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.

As non-profit consultants working for non-profit organizations, we found CiviCRM to be particularly well suited to answer the common needs of activist associations, charities and other medium-sized groups. Based in Montréal, we've helped local and international organizations migrate to CiviCRM to manage their memberships, events, communications and fundraising campaigns. We empower our clients and assist them when they need us.

Over the past 15 years I've been involved in several open source communities.
CiviCRM is without any doubt the one that has the strongest focus in welcoming "newbies" and letting everyone feel at home here. Another impressive feature is the focus on shipping. No matter what you think of CiviCRM today, you are almost sure that there will be a newer and better version in a few months.

CiviCRM provides a vital tool whereby nonprofits and other social projects can implement strong contact-relationship management capabilities without high monthly fees. It also provides the integration and customization capabilities necessary to make such software useful in the complex, lived reality of doing social engagement work. Plus it continues to build the open source toolset made available to the Commons and grow the common good.

I find the engagement with our community of users to be intellectually stimulating
and rewarding. Seeing folks with expertise in a particular area step up and contribute their time and ideas to help improve the product is quite exciting. Every time I hear about a new interesting organization starting to use CiviCRM, I get a renewed sense of excitement about our work. The range of civic sector organizations currently using the software is quite amazing to me - from large international advocacy organizations to local performing arts troupes. I also really enjoy interacting with our international community - building friendships and getting to share culture (food, music, humor ....) with colleagues on every continent.