About Us

AJEndeavors, LLC was formed in 2009 as a limited liability company. It is solely owned and operated by Ann Johnson, primarily as a small web development company. 

Although my training and work history is primarily in the area of social work and child welfare, the last twenty or so years of my employment was as a Management Analyst. Much of this time was spent as the intermediary between our IT department and field staff working to use technology for the most benefit for ourselves and the public. In order to problem solve most efficiently, I took a few classes and then taught myself some coding skills so that I could better translate the business needs and processes to the programmers. This resulted in some nice recognitions and awards over time.

My goal is to work together as a team in analysis of an organization's goals and objectives, their future directions, and how they do their work. Only when we all have a clear big picture can we create a customized application that is efficient and easy for volunteers to maintain.

Being a lifelong birder and an active member of the Iowa Ornithologists’ Union, in 1995 I developed version 1 of the IOU website. This was a static site with some minimal information that required my intervention for updates. In 2000 I became secretary of the Iowa Rare Birds Records Committee and moved that process from a paper, photocopy, and mail system to one that has been transactional on-line since then. This ability for a committee to effectively work through a web browser became the model for other activities and the IOU site was expanded to include membership management, meeting registration, and even board of directors motions and discussions between official meetings.

Although I had been approached by a handful of other groups to do something similar, I did very few sites until my retirement in 2010. Having worked with a number of non-profit organizations over the years, I had a commitment to help them become more efficient at both marketing and business at an affordable cost. Frequent communication with the customer are imperative to "getting it right" and my expectation is that the customer will be actively involved in any beta testing to assure that goals are being met. In working with non-profits I have these financial goals in mind:  

1. Assure that the organization gets a quality product for their money. In this vein, I assume all risk except for hosting costs (simply because it is easier to do that up-front than to try to transfer accounts later). Other than that, the organization doesn’t pay a dime until they are satisfied with their product. This has worked very well and I think speaks to my confidence that I can sufficiently meet organizational needs, within a few parameters, to keep on-going costs reasonable.
2. The application should be self-sustaining and manageable by members of the organization with little to no on-going development costs. I do offer an annual maintenance contract but for the most part, any extra costs to organizations have been for enhancements/new development for their sites.
3. To be at least minimally compensated for my time for my birding travel fund.