerism. A bequest is a gift that is written into a donor's will that is fulfilled after their death. These gifts can be written in the will itself or added as a codicil (addendum) after the main will has been ratified. These gifts are separated from individual giving by Giving USA to illustrate the importance of Planned Giving, which is a type of fundraising that focuses on asking donors to include charitable gifts in their estate plans. While fundraising often involves
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#1733093196360876-403: Is a common mistake to either over-burden existing donors with funding requests or under-serve them to the point of disengagement. For effective fundraising to occur, the systems and operations in place, including reporting, should be organized to ensure that both new and existing donors are not just satisfied, but delighted to support. According to Giving USA 2019, a study of charitable giving in
949-511: Is a framework that provides the viewpoints on the system and its environment , to be used in the software development process . It is a graphical representation of the underlying semantics of a view. The purpose of viewpoints and views is to enable human engineers to comprehend very complex systems and to organize the elements of the problem around domains of expertise . In the engineering of physically intensive systems, viewpoints often correspond to capabilities and responsibilities within
1022-408: Is a popular way of managing changes made to the software. Whenever a new version is checked in, the software saves a backup of all modified files. If multiple programmers are working on the software simultaneously, it manages the merging of their code changes. The software highlights cases where there is a conflict between two sets of changes and allows programmers to fix the conflict. A view model
1095-527: Is called planned giving . Charitable giving by individuals in the U.S. was estimated to be $ 286.65 billion in 2017. The established development programs at institutions of higher learning include prospect identification, prospect research and verification of the prospect's viability, cultivation, solicitation, and finally stewardship, the latter being the process of keeping donors informed about how past support has been used. When goods or professional services are donated to an organization rather than cash, this
1168-421: Is called an in-kind gift. A number of charities and non-profit organizations are increasingly using the internet as a means to raise funds; this practice is referred to as online fundraising. In addition, crowdfunding has begun to be used as a method to engage small-donation donors for small, specific opportunities. Comparing traditional and online fundraising, 55% of donors worldwide prefer to give online with
1241-449: Is correctly incorporated with the newer software. Design involves choices about the implementation of the software, such as which programming languages and database software to use, or how the hardware and network communications will be organized. Design may be iterative with users consulted about their needs in a process of trial and error . Design often involves people expert in aspect such as database design , screen architecture, and
1314-833: Is essential to success. This is more easily achieved if the team is small, used to working together, and located near each other. Communications also help identify problems at an earlier state of development and avoid duplicated effort. Many development projects avoid the risk of losing essential knowledge held by only one employee by ensuring that multiple workers are familiar with each component. Software development involves professionals from various fields, not just software programmers but also individuals specialized in testing, documentation writing, graphic design , user support, marketing , and fundraising. Although workers for proprietary software are paid, most contributors to open-source software are volunteers. Alternately, they may be paid by companies whose business model does not involve selling
1387-399: Is helpful for new developers to understand the project when they begin working on it. In agile development, the documentation is often written at the same time as the code. User documentation is more frequently written by technical writers . Accurate estimation is crucial at the feasibility stage and in delivering the product on time and within budget. The process of generating estimations
1460-422: Is inefficient, difficult to understand, or lacking documentation on its functionality. These standards are especially likely to break down in the presence of deadlines. As a result, testing, debugging, and revising the code becomes much more difficult. Code refactoring , for example adding more comments to the code, is a solution to improve the understandability of code. Testing is the process of ensuring that
1533-465: Is not strictly considered fundraising, but rather the result of previous fundraising efforts' investment. The donor base (often called a "donor file" or simply "constituents") for higher education includes alumni, parents, friends, private foundations, and corporations. Gifts of appreciated property are important components of such efforts because the tax advantage they confer on the donor encourages larger gifts. The process of soliciting appreciated assets
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#17330931963601606-440: Is often delegated by the project manager . Because the effort estimation is directly related to the size of the complete application, it is strongly influenced by addition of features in the requirements—the more requirements, the higher the development cost. Aspects not related to functionality, such as the experience of the software developers and code reusability, are also essential to consider in estimation. As of 2019 , most of
1679-432: Is often used to break down the customer's requirements into pieces that can be implemented by software programmers. The underlying logic of the program may be represented in data-flow diagrams , data dictionaries , pseudocode , state transition diagrams , and/or entity relationship diagrams . If the project incorporates a piece of legacy software that has not been modeled, this software may be modeled to help ensure it
1752-401: Is robust to heavy levels of input or usage), integration testing (to ensure that the software is adequately integrated with other software), and compatibility testing (measuring the software's performance across different operating systems or browsers). When tests are written before the code, this is called test-driven development . Production is the phase in which software is deployed to
1825-455: Is sometimes used to refer to the identification and solicitation of investors or other sources of capital for for-profit enterprises. Traditionally, fundraising has consisted mostly of asking for donations through face-to-face fundraising , such as door-knocking. In recent years, though, new forms such as online fundraising or grassroots fundraising have emerged. Fundraising is a significant way that non-profit organizations may obtain
1898-471: Is somewhat standardized through the Service Availability Forum and is commonly used in complex, embedded systems within the telecom, defence, and aerospace industries. Many categories of middleware have been defined, based on the field in which it is used or the application module it serves. A recent bibliography identified the main categories of middleware as follows: The term middleware
1971-414: Is typically undertaken for one of two broad objectives: Opex (Operational Expenditure) or Capex (Capital Expenditure). Opex includes salary, overheads such as electricity, rent and transport, whereas Capex includes expenses such as infrastructure, equipment or supplies. Therefore, organizations raise funds to support capital projects, endowments, or operating expenses of current programs. Capital fundraising
2044-465: Is used in other contexts as well. Middleware is sometimes used in a similar sense to a software driver , an abstraction layer that hides detail about hardware devices or other software from an application. Software developer Software development is the process of designing and implementing a software solution to satisfy a user . The process is more encompassing than programming , writing code , in that it includes conceiving
2117-430: Is when fundraising is undertaken to raise major sums for a building or endowment; generally such funds are kept separate from operating funds. This is often done over a period of time (in a capital campaign) to encourage donors to give more than they would normally give and tap donors, especially corporations and foundations who would not otherwise give. A capital campaign normally begins with a private phase before launching
2190-840: The operating system and applications on each side of a distributed computing system in a network." Services that can be regarded as middleware include enterprise application integration , data integration , message oriented middleware (MOM), object request brokers (ORBs), and the enterprise service bus (ESB). Database access services are often characterised as middleware. Some of them are language specific implementations and support heterogeneous features and other related communication features. Examples of database-oriented middleware include ODBC , JDBC , and transaction processing monitors. Distributed computing system middleware can loosely be divided into two categories—those that provide human-time services (such as web request servicing) and those that perform in machine-time. This latter middleware
2263-471: The programming language ). Documentation comes in two forms that are usually kept separate—that intended for software developers, and that made available to the end user to help them use the software. Most developer documentation is in the form of code comments for each file, class , and method that cover the application programming interface (API)—how the piece of software can be accessed by another—and often implementation details. This documentation
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2336-499: The transport (i.e. over TCP/IP) layer set of services but below the application environment" (i.e. below application-level APIs ). In this more specific sense middleware can be described as the hyphen ("-") in client-server , or the -to- in peer-to-peer . Middleware includes web servers , application servers , content management systems , and similar tools that support application development and delivery. ObjectWeb defines middleware as: "The software layer that lies between
2409-513: The Association of Fundraising Professionals' Fundraising Effectiveness Project suggests the sector has a long way to go in improving the quality of donor relations. The sector generally loses 50–60% of its newly acquired donors between their first and second donations and one in three, year on year thereafter. The economics of regular or sustained giving are rather different, but even then organizations routinely lose 30% of their donors from one year to
2482-457: The COVID-19 pandemic. Non-profit organizations also raise funds through competing for grant funding. Grants are offered by governmental units and private foundations/charitable trusts to non-profit organizations for the benefit of all parties to the transaction. Charitable giving by foundations in the U.S. was estimated to be $ 66.90 billion in 2017. Charitable giving by corporations in the U.S.
2555-479: The UK shows that charities generally underinvest in good marketing research spending around a quarter of what an equivalent sized for profit company might spend. Donor relations and stewardship professionals support fundraisers by recognizing and thanking donors, and demonstrating the impact of their donations in a fashion that will cultivate future giving to nonprofit organizations. Recent research by Adrian Sargeant and
2628-488: The United States, the sources of funds donated to charities are as follows: *NOTE – This chart does not include government grants, which are technically contracts to perform a service, not a charitable gift. Fundraising is just one of several revenue sources for a nonprofit organization. Additional revenue can come in the form of grants from government agencies, endowments, and sales and services. Income from an endowment
2701-713: The United States. In 2018, digital fundraising accounted for 8.5% percent of charitable donations and 24% of online donations were made on a mobile device in the United States. Organizations in the United States established for charitable purposes are allowed to raise funds from many sources. They are given a specific designation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), commonly noted as 501(c)(3) organizations. Other nonprofits such as fraternal associations have different IRS designations, and may or may not be eligible to raise funds. Financial information on many nonprofits, including all nonprofits that file annual IRS 990 forms
2774-489: The available methodologies are best suited to specific kinds of projects, based on various technical, organizational, project, and team considerations. Another focus in many programming methodologies is the idea of trying to catch issues such as security vulnerabilities and bugs as early as possible ( shift-left testing ) to reduce the cost of tracking and fixing them. In 2009, it was estimated that 32 percent of software projects were delivered on time and budget, and with
2847-470: The case of associations, direct marketing enhances the anonymity and intimacy of donations, but it can also serve as a tool for developing visibility and image. Many associations have transformed their one-time fundraising into automatic withdrawal collections following the example of " Doctors Without Borders ." This progression is similar to that resulting from another form of fundraising introduced in France in
2920-457: The charity. Popular charity fundraisers in major American cities include lavish black-tie gala benefit dinners that honor celebrities, philanthropists, and business leaders who help to fundraise for the event's goals through solicitations of their social and business connections. Often called donor cultivation, relationship building is the foundation on which most fundraising takes place. Most fundraising development strategies divide donors into
2993-423: The code executes correctly and without errors. Debugging is performed by each software developer on their own code to confirm that the code does what it is intended to. In particular, it is crucial that the software executes on all inputs, even if the result is incorrect. Code reviews by other developers are often used to scrutinize new code added to the project, and according to some estimates dramatically reduce
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3066-407: The cost of an item versus its gift value, such as a $ 100.00 per person dinner, for a $ 25.00 cost meal. Fundraising often involves recognition to the donor, such as naming rights or adding donors to an honor roll or other general recognition. Charity Ad Books are another form of donation for recognition, sponsorship or selling of ads often in an event related program or group directory. Fund raising
3139-425: The direct impact of their fundraising efforts. This accountability may comes in the form of a vote, where the members select a specific program or charity that they would like their money to go to. Another example is put in place a mechanism which allows donors to contraint usage of funds toward a specific purpose and closely monitor/allow spending to ensure proper usage. Many non-profit organizations take advantage of
3212-496: The donation of money as an outright gift, money may also be generated by selling a product of some kind, also known as product fundraising . Girl Scouts of the USA are well known for selling cookies in order to generate funds. It is also common to see on-line impulse sales links to be accompanied by statements that a proportion of proceeds will be directed to a particular charitable foundation. Tax law may require differentiating between
3285-413: The early 21st century, "street fundraising". Street fundraising involves recruiting new donors in public places, approaching them to introduce the association and propose support for its actions through assured automatic withdrawal donations. Unlike traditional fundraising, it does not collect cash or checks. It usually involves promises of donations. Street fundraising aims to establish a dialogue, create
3358-408: The end user. During production, the developer may create technical support resources for users or a process for fixing bugs and errors that were not caught earlier. There might also be a return to earlier development phases if user needs changed or were misunderstood. Software development is performed by software developers , usually working on a team. Efficient communications between team members
3431-430: The engineering organization. Fitness functions are automated and objective tests to ensure that the new developments don't deviate from the established constraints, checks and compliance controls. Intellectual property can be an issue when developers integrate open-source code or libraries into a proprietary product, because most open-source licenses used for software require that modifications be released under
3504-477: The full functionality. An additional 44 percent were delivered, but missing at least one of these features. The remaining 24 percent were cancelled prior to release. Software development life cycle refers to the systematic process of developing applications . The sources of ideas for software products are plentiful. These ideas can come from market research including the demographics of potential new customers, existing customers, sales prospects who rejected
3577-656: The goal, evaluating feasibility, analyzing requirements , design , testing and release . The process is part of software engineering which also includes organizational management , project management , configuration management and other aspects. Software development involves many skills and job specializations including programming , testing , documentation , graphic design , user support , marketing , and fundraising . Software development involves many tools including: compiler , integrated development environment (IDE), version control , computer-aided software engineering , and word processor . The details of
3650-547: The group at the event by way of placing an ad-like page. Events and their associated fundraisers can be a major source of a group's revenue, visibility and donor relations. One specific type of event is the "ad book" fundraiser, where those who wish to give funds to a fundraising group do so through the sponsorship or statement within a book of advertisements. Online fundraising pages have become very popular for people taking part in activities such as charities and crowdfunding . Those pages facilitate online payments in support of
3723-433: The group such as speakers, a dance, an outing or entertainment, to encourage group participation and giving. Events can also include fundraising methods such as a raffle or charity auction. Events often feature notable sponsors or honoree. Events often feature a charity "ad book" as a program guide for the event. This can also be another fundraiser providing members, supporters and vendors an opportunity to show their support of
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#17330931963603796-498: The money for their operations. These operations can involve a very broad array of concerns such as religious or philanthropic groups such as research organizations, public broadcasters , political campaigns and environmental issues . Some examples of charitable organizations include student scholarship merit awards for athletic or academic achievements, humanitarian and ecological concerns, disaster relief, human rights , research , and other social issues. Some of
3869-432: The most common practice of American non-profits is to employ a staff person whose main responsibility is fund raising. This person is paid a salary like any other employee, and is usually a part of the top management staff of the organization. Some non-profit organizations nonetheless engage fundraisers who are paid a percentage of the funds they raise. In the United States, this ratio of funds retained to funds passed on to
3942-649: The most substantial fundraising efforts in the United States are conducted by colleges and universities. Commonly the fundraising, or "development" / "advancement," program, makes a distinction between annual fund appeals and major campaigns. Most institutions use professional development officers to conduct superior fundraising appeals for both the entire institution or individual colleges and departments (e.g. School of Art, School of Math, School of Science, etc... as well as campus institutions like athletics and libraries. ). The number of people involved, often having socialized at such "fund-raisings", will vary widely depending on
4015-407: The next. A capital campaign is "an intensive fundraising effort designed to raise a specified sum of money within a defined time period to meet the varied asset-building needs of an organization". Asset-building activities include the construction, renovation or expansion of facilities (for example, a new building), the acquisition or improvement of land, equipment, or other items, and additions to
4088-647: The non-profit is subject to reporting to a number of state's Attorneys General or Secretaries of state . This ratio is highly variable and subject to change over time and place, and it is a point of contention between a segment of the general public and the non-profit organizations. The term 'professional fundraiser' is often legislated, referring to third-party firms whose services are contracted, whereas 'fundraising professionals' or development officers are typically individuals or staff at charitable non-profits. Although potentially confusing, it's important to note this distinction. Online and mobile fundraising had become
4161-415: The nonprofit sector. The alignment of direct marketing approaches with fundraising is believed to have facilitated its adoption by associations in the mid-1970s. The results obtained through the intensive use of direct marketing techniques triggered increasing interest from associations. While only a few dozen were using major direct marketing channels in 1975, several hundred commonly utilize them today. In
4234-407: The number of bugs persisting after testing is complete. Once the code has been submitted, quality assurance —a separate department of non-programmers for most large companies—test the accuracy of the entire software product. Acceptance tests derived from the original software requirements are a popular tool for this. Quality testing also often includes stress and load checking (whether the software
4307-403: The performance of servers and other hardware. Designers often attempt to find patterns in the software's functionality to spin off distinct modules that can be reused with object-oriented programming . An example of this is the model–view–controller , an interface between a graphical user interface and the backend . The central feature of software development is creating and understanding
4380-463: The process used for a development effort varies. The process may be confined to a formal, documented standard , or it can be customized and emergent for the development effort. The process may be sequential, in which each major phase (i.e. design, implement and test) is completed before the next begins, but an iterative approach – where small aspects are separately designed, implemented and tested – can reduce risk and cost and increase quality. Each of
4453-424: The product that developers can work from. Software analysts often decompose the project into smaller objects, components that can be reused for increased cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability. Decomposing the project may enable a multi-threaded implementation that runs significantly faster on multiprocessor computers. During the analysis and design phases of software development, structured analysis
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#17330931963604526-466: The product, other internal software development staff, or a creative third party. Ideas for software products are usually first evaluated by marketing personnel for economic feasibility, fit with existing channels of distribution, possible effects on existing product lines, required features , and fit with the company's marketing objectives. In the marketing evaluation phase, the cost and time assumptions become evaluated. The feasibility analysis estimates
4599-503: The project's return on investment , its development cost and timeframe. Based on this analysis, the company can make a business decision to invest in further development. After deciding to develop the software, the company is focused on delivering the product at or below the estimated cost and time, and with a high standard of quality (i.e., lack of bugs) and the desired functionality. Nevertheless, most software projects run late and sometimes compromises are made in features or quality to meet
4672-437: The same license. As an alternative, developers may choose a proprietary alternative or write their own software module. Fundraising Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gather money for non-profit organizations , it
4745-510: The services of professional fundraisers. These fundraisers may be paid for their services either through fees unrelated to the amounts of money to be raised, or by retaining a percentage of raised funds (percentage-based compensation). The latter approach is expressly forbidden under the Code of Ethics of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), a professional membership body. However, by far
4818-422: The size of the institution they sponsor. Equally important are fundraising efforts by virtually all recognized religious groups throughout the world. These efforts are organized on a local, national, and global level. Sometimes, such funds will go exclusively toward assisting the basic needs of others, while money may at other times be used only for evangelism or proselytism . Usually, religious organizations mix
4891-427: The software that implements the desired functionality. There are various strategies for writing the code. Cohesive software has various components that are independent from each other. Coupling is the interrelation of different software components, which is viewed as undesirable because it increases the difficulty of maintenance . Often, software programmers do not follow industry best practices, resulting in code that
4964-403: The software, but something else—such as services and modifications to open source software. Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is tools for the partial automation of software development. CASE enables designers to sketch out the logic of a program, whether one to be written, or an already existing one to help integrate it with new code or reverse engineer it (for example, to change
5037-520: The tools for estimating the amount of time and resources for software development were designed for conventional applications and are not applicable to web applications or mobile applications . An integrated development environment (IDE) supports software development with enhanced features compared to a simple text editor . IDEs often include automated compiling , syntax highlighting of errors, debugging assistance, integration with version control , and semi-automation of tests. Version control
5110-652: The two, which can sometimes cause tension. Fundraising also plays a major role in political campaigns . This fact, despite numerous campaign finance reform laws, continues to be a highly controversial topic in American politics. Political action committees (PACs) are the best-known organizations that back candidates and political parties , though others such as 527 groups also have an impact. Some advocacy organizations conduct fundraising for-or-against policy issues in an attempt to influence legislation. While public broadcasters are completely government-funded in much of
5183-574: The world, there are many countries where some funds must come from donations from the public. In the United States less than 15% of local public broadcasting stations' funding comes from the federal government. Pledge drives , a type of annual giving, commonly occur about three times each year, usually lasting one to two weeks each time. Viewership and listenership often decline significantly during funding periods, so special programming may be aired in order to keep regular viewers and listeners interested. The techniques of direct marketing have been adapted in
5256-453: Was considered a "once in a lifetime" campaign in the past because of the ambitious goals of the campaign. Today, however, organizations frequently schedule capital campaigns every five to ten years, and "the megagoals announced by large institutions often are the result of 'counting everything' during a five-to seven-year campaign period". A second type of campaign is the comprehensive, integrated, or total development campaign , which aims for
5329-456: Was estimated to be $ 20.77 billion in 2017. This consists of corporate grants as well as matching gift and volunteer grants . 65% of Fortune 500 companies offer employee matching gift programs and 40% offer volunteer grant programs. These are charitable giving programs set up by corporations in which the company matches donations made by employees to eligible nonprofit organizations or provides grants to eligible nonprofit organizations as
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