I've had the opportunity to present the ‘state of CiviCRM’ now at both the recent DC User Summit and at CiviCon London. While we often talk about and evaluate the features and technical capabilities of CiviCRM, we do at times lose sight of its central purpose... the 'why' behind what we do. Going forward, we hope to keep this front and center in our communications. Why? (I knew you’d ask that)...
Because the central purpose of CiviCRM is its most ‘significant’ feature. Simply put, CiviCRM exists to empower organizations all across the world to have meaningful impact.
I'm asking you to consider this because I believe that appreciating CiviCRM for its purpose is necessary to reach sustainability. The more that I understand about CiviCRM and its community, the more I realize that supporting it because of what it can do technically is sufficient in and of itself. However, supporting it for its purpose, the reason why it exists, is truly a noble gesture and a reflection on the quality of the project and of its community.
We often encourage participation in the community because we know that it not only benefits the project, it aligns people more closely with the project's objectives and its purpose. Damon Kirkpatrick at Friends of Georgia State Parks & Historic Sites succinctly put this when he talked about transitioning from a user of CiviCRM, to an investor. This is often confirmed again after events when we see a small spike in member signups. Once users get to know the community and understand that CiviCRM is more than just software, giving becomes easy.
8 organizations became members of CiviCRM immediately after CiviCon London...
We joined the membership programme because just as we believe in supporting Cool Earth's ground up model of saving rainforest, we believe in supporting CiviCRM's model of working towards an accessible, free, and open source platform that can empower any organisation, however small, to take ownership of their CRM and data. ~ Chloe Rickard, Cool Earth
If you’re reading this post, then you are a part of this community. You can not only use the software and benefit from its features, you can support its purpose and help CiviCRM ensure that organizations all across the world are empowered to have meaningful impact.
We’re a little over 2 months out from the end of our budget year, and we have a gap of $196,000 to close in order to meet our sustainability goals for 2015. I hope that you'll help chip away at this by making a one-time gift or by becoming a member of CiviCRM.
We're very excited about CiviCRM, its future and the community that supports it. Thank you for being a part of it.
Josh
About Cool Earth
Cool Earth works alongside indigenous villages to halt rainforest destruction. All our projects - from Peru to Papua New Guinea - are community led, and we know that the most effective way to save rainforest is by putting the power back in the hands of its main stakeholders: the people that live there. The top-down model of conservation, with boardrooms and bureaucracy, has failed.
CiviCRM puts CRM development and data back into the hands of its main stakeholders: the people that work with it everyday. Its open source model and community-led development echoes precisely how our organisation works. In that sense we can't think of a better fit.
