Project Financials added to CiviCRM Stats Page

It’s been a long time coming, but we finally managed to post the Core Team’s financials online in a format that not only shows where we’re at but also breaks down our income and expenses over the past 12 months. We’ve maintained project stats online for some time at https://stats.civicrm.org so it made sense to just add a new tab there. Check it out here. The financials are currently updated each month, and we’ll continue to expand on them as we have capacity.

The purpose of providing these financial metrics is to help demonstrate how CiviCRM functions as well as how it’s currently funded.

Things we like to see in the numbers:

1. Overall, we’re seeing some stability in income and expenses. While that’s good, most of this balancing has come in the form of a smaller core team. In and of itself, that’s not necessarily a bad thing and the community has stepped up to drive many initiatives.
2. An increase in technology partners and in income from them. Tech partners integrate with CiviCRM but don’t host or implement. They also typically benefit financially from the integration, so it’s nice to see them giving back to the project. It’s truly a win win.
3. We like to see the uptick in support for Extended Security Release. We are not where we want to be here, but the trend is positive.

Things we want to see improve:

1. Even though it was never viewed as an income driver, Spark is mostly flat. The primary purpose behind Spark is to help grow the ecosystem, so it’s a bummer to not see it expanding. In fairness, we have not been aggressive at all in promoting it. At the same time, we have seen CiviCRM break 11k installs for the first time recently, so even though it’s not as a result of Spark, it is good to see the community expanding.
2. Aside from technology partners, most community funding is flat or in decline. That’s not good... at all. In particular, make it happen campaigns and membership are very light. We have not pursued membership and have often toyed with scraping the program altogether. Nonetheless, both membership and MIH campaigns are among the best ways for the broader community to participate.
3. Our receivables are high and they’ve been around for a while. That’s not good for anybody.

All that aside, you can take a look for yourself and get an overview of our funding. We’ll probably be on hand at the Summit in Barcelona as well to review of these in more detail along with discussions around the project in general. If you have any questions, find me @josh at https://chat.civicrm.org

Income & Expenses: 12 Months Rolling

The chart below is one of a few located at https://stats.civicrm.org. Head on over to check more like this one and get a feel for how CiviCRM is funded.