Our partner program 'beta release': help us reach our fundraising goal

A quick update on our partner program.  Our 'beta' is now ready for review.  Have a look at the following pages:

• http://civicrm.org/providers/partners
• http://civicrm.org/about-service-providers
• http://civicrm.org/become-partner

And let us know what you think and how we could improve them, especially in terms of the language used and information displayed on those pages.  It's probably a good idea to familiarise yourself with posts and comments in the sustainability conversation so far before you feedback if you haven't read them already.

A couple of things that are not part of this beta release but will be in the final release that we launch after our founding partner drive:

• we'll hide some of the detail of the partner listings on initial view so that we can fit more providers on each screen
• we'll add a profile form so that you can update your listing at any time
• we'll add a seperate listing for service providers that specialise in SAAS / turnkey CiviCRM hosting
• we'll retire the current civicrm.org/what/experts pages

A number of partners have already signed up to become founding partners, which is fantastic news for the project.  If you provide CiviCRM services, then please join them and help us reach our goal of $75,000 raised from founding partners.

A couple of next steps once the partner program is bedded in:

• we'll be working on clarifying the process of how service providers are recognised as 'active contributors' to CiviCRM, which we see as running in parallel to the partner program and an equally important component of how we recognise and promote service providers.
• we'll carry on the 'how much does it cost to run CiviCRM / how does the core team spend its time' conversation that we started at the same time as this partner program.