Look What's Happening For Xmas

As 3.3. goes live it’s great to see a couple of Make-it-Happen initiatives included in it. The Make-it-Happen initiative was born out of my frustration at the difficulties of getting things into CiviCRM that were useful for everyone but not funded by any ONE organisation.

Since launching it we've managed to get a couple of long-wanted de-dupe improvements in - now in 3.3 you can make CiviCRM REMEMBER that John Smith from Widgimootha and John Smith from Aalberg are different people. For those of us who have been round the loop of running a de-dupe search, choosing two contacts to merge, merging them, and suddenly discovering than you can't navigate back to the duplicate listing page there's still quite a bit of scope for improvement so consider making a contribution to the 'prev-next' initiative

But, the Xmas present from Make-it-Happen is that Authorize.net recurring payments will be in release 3.3.1 which we hope to see out on Xmas eve. Thanks to

Data-Scribe

Rayogram

GingerFeet LLC

Kabissa

Beth Hynes-Ciernia

I can't think how many times I've been in conversations about getting recurring processing going for Authorize.net so it's great to see it finally happening. However, the initiative goes further than than. There will be functionality for both back office users and end users to set up their recurring membership to be paid for by recurring credit card payments. Managing cancellations to Recurring payments is also on the cards.

If you don't use Authorize.net all is not lost. Although this functionality won't be there for other processors for Xmas once the work is done for Authorize.net it will be a lot easier to extend it for other processors.

Overall there has been quite a bit of interest in the Make-it-Happen initiative and while this blog space has been a bit quiet of late there have quite a few discussions behind the scenes as to how to get initiatives launched - and I should write more about that.

I've also seen a few conversations by organisations on building Make-it-Happen into their budgets. Wellington Circus Trust recently made a decision to commit on an on-going basis one week's admin salary each year to Make-it-Happen. Before you get too excited WCT only has one part-time staff member but it's great to see even a small organisation acknowledging the importance CiviCRM has for them and the business logic in investing in CiviCRM in a way that meets their needs.

For me, however, a more heart-warming note was seeing an individual make a $10 donation in October and again in November. I'll be watching to see if there's a December donation too because it looks to me like this might be his own personal commitment to Making-it-Happen for whatever cause he believes in.