Digital Civil Liberties Advocates Get Control Over Data Security and Privacy by Switching to CiviCRM

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the leading organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. We defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, support freedom-enhancing technologies, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows.

 

EFF is proud to join a growing cadre of activist organizations using CiviCRM and will continue contributing to its ongoing success. The best part about using an open source solution that we host ourselves is that we can modify and extend it to fit our needs. We have total control over the security of our data and our constituents' privacy. Instead of storing passwords in plaintext, we no longer store passwords at all and can safely force HTTPS on all parts of our membership center. Equally important, using CiviCRM dramatically reduces the cost of supporting a robust membership program, so more dollars can go directly to the programs that actually support your digital rights.

 

CiviCRM has also allowed us to stretch and pull our action center to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people. We find it incredibly easy to import a wide variety of data from petitions to stop bills to tell stories we can use for expanding excemptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The day we sent over 1 million emails to Congress as part of an Internet wide protest of the blacklist bill SOPA and PIPA, we balanced the traffic load across 10 rented servers and slowly imported participant information when possible.

Organizational focus
Legal Advocacy
Organization type
Non Profit

Background

EFF is fortunate to have technical expertise on staff, so we wanted a product that allowed us to push the limits of what was possible in terms of website design, new functionality, and tremendous spikes in traffic. Access to the CiviCRM code and close communication with the dedicated community has allowed us to far exceed our expectations.

Challenges

Deciding how to structure our data. We are still in the process of deciding how to most effectively use fields like Contribution Type and Contribution Source to check data entry against accounting records and measure the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns.

Solution

We evaluated a number of alternatives before selecting CiviCRM, including Convio's Common Ground, Salesforce's Nonprofit Starter Pack, and Blackbaud's Razer's Edge. CiviCRM gave us the greatest control over donor data and allowed our improvements to benefit other nonprofits.

Project images (click to enlarge)

EFF's Web Developer, Micah Lee, and Tech Generalist, Leez Wright, spearheaded our implementation of CiviCRM. We are partnering with CiviSMTP for sending bulk emails and Salsa Labs for sending action alerts to government representatives.