NationForge: A Self-Hosted Admin Panel for Civic Organizations

What is NationForge?

NationForge is an open-core platform built for political movements, civic organizations, and community groups to manage their operations from a single, self-hosted admin panel.

Running an organization means juggling hundreds of contacts, events, volunteers, donors, and internal communication — all at once. Generic CRMs are expensive and built for sales teams, not communities. NationForge is purpose-built for the way civic organizations actually work.

Own your data. Host it yourself. Extend it freely.

Features

✅ = implemented  ·  🔲 = planned

Contacts (CRM)

• ✅ Full people database: name, status, address, phone, email, birthdate, gender, social links
• ✅ Status workflow: Prospect → Supporter → Member → Volunteer → Donor → VIP → Inactive
• ✅ Photo upload (Spatie MediaLibrary)
• ✅ Newsletter subscription management + unsubscribe token
• ✅ Custom fields (JSON), source tracking, notes, biography
• ✅ Donation statistics per contact (total donated, count, last donation date)
• ✅ Group membership & event RSVP history
• ✅ Soft deletes
• ✅ CSV / Excel import & export
• ✅ Advanced saved filters & search with named presets
• ✅ Duplicate detection & contact merge
• ✅ Per-contact activity log (interaction history)
• ✅ Contact scoring / lead scoring (6-stage pipeline + 1–5 stars)

Groups

• ✅ Types: Community, Campaign, Chapter, Committee, Team
• ✅ Privacy levels: Public / Private / Secret
• ✅ 28 custom icons per group
• ✅ Cover image, member list with role badges
• ✅ Built-in real-time group chat (Livewire)
• ✅ Soft deletes
• ✅ File sharing within groups (upload, download, delete; 20 MB limit; PDF, Office, images, ZIP)
• ✅ Group-level calendar (monthly view, linked to group events)

Events

• ✅ Types: Meetup, Rally, Webinar, Fundraiser, Volunteer, Conference
• ✅ Online & offline support (venue/city + online URL)
• ✅ Capacity management, ticket pricing fields
• ✅ RSVP tracking per event
• ✅ Public event registration page (name, email, phone, guests, notes, token)
• ✅ Status workflow: Draft → Published → Completed / Cancelled
• ✅ Cover image, featured flag, tags, soft deletes
• ✅ Registration confirmation email (automatic after sign-up)
• ✅ Volunteer shift scheduling with sign-up & attendance tracking
• ✅ Event check-in via QR code (camera scanner + personal ticket page)
• ✅ Waitlist management (auto-promotion, email notifications)
• ✅ Online payment for paid tickets (Stripe / Barion)

Email Campaigns

• ✅ Compose and send HTML / Markdown email campaigns
• ✅ Sender name & email configurable per campaign
• ✅ Delivery tracking: sent count, failed count, recipient count
• ✅ Status workflow: Draft → Sending → Sent / Failed
• ✅ Powered by Resend transactional email API
• ✅ Email template library (reusable layouts)
• ✅ Audience segmentation (send to group / tag / status)
• ✅ Automated drip / sequence campaigns
• ✅ One-click unsubscribe landing page
• ✅ Open & click tracking

Donations

• ✅ Donor records linked to contacts (or anonymous)
• ✅ Amount, currency, payment status, payment method, transaction ID
• ✅ Per-campaign tracking label
• ✅ Monthly donation totals on dashboard
• ✅ Recurring donation fields (interval, next charge date)
• ✅ Public online donation form
• ✅ Donation receipt / acknowledgment email
• ✅ Export for accounting (CSV, XLSX, PDF)

Projects & Tasks

• ✅ Project management: title, status, priority, start/end date
• ✅ Assigned team members (many-to-many)
• ✅ Overdue detection & progress percentage (based on tasks)
• ✅ Task list with status and deadlines per project
• ✅ Task comments & file attachments
• ✅ Gantt-style timeline view

Dashboard

• ✅ Stat cards: total contacts, upcoming events, donation totals, newsletter subscribers
• ✅ Chart.js charts: monthly donations (bar), contact growth (dual-axis line), status distribution (doughnut)
• ✅ Upcoming events panel, latest contacts feed
• ✅ Custom dashboard widget builder
• ✅ Scheduled summary reports via email (daily/weekly/monthly, configurable recipients & hour, "Send test" button)

Users & Roles

• ✅ Role-based access control: Super Admin, Admin, Editor, Member
• ✅ Powered by Spatie Laravel Permission
• ✅ User photo upload
• ✅ Users assignable to groups with roles
• ✅ Audit log (who changed what, when — with field-level diff)
• ✅ Invitation-based user registration (email invite, 7-day token, role pre-assignment)

Link Collection & Quick Links

• ✅ Configurable link library for the whole team (social media, news, resources)
• ✅ Custom colors, sort order, category grouping
• ✅ Quick links bar in top navigation
• ✅ Managed from Settings — no code needed

Settings

• ✅ App name, mail from address / name configurable from admin UI
• ✅ Changes written directly to .env
• ✅ Branding settings (logo, primary color, org name — applied to sidebar in real time)
• ✅ SMTP / mailer configuration from UI (SMTP, Resend API, log mode)

Help & Documentation

• ✅ Built-in help article editor (Markdown + image lightbox + video embed)
• ✅ Full 5-language documentation: HU / EN / DE / RO / SK
• ✅ Separate title & content columns per locale in the database
• ✅ Admin editor with per-language tabs (HU / EN / DE / RO / SK)
• ✅ Accessible to all users from the admin panel

Multi-language

• ✅ Full HU / EN / DE / RO / SK admin panel
• ✅ Language switcher in sidebar (SVG flag-icons)
• ✅ Per-session locale switching
• ✅ All 16 built-in help articles translated in all 5 languages

Integrations & API

• ✅ Outgoing webhooks — configurable HTTP POST to any URL on system events
  • 12 event types: contact.*, event.*, donation.created, campaign.sent, task.*, drip.enrolled
  • HMAC-SHA256 request signing (X-NationForge-Signature)
  • Delivery log with per-attempt status, HTTP code and response body
  • Automatic retry (3 attempts, 60 s backoff) via queue
  • Manual retry for failed deliveries from the admin UI
• ✅ Google Calendar / iCal sync — public iCal feed (/events.ics) subscribable in any calendar app; one-click "Add to Google Calendar" from the Integrations page
• ✅ Facebook Events sync — publish events to a Facebook Page via Graph API (Page Access Token in Integrations settings)
• ✅ Zapier / Make (Integromat) integration — use existing outgoing webhooks as triggers; step-by-step guide built into the Integrations page

Advanced / Enterprise

• ✅ Multi-organization / Multi-tenant support
• ✅ White-label & custom domain per tenant
• ✅ Advanced reporting & data export
• ✅ Two-factor authentication (TOTP)
• ✅ REST API for mobile clients
• ✅ Document storage (files per contact / project)
• ✅ Survey & form builder
• ✅ Petition / signature collection
• ✅ Volunteer hours tracking
• ✅ Priority support & SLA
• ✅ Managed cloud hosting

Tech Stack

Requirements

• PHP >= 8.2
• Composer 2
• Node.js >= 18 + NPM
• MySQL 8+ (or SQLite for local development)

Installation

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/programozas-kft/nationforge.git
cd nationforge

# 2. Install PHP & JS dependencies
composer install
npm install

# 3. Set up environment
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

# 4. Configure database in .env
# DB_DATABASE=nationforge
# DB_USERNAME=root
# DB_PASSWORD=

# 5. Run migrations & link storage
php artisan migrate
php artisan storage:link

# 6. Build frontend assets
npm run build

Or use the one-command setup:

composer run setup

Create your first admin user

php artisan tinker

$user = User::create(['name' => 'Admin', 'email' => 'admin@example.com', 'password' => bcrypt('password')]);
$user->assignRole('super-admin');

Local Development

composer run dev

Starts the Laravel server, Vite, queue listener and log watcher concurrently.

Open Core Model

NationForge follows an Open Core strategy — the community foundation is MIT-licensed and free forever, while advanced enterprise features are available in the Pro tier.

The Community / Pro split is being finalized. See the Features section above for the full list (✅ done, 🔲 planned). The table below will be updated once the split is confirmed.

Interested in Pro or managed hosting? → View NationForge Pro · programozas.kft@gmail.com

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome for bug fixes, UI improvements, and translations.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your branch: git checkout -b fix/your-fix
3. Commit: git commit -m "Fix: description"
4. Push and open a Pull Request

For larger features, please open an Issue first so we can discuss direction before you invest the time.

Security

If you discover a security vulnerability, please email programozas.kft@gmail.com instead of opening a public issue. All reports are addressed promptly.

License

The NationForge Community Edition is released under the MIT License.