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CiviCRM Annual Report & 2025 Roadmap

This year, CiviCRM will return to its origin and celebrate its 20th anniversary at CiviCon San Francisco. It’s been an amazing 20 years, though this report will only focus on the most recent; 2024.

The tenure of the current Core Team is coming up on 10 years, most of which is characterized by efforts to stabilize the project, its codebase and its financials. Past annual reports demonstrate conservative financial and technical improvements. 

2024, however, marked a turning point in our strategy in that we undertook more aggressive investments in order to push the project forward. On the whole, we’re happy with our efforts and the general trends.

Our stated objectives for 2024 (from the 2023 Annual Report) were:

  1. Enabling contribution support in FormBuilder (in progress)
  2. Supporting remote form capability in FormBuilder (in progress)
  3. Implementing at least version 1 of a new default theme (complete)
  4. Scaling https://civicrm.com to be the default site for new users evaluating CiviCRM (complete)
  5. Pushing SearchKit more throughout the admin interface (in progress)
  6. Moving the JS framework transition forward (not started)
  7. Stabilizing and growing CiviCRM Standalone (complete)

Those items that we sufficiently achieved (marked “Complete” above) are highlighted in more detail below.

Each of these objectives supports our primary goal; to grow the overall ecosystem through improved marketing and product innovation.

In order to achieve these objectives, we sought to increase our budget by 17.5%, all of which was allocated for team capacity. The additional capacity came in the form of adding Ben Walpole to the Core Team, increasing Josh Gowans’ time from ½ time to ¾ time, and through investments in labor related to RiverLea and CiviCRM Standalone.

This report cites various financial metrics, operational achievements and future goals throughout the report. For reference and additional detail, please review:

To view previous annual reports, please visit the links below:

  1. CiviCRM Core Team Annual Report 2019
  2. CiviCRM Core Team Annual Report 2020
  3. CiviCRM Core Team Annual Report 2021
  4. CiviCRM Core Team Annual Report 2022
  5. CiviCRM Core Team Annual Report 2023

Financial Performance

Regarding CiviCRM’s financial performance in 2024, not only did we NOT hit our target budget increase of 17.5%, we incurred unforeseen expenses (details below) that amount to a significant loss (cash basis). Key highlights include: 

4.21%

Budget increase

-$99,831

Financial loss

-33%

Capital decline

Before we get to the details below, it is worth providing some additional insights in order to clarify these seemingly bleak summary metrics.

  • We typically report on a cash basis and avoid doing so on an accrual basis. In this instance, though, if we look at the income statement on an accrual basis, our loss comes in at $36,032. This is because we have several invoices outstanding that offset a majority of the stated, cash basis, loss.
  • We experienced unforeseen expenses in the amount of $30,043 that include: 1) retirement accounts used to offset 2023 tax liability, 2) missed payments to the California Franchise Tax Board, 3) CiviCRM trademark related expenses, 4) investment into CiviAcademy and 5) CiviCon San Francisco related expenses. Factoring these expenses out and viewing our financials on an accrual basis, our loss from operations was $5,989, which is more reflective of our operational performance. Still, a loss is a loss, and we therefore must account for the unexpected expenses and the outstanding receivables.

In lieu of providing analysis of our financials, we’re presenting the financial statements above along with a few charts and leaving the interpretation up to you.

Core Team labor is not reflected in the amounts applied to other categories.

Achievements

Now for a bit more detail on what we accomplished in 2024.

Enter RiverLea

In mid to late 2023, the Core Team undertook an evaluation of what it would take to ship a new default theme in CiviCRM. Nic Wistreich and Rich Lott reviewed our options and presented a path forward. 

After a lot of hard work, Nic introduced “RiverLea” to the community at CiviCamp Hamburg and went on to produce the initial release which shipped in CiviCRM 5.80 (December 2024). 

Image of the Thames stream of RiverLea
Thames stream of RiverLea

RiverLea is more of a theme framework that presents new "themes" (called "streams") that users can adopt. Currently these streams match the existing themes in use, such as Greenwich, Shoreditch, Finsbury, etc., however RiverLea is intended to replace these altogether.

At present, RiverLea ships as an extension that you must install to use. However, as of CiviCRM 6, RiverLea will ship as the default theme for all new installations of CiviCRM. Learn more about RiverLea on chat and on Gitlab.

While we consider this objective "complete", it is and will continue to be an ongoing initiative within CiviCRM Core. RiverLea supports our objective of both product innovation and ecosystem growth in that it modernizes the UI and presents CiviCRM better to new prospective users.

CiviCRM.Com

At the Ashbourne sprint in 2023 we pulled the trigger on splitting https://civicrm.org into 2 sites; one for new prospective users (https://civicrm.com) and one for the existing community (https://civicrm.org). 

The primary objectives in doing so include introducing CiviCRM to new users and improving CiviCRM’s overall brand awareness. It took a bit longer and a bit more work than expected, however version 1 of a multilingual https://civicrm.com officially went live on 14 October. Site performance, so far, has been encouraging.

We’re very focused on improving the site’s organic optimization (across multiple languages) along with developing offsite channels such as expanding use of LinkedIn and adopting new platforms such as Bluesky. Our objective in doing so is to raise broader awareness of CiviCRM.

In conjunction with the work on civicrm.com, the Marketing Team has been rebooted and is working to improve CiviCRM’s position in the market. Many thanks to Andy Burns of Civicopilot for taking on the leadership role in this group.

https://civicrm.com is the central channel through which we are marketing CiviCRM to new prospective users and growing the overall CiviCRM ecosystem. Its purpose is to present CiviCRM to new users in a way that it is easy to understand and easy to get started.

SearchKit for the win!

We continue to push SearchKit into the UI of CiviCRM, an effort that will be ongoing throughout 2025 as well. While this is marked as “in progress” still, it is worth highlighting progress such as the stable release of ChartKit and of SearchKit Report Starter Pack extensions as examples of how SearchKit is increasingly showing up in the UI (and therefore why you should be using it as much as possible!).

ChartKit brings visualization capabilities to SearchKit searches whereas the Report Starter Pack essentially replaces the out-of-the-box reports that currently ship with CiviCRM, taking us one step closer to one day sunsetting CiviReport (in its current form).

SearchKit has been in development for a few years thanks to support of various end user organizations, partners and contributors. Special thanks to the Wikimedia Foundation for seeding this project and for continuing to support development efforts.

SearchKit (along with underlying changes like APIv4) represents a new foundation for CiviCRM and supports our primary goal of product innovation. As it rolls more and more into the interface, it will consolidate legacy components/extensions (like CiviReport) and bring in new potential features and capabilities.

Standalone Again!

After a long adieu, the standalone version of CiviCRM has made a comeback, and the timing couldn’t be better. Open source CMS’s have, generally speaking, seen a decline over the past few years in the face of newer, proprietary systems like Wix, Webflow, etc. The fact that CiviCRM has long hitched its wagon to these open source CMS's poses an existential risk. We have to acknowledge that there are many would-be users of CiviCRM that simply don’t want to (or need to) use one of these open source CMS’s.

As a result, we introduced the objective of rebooting the standalone version back in 2023 and, after a ton of work, have made that dream a reality. As of CiviCRM 5.80 (December), users can download and use a “stable”, standalone version of CiviCRM.

The primary objective of this initiative is to grow the overall ecosystem. Similar to initiatives like CiviCRM Spark, our objective is to make it CiviCRM more broadly available to the market. The reintroduction of Standalone essentially makes CiviCRM available to any nonprofit, regardless of size, budget, focus OR website/CMS.

CiviAcademy

One initiative that we did not plan on was the development and introduction of CiviAcademy, a library of video tutorials intended for users of CiviCRM. Stuart Gaston of CiviTeacher took the lead on this on behalf of the Core Team and has developed a range of new, updated videos.

Consistent with our focus on growing market awareness, CiviAcademy is intended to create some stickiness with users by providing professional instruction on CiviCRM (out of the box) for a single, lifetime price. Videos are geared towards new or inexperienced users, and attempt to increase overall comfort and familiarity with the “CiviCRM way of doing things”.

We still have a lot to do here both with respect to video creation and promotion, however we’re committed to offering CiviAcademy as a valuable resource to users of CiviCRM.

CiviAcademy supports our goal of ecosystem growth by helping nonprofits become more familiar with CiviCRM more quickly, thereby improving the likelihood of successful adoption/implementation.

Improvements to Funding Streams

Another item that didn’t make the original plan but that was undertaken was an overhaul of 3 funding streams: 1) the CiviCRM Partner Program, 2) the CiviCRM Member Program and 3) CiviCRM Extended Security Release. 

Over the years, these have been patched together in a way that didn’t always work as efficiently as they could. As a result of a desire to make a new push on the member program as well as to professionalize the partner program, we opted to do a bit of clean up across the board. The results are:

  • Detached Extended Security Release (ESR) from the member program and updated the rates. We opened up the bulk licensing to all providers as well. Partners, contributors and members now receive an automatic discount when licensing ESR.
  • Revised the rates and benefits to the member program, and applied (automatic where possible) discounts to events, ESR, and CiviAcademy.
  • Revised the partner program to establish clearer requirements, provide greater flexibility when qualifying partners, apply discounts across various initiatives, and to simplify the rate structure.
  • Revised the contributor benefits to receive automated discounts to events and ESR, and introduced opportunities to sponsor CiviCRM Spark and CiviAcademy.

These initiatives do not directly support our underlying goal of ecosystem growth, however they do improve our ability to engage and foster the overall CiviCRM Community. We are grateful to all of CiviCRM's supporters and contributors and are taking steps to better celebrate them.

Community Initiatives

While the following were not direct initiatives of the CiviCRM Core Team, it’s definitely worth mentioning them as they stood out in 2024:

Environmental Impact

We continued to support the work of Ecologi throughout 2024 and remain committed to funding opportunities that have a meaningful impact on the environment and on global climate change.

Join CiviCRM and support Ecologi today!

What’s Next in 2025

2025 is underway and, consistent with 2024, we want to continue to invest in the product, to improve community engagement and to increase overall adoption of CiviCRM. Our focus areas will be on:

Financial Stability

In general, we’ve operated predominantly on community funding and earned income. Given our objectives, we need to both grow our base income as well as broaden our funding streams.

  • Pursue grant opportunities that focus on capacity building and underlying technology improvements (in progress)
  • Offer CiviAcademy and CiviCRM Spark Sponsorship opportunities to CiviCRM contributors and partners (in progress)
  • Revise paid issue queue to be clearer, easier to administer, and more accessible to community members (planned)
  • New member drive; take a final stab at creating a viable member program that end users are compelled to support (planned)

Community Engagement

Community engagement is always our focus. Like all aspects of the project, there is a lot to do!

  • Revising https://civicrm.org - with the launch of https://civicrm.com, it’s time to revisit the community site to make it more appealing and useful to current community members. (in progress)
  • Introduction of a more consistent, targeted communications plan - we relaunched the monthly Community News in 2024 and are preparing to implement more targeted communications both offsite and via https://civicrm.org. (planned)
  • Better visibility via Gitlab projects - all of our efforts will be managed and better tracked across various community projects. We’re also planning more direct outreach in an attempt to improve participation. (in progress)

Brand Optimization & Market Growth

We laid the groundwork in 2024 and are seeking to grow CiviCRM’s position in the market.

  • March 2025: Official launch of CiviCRM 6 - this release will mark the introduction of RiverLea as the default theme for new installations, an officially-stable stable release of standalone, and a few other features. (in progress)
  • Scale CiviCRM Spark to be a more effective channel for growth while creating a more effectively off-boarding of Spark users seeking to upgrade, use a partner, etc. (in progress)
  • Scale brand awareness through more focused outreach, adoption of offsite communication channels, improvements to civicrm.com and through more systematic planning and implementation from the marketing team. (in progress)
  • Grow and improve the quality of relevant case studies and success stories provided by CiviCRM partners and end users. (in progress)

Product Innovation

Most of what we have planned at present, short of any surprise engagements, is carry over from 2024. 

  • FormBuilder support for payment processing - this is a thorny task that is taking its sweet time to be resolved. However, 2025 is the year that it’s going to happen. (in progress)
  • Support for remote forms - we’re nearly there with this task, which will allow FormBuilder forms to be embedded remotely via oEmbed. This is critical for adoption of the standalone version of CiviCRM. (in progress)
  • RiverLea funding/support - we’ll continue to fund development and support for RiverLea. As it’s more widely adopted, we expect the community to help pick up some of the maintenance and contribute back to the project. (planned)
  • Standalone support and improvements - we’re just getting started with standalone and want to get it as feature-rich as possible such that it’s a viable CRM for users not using a supported CMS. (in progress)
  • SearchKit throughout the admin - this item is probably going to be a permanent fixture on our roadmap for some time as it is slowly being pushed throughout the interface. (in progress)

CiviCRM 6

And, for special mention, CiviCRM 6 will be released on March 5, 2025. We're hosting an informal community webinar to review the key points of CiviCRM 6 as well as the general state of CiviCRM on January 21, 2025.

Register for the Webinar

Let’s Wrap this Up

In general, we’re very happy with the progress in 2024 and in the direction of our efforts. We expect to continue to face challenges with respect to sustainability (financial) and ecosystem growth, however these remain our top priorities.

We want to end by thanking CiviCRM’s community of contributors, supporters and end users. CiviCRM continues to be a vibrant project as a result of your participation.

Finally, thank you to Ben Walpole, Seamus Lee, Mathieu Lutfy, Eileen McNaughton, Tim Otten and Coleman Watts for your hard work and your unwaverying dedication to the mission of CiviCRM.

Respectfully submitted on January 12, 2025.

Josh Gowans