Please join me in congratulating the new CiviCRM Community Council. The council has 11 seats. Nine candidates each received endorsements from two community members. There were fewer candidates than seats, so all nine are elected by acclamation.
The CiviCRM Community Council is an elected advisory body. It brings together the community’s ideas and values, works with the Core Team on open decision-making, and keeps the CiviCRM community a safe place to collaborate.
Meet the Council members:
Nina Carstensen
I started using CiviCRM in 2017, when both the organisations, the one I was volunteering for and the one where I worked, introduced the software. I now work as a project lead for CiviCRM at a community foundation in Germany. I co-founded and help organise the monthly German-speaking CiviCRM meetup as well as the meetup for fundraisers using CiviCRM. Both meetups bring together users to learn and share their knowledge. Based on this background, I see myself primarily speaking for end users. On the Council, I would like to help more users become confident members of the community by learning how to find help, help others and being able to participate without coding skills.
Lesley Carter
I have used CiviCRM with our clients for fourteen years, helping them to utilize it to its fullest extent in support of their missions. The core principles underlying CiviCRM – data and system ownership, flexibility, development by a community rather than a for-profit corporation – are tremendously important to me and I hope to help the Civi team continue to build on them. As a system admin/user rather than a developer, I’ve found the Civi community to be welcoming and patient with questions – my goal is to expand that ambience for folks who are new to CiviCRM or still grappling with it and to find new and creative ways to make Civi even more accessible to a variety of users.
Don Hirst
I have supported CiviCRM users and websites since 2015. Along the way, I identified issues with the documentation and worked to improve it. When the Community Council was established, I volunteered to serve, focusing on documentation. Since then, I have worked with community contributors, partners, and Community Council and Core Team members to strengthen and expand the documentation suite.
Going forward, my focus remains on documentation. I support the use of the Diátaxis framework to help restructure existing documentation and guide the development of new content. Recent efforts to use AI tools to improve documentation and make it more accessible are valuable and should continue. CiviCRM is a world-class application. My goal is to help ensure that it is supported by world-class documentation.
Benedikt Kaleß
I am Benedikt Kaleß and I will serve on the CiviCRM Community Council as a representative of a user organization.
In my professional capacity, I serve as Head of IT at Pro Peace. We use CiviCRM since 2009. From the very beginning, I am part of the CiviCRM community. I recall meetings in Berlin focused on establishing a German-speaking community or the discussions of funding the extension CiviSepa. In my role within the user organisation Pro Peace, I am also a board member at Software für Engagierte. I actively contributed to #CiviOneClick, which received funding from the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement im Ehrenamt (DSEE). My goal is to strenghten the new concept of Regional Ambassadors envolving more end user organizations in CiviCRM community.
Rich Lott
I'm standing because I want CiviCRM to be a useful thing for organisations that are focussed on improving humanity. Our democracies are under threat; our climate is fast becoming un-live-able; our ability to communicate and organise is being co-opted by big tech.
I want to make sure that Civi's "do-ocracy" doesn't leave smaller organisations behind and I also want to help us remember not to sell out our ethics or community to big tech billionaires via AI.
I've been implementing, running, developing and supporting Civi for clients since 2010. I've been a partner for many years too. I'm a regular at UK/EU sprints and camps. I maintain over 30 extensions used by hundreds of orgs and contribute to many more. I have about 10 Civi clients ranging from tiny orgs to larger ones with ~1M contacts. I frequently contribute to core; I was key to bringing Standalone and RiverLea into being. I had 20 years' experience as a senior manager and co-director of a small UK NGO before going full time on my freelance business called Artful Robot.
Bashar Makhay
I'm Bashar Makhay, Senior Communications & Technology Officer at the NYC Preparedness & Recovery Institute, where I implement and manage CiviCRM. I’ve also managed CiviCRM for Columbia University’s Office of Government and Community Affairs, Columbia Community Service, and Tarab NYC. My experience is primarily as an implementer, administrator, and organizational decision-maker rather than a developer. CiviCRM is an incredibly powerful platform, but we don’t always communicate its value effectively, particularly beyond the existing community. Drawing on my background in communications and community organizing, I want to make CiviCRM more accessible, approachable, and appealing to organizations considering adopting it. On the Council, I hope to amplify non-technical voices while advocating for better user experiences, stronger marketing, and more accessible resources. Cheers!
Joe Murray
I've been in providing CiviCRM services through JMA Consulting since 2005. Over the years I provided significant early funding, specifications, developer resources and/or leadership to lots of community initiatives. While serving on the Community Council, I’ve helped with policy development and compliance on things like CiviCRM trademark and brand, use of the blog, and using AI when contributing to CiviCRM. I hope the Community Council continues to contribute to healthy ecosystem governance and the growth of the project. I have a particular interest in the product roadmap, especially making the system easier for non-technical nonprofit staff to use. JMA will continue funding user experience research in this area and working with the core team and others, initially to create a simpler FormBuilder UI.
Neil Planchon
I've been using and championing CiviCRM since 2008, all pro bono, as an end user rather than a developer or implementer. My background spans 25 years in the cohousing and intentional communities movement, Sociocracy and shared governance, and nearly 30 years in nonprofit technology, including organizing with NTEN Oakland.
I've led two West Coast CiviCamps, volunteered at several CiviCons, and recently helped Sociocracy For All and the Cohousing Research Network put CiviCRM to work. Much of my ambassador work is introducing CiviCRM to organizations that could benefit from it and helping newcomers find their way into the community, and I enjoy helping different voices find common ground.
Returning to the Council, I look forward to finishing a confidential way to raise concerns, regular Council updates, and AI guidelines for the project, and to supporting the Core Team and welcoming our new members.
Peter Reck
I actively managed the introduction and implementation of CiviCRM four years ago to help digitize the processes of Stiftung Pfadfinden, a volunteer-run foundation in Germany. I have invested significant time building automations with Form Processor and Search Action Designer to make CiviCRM as simple and accessible as possible for our volunteers. In my professional life, I work as a Project Manager, bringing experience in stakeholder management, governance, and finding common ground between different perspectives. As a Community Council member, I would like to strengthen the voice of small NGOs, end users, and administrators, ensuring that community decisions reflect the practical needs of organizations that rely on CiviCRM every day and encourage more people to actively contribute to the community.
