This is a post to start a discussion, something of an expansion of Dave's blog (Let's Market CiviCRM better
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Luciano Spiegel
Developer & Implementator
IXIAM
It's all about community. I love the CiviCRM philosophy and in IXIAM, we are trying to expand the spanish speaking community in Spain and Argentina
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Alice Aguilar
Implementor
Progressive Technology Project
The organizations we work with are experiencing the benefits of a robust tool that is
easy to use, supports their work, and allows them to collect and track data from various parts of their organization, such as membership, fundraising, communications, and organizing into a centralized database. CiviCRM as an open-source solution also allows us to nurture and build a user community to share and create a common vision of future features that would be useful to the community organizing field. Just two years after our pilot project, we're currently supporting 30 community organizing groups to use CiviCRM, and the community is steadily growing.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Philippe Gervaix
Implementor
ISHR
ISHR is currently in the early stages of implementing CiviCRM, and is finding the customisable aspects of the software to be especially beneficial.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Ken West
End-user, Administrator
City Bible Forum
City Bible Forum is an Australian not-for-profit Christian organisation. We need to communicate effectively with our constituents, and CiviCRM gives us a comprehensive set of tools for managing relationships. Interestingly, we often find that new features are being added just as our need for those features is becoming apparent. It's the right fit for us.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Donald Lobo
Implementor, Developer
CiviCRM LLC
Still thinking of a deep deep quote. Basically:
It is super important for non-profits, advocacy and related groups to take charge of their destiny. Having control of your data is a good start. The crowd-sourced nature of an open source project in so in line with the co-operation and principles of most non-profits
CiviCRM is a project that strives to make the above possible. It is FREE as in kittens.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Eileen McNaughton
Developer and End-user
Fuzion
CiviCRM has one of the most active and friendliest communities I have come across. From initial tentative forum posts I was encouraged into engaging more actively through IRC and directly with other groups & individuals and am now happy to count many community members as friends. I recently found an article on the web that said if you post a question about CiviCRM anywhere on the web Lobo will post an answer within a few hours. It often feels like that is true.
One of the most valuable way in which the community supports me is by allowing me to bounce my ideas around and often someone is able to suggest an approach which is better than mine.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Simon West
End-user, Administrator, Implementor
ZING
We feel there are too many obstacles facing not-for-profits (NFPs) considering commercial CRM offerings, including many of those that are charity oriented. From licensing models which restrict the fluid expansion of an organisation's user base (why should you be punished with higher costs for being successful?), to support from commercial companies being inherently tied to one supplier; a NFP would benefit from the option to 'shop around' for those most appropriate, e.g. based on: proximity and availability on-site, cost, experience, value added services... They also often lack the capacity for charity relevant workflows, necessitating either customisations, complicated and inefficient workarounds or an en-masse call for new functionality, as individual charities do not appear to carry the weight required to influence subtle NFP-only changes to market leading software, without large expense.
On the flip side, CiviCRM is completely free and open-source, carrying with it a friendly, hard-working and enthusiastic community of developers and implementers, constantly listening to the users' needs and sculpting future releases to the requirements of NFP organisations. This is exciting!
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Stacy Liou
Implementor, Developer, Trainer
elMobile Inc.
As developers for various OpenSource CRM applications, we learned a lot from CiviCRM on its scalability and ease of customization.
CiviCRM community is truly organic cultivating growth for users and developers.
We wish to continue learning with CiviCRM and to tackle future challenges with CiviCRM.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Jamie Novick
Implementor / Developer
Compucorp Ltd
From fundraising websites which really connect you with your donors to essential tools for care organisations to manage their data, Civi has allowed us to do some amazing things for our clients. It's such a flexible platform and has such a great community which we're proud to be a part of.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Gary Zimmerman
Implementor
CSH Consulting, Inc.
CiviCRM is a great tool for the Non-Profit world. Our business needed a solution for them. CiviCRM is that solution.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Kasia Wakarecy
Administrator, Implementator, Developer, End-user
Freeform Solutions
Freeform Solutions uses CiviCRM for our internal CRM. We are also a NFP IT support organization and we implement CiviCRM for NFP organizations we work for because we find that CiviCRM is the best open source CRM out there.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Carlos Capote Pérez-Andreu
Administrator, Developer
Amnistía Internacional España
CiviCRM helps us to unify the management of different databases (volunteers, members, etc) allowing us to keep control over our data.
