About Us


Since 1999 the netFORUM Users' Group has been and remains independent of the vendor (Abila/Community Brands, previously Avectra). We are entirely staffed by volunteers who work at organizations utilizing the netFORUM software. Our tagline is “Advocacy and Education Through Participation.” Our primary mission is to promote the education of members using NetForum Enterprise, and its nuances, and represent those members with any shared concerns with Community Brands.

We use our membership dues to support our Quarterly Meetings at which we have educational sessions, networking with peers, and an opportunity to interact with Community Brands staff including executives. For each quarterly meeting, we prepare a list of questions for Community Brands -- these are often questions that users would not normally ask and involve delicate or controversial topics. This open forum gives the group a chance to advocate for our members and encourages Community Brands to respond to the community as a whole.

Additionally, we hold two member-only conferences each year:

  • Accounting Symposium – for more than ten years this event has been bringing together users of the Accounting and related modules and discusses topics relevant to that arena. Top topics include interfacing with the payment processor vendors, applying sales tax, batch reconciliation, and reporting.
  • Developer Deep Dive – this is the premier event for developers extending NetForum. Topics include using the NetForum Toolkit to customize the NetForum environment, various integrations (ie SAML) and upcoming changes in the development environment (ie new Form Designer and Deployment tool).
The NetFORUM Insight Series is another event hosted by the netFORUM Users' Group. The Insight Series is a periodic virtual meeting series, utilizing a lunch and learn format, covering business topics, NetForum training, and other items of interest. The Insight Series is a great way to offer our community just-in-time training and topic discussions that may be separate from Quarterly Meetings. 

Also, if you plan on sending staff to the yearly Xperience Conference (formerly AUDC), we partner with Community Brands to offer a discount per registrant only available to our members. Depending on how many of your staff attend, this benefit alone could recoup your dues.

We have a very active community with more than 650 individuals in over 200 organizations, and 9,000+ discussion threads in our primary community (NetForum Enterprise). Many of our member organizations have been members for more than 10 years! They recognize that the value of their dues is repaid many times over in advocacy, information, education, and discounts.

You may have noticed our logo @ug. We held a contest to develop a logo many years ago, and this was the winning design. Our group was first formed as the Ablaze Users Group and was loosely based on the listserv for users of the Ablaze Membership Suite. Then Ablaze merged with TASS and became Avectra and we re-branded as the Avectra Users Group. Avectra was eventually bought by Abila, but we remained the Avectra Users Group. Community Brands subsequently acquired Abila, and the Avectra Users' Group was rebranded again as the netFORUM Users' Group.

If you have questions about joining the netFORUM Users' Group, please contact our Membership Team: membership@netforumusersgroup.org or Matt Forrest, President: president@netforumusersgroup.org.