As the founders of the MemberJunction platform, we’ve worked in the membership, association, and nonprofit world for most of our careers and have grown to share a deep appreciation for the compelling stories and missions behind the organizations within the space.  Everyday we’ve seen groups driven to bring value to their members and wider communities through knowledge and resource sharing as well as industry, career, and personal development.  We’ve seen individuals volunteer their time to grow these communities in the public interest.  And we’ve seen leadership and staff dedicated to serving those communities using any and all available resources. 

We’re now bringing that same mindset to the technology space for the systems that support those organizations, including: 

1. A member-first focus that concentrates on the needs of external participants served through a seamless and personalized digital experience. 
2. A flexible data model and architecture that radically lowers integration hurdles and allows staff to choose the systems that work best for them when they want them.
3. An open-source platform owned by the community that can drive faster and more robust innovation.  

As a technology solution, our mission for MemberJunction is to create an interoperable platform for associations to unlock data from disparate systems. By creating an open-source project with a plug-and-play, standard data structure, associations will be free to share data across their technology infrastructure and experiment with new systems to meet evolving business needs. 

MemberJunction is an xDP (extensible data platform) that is comprised of several components. We've listed them below but will cover each in more detail in our upcoming blog posts: 

• Line of business applications: The numerous applications that associations use today - from financial management systems (FMS) to association management systems (AMS), these are the foundation of an association's day-to-day business activity. MemberJunction will provide a mechanism to communicate with them all and pull together the important data into a common format. 
• Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS): In MemberJunction, the iPaaS is responsible for communicating data updates between the MemberJunction database and the line of business applications. MemberJunction’s plug-in architecture is designed to integrate with any iPaaS solution. We’re starting with implementing one of the leading iPaaS options for MemberJunction version 1.0, but over time this open-source project will support additional iPaaS solutions. IPaaS vendors are encouraged to get involved and contribute to the open-source project, bringing more choice to the community. 
• Standardized Data Model in a Database: For our first implementation, the MemberJunction database is cloud-based, using Microsoft Azure SQL Server. But the data definitions and database schema are generic such that they can be implemented anywhere and with any database. 
• Web Components: The database serves as the source for our MemberJunction web components. These are reusable web components that work with any content management system. The web components provide a unified member experience so that everything a member needs is cleanly presented in a single site. Also, in future iterations, the web components will include an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to provide personalized recommendations and workflows based on a member’s characteristics. 

We have big plans for MemberJunction, and we’re just getting started! We hope you’ll join us on this journey and contribute to this community-owned open-source project for associations!