In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t spend a ton of time on marketing and sales. Not only is our budget for marketing small (and by 'small', I mean 'tiny'), just take a quick look at the makeup of the Core Team and at our roadmap and you should get a good sense of what our focus is (and is not). Like most things CiviCRM, we rely on our community to help spread the word about the project and the benefits of using the software. The good thing about open source, however, is that there are a ton of ways to be involved and to help promote CiviCRM as an active member of its community!
One such way is to provide feedback to those that may be considering CiviCRM on sites like G2 Crowd and Capterra, specifically those that are looking for software for nonprofits. We've seen a spike up interest recently in both site registrations (and evaluators) as well as leads generated from G2 and Capterra, so we believe that it might be a good time to ask the CiviCRM community to take a few moments and provide some feedback. Not only is this a good mechanism for potential users, but your objective input is truly valued and helps provide balance to the entire project. And, just like your participation in and financial support for the project, the input you provide about CiviCRM on public forums like G2, Capterra, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. helps fuel enthusiasm and support for this incredible CRM for nonprofits.
As users, partners and developers of CiviCRM, we know how impressive it is and how well it has matured to serve the needs of nonprofits everywhere. We want to see that same level of awareness grow throughout the nonprofit sector such that CiviCRM can benefit thousands more organizations worldwide. It's always a busy time for everyone, however we hope that you'll take a moment to jump into G2 Crowd and Capterra to post a review, and to join the conversation on LinkedIn and Twitter. Your input is vital to help spread the word about CiviCRM.
Thank you for your support!
Josh
Comments
There's a big European trade fair for software called CeBIT. See http://www.cebit.de/home for details.
Maybe it's a good idea to have a CiviCRM stand there. Even though civi was designed with non-profit organizations in mind, it's also useful for commercial organizations. Also, commercial organizations that adopt CiviCRM are more likely to financially support the civi-project because their business depends on it.
Another interesting event where you can promote CiviCRM is FOSDEM. It's every year in January or February in Brussels (Belgium). See https://fosdem.org/. Thousands of open source enthousiasts from all over the world attend this conference. Big names like Mozilla, Google, Redhat... have booths, hacking rooms or organize talks about their products. It could be nice to combine a presence at this conference with a code sprint.
Alain
Hey Alain,
Check out this page http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/External+conferences for a list of external conferences that we think CiviCRM should have a presence at. please feel free to add CeBIT and also to apply for funds to represent civicrm at that conference (there are a couple of requirments for doing so but nothing too onerous). You'll see that Fosdem is also there - would be cool if you wanted to help out with a fosdem presence and sprint. We have done that before (in the distant past) and it was great and we should do it again if we can.
Michael
hey Josh,
We think CiviCRM is an ideal solution for UK voluntary, community and not-for-profit groups. As such we use CiviCRM ourselves and promote CiviCRM as an ethical approach to contact databases for charities.
Hosting stalls at events can be effective but usually this is done with other providers to share the costs. We certainly don't have the budget of other commercial providers!
Thanks for sharing your appeal.
Jon-man