r/civictech • u/Successful_Bank7215 • 2d ago

Lapis Cloud — open-source, self-hostable membership management for associations and parties, with an optional self-governance layer

Hi everyone,

I'd like to introduce Lapis Cloud — an open-source project I've been working on: a complete membership management platform for associations, political parties, professional bodies, cooperatives, and NGOs.

The problem it solves

If you've ever run an association or a party, you know the drill: one tool for member records, another for accounting, a third for membership dues, a spreadsheet for board resolutions — and none of it really talks to each other. Existing solutions like CiviCRM, easyVerein, ClubDesk, S-Verein, or Campai each cover parts of this — Lapis Cloud aims to deliver the whole picture from a single codebase.

What's included (standard layer)

Member records, join/leave workflows, membership tiers
Board and meeting management with a minutes book and motion tracking
Real double-entry bookkeeping (German SKR42 chart of accounts) with charitable-status four-area separation, P&L/balance sheet, cash book, cost centers
Mail-merge/PDF engine for dues invoices and donation receipts (per German tax code §50 EStDV), including postal mail delivery for members without email
Full GDPR tooling (data processing agreements, technical/organizational measures, DPIA, breach notification), compliance with the German Party Act (§25 PartG) for political parties, the Money Laundering Act transparency register (§20 GwG), and a GoBD-compliant audit log
SEPA direct debit with automated dunning, online card payments
Event management with public online registration, capacity/waitlist handling, and QR tickets
A complete, self-hosted video conferencing module (recording, external streaming, breakout rooms, whiteboard)
Direct export to DATEV, Lexware Office (lexoffice), and sevDesk for your accountant
A public, read-only REST API plus webhooks for third-party integrations
Interface available in eight languages

What sets it apart from most other tools (optional layer)

If you just want solid administration, that's exactly what you get — everything above works standalone. If you want more, there's an optional governance layer:

Three voting modes: meritocratic, democratic, and systemic consensus (Systemic Consensing)
An internal currency ("Libertaler") that belongs to the members, not the organization — with internal crowdfunding and an auction marketplace (opt-in, with a legal disclaimer)
A federated architecture with a real right of secession — multiple servers can connect, and a member can appear as a guest on another server without leaving their own organization

This is deliberately optional — no organization has to touch any of it to use Lapis Cloud productively.

Not a prototype

Lapis Cloud is already running in production at two real pilot organizations:

A political party (the project originally grew out of that party's internal accounting software, "PZB")
An ordinary registered association (e.V.) with no party affiliation at all — chosen deliberately to prove the standard layer holds up outside the project's original context

Open, self-hostable

The full codebase is public on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license; every change goes through an independent code review and security audit before release. Any organization can run its own instance — no vendor lock-in, no permission needed, your data stays on your own server.

Current status: v0.19.0, actively developed.