Future Tech: Open Source Software
Future Tech
•What do Wikipedia, The ConservationFund, USPIRG and the Obamaadministration have in common?
Open Source software?
•Access to source code
•Users can modify and improve
•Anyone can redistribute
•Public collaborative development
Philosophy
•Cathedral vs. Bazaar
•Users as co-developers
•Release early and often
•Diverse agendas welcome
Open source culture?
•Scientific communities
•User-generated content
•Copy-left (Creative Commons)
Does it matter?
•Pace of change
–Facebook,Twitter, YouTube…what's next?
–Can in-house development / proprietary vendorskeep up?
•Strained resources
–Exorbitant license fees vs. cost-sharing to buildthe sector
•The power of many
–Open source projects built by hundreds /thousands of users and developers
Tools
•Content Management Systems - CMS
•Keeps track of every piece of content onyour Web site
•Content = text, photos, music, video,documents…
•“Giant bin of free Lego-style buildingblocks”
Open source CMS’s
•Drupal and Joomla!
•Hundreds of thousands of sites
•Thousands of contributors
Constituent Relationship Management - CRM
•Constituent = donors, funders,volunteers, clients... everyone whohelps your organization to achieve itsmission
•RM = Strengthen relationships
•Reliable and easy-to-access infoenhances fundraising, mobilization,awareness…
CiviCRM
•Open source CRM designed by and for non-profits
–Fundraising
–Events
–Membership
–Newsletters
–Case management
–CMS integration
•6,000 community members, thousands ofinstalled sites
Foundation for Prader WilliResearch
•Offline organization - widely distributedconstituents
–Drupal + CiviCRM: 300% increase infundraising in 2 years
Open source advantage
•Contributed “Personal fund-raising”specification
•Built into CiviCRM “core”
•Breast Cancer Research Foundation "Timefor Research"
Wikimedia Foundation
•Fundraising not integrated with website
–Connected MediaWiki to CiviCRM andPayPal
–$5M in 2008
Open source advantage
•Sponsor / design collaboration forenhanced reporting in CiviCRM
•In CiviCRM 2.3 “core” for thousands oforganizations to share!
Physician Health Program
•Needed better case managementsoftware
–Sponsor and design CiviCase
What Now America
•Needed a media-rich and interactiveweb site
•Needed volunter recruitment andmanagement
–Joomla!
–CiviCRM
Native Americans in Philanthropy
•Widely distributed constituent base
•Needed online membership signup andrenewal and ways for members to connect.
–Drupal + CiviCRM!
Generations Community Wellness
•Donate Your Fat - 40-day wellness programbenefits at-risk communities
•Tracking was on paper and spreadsheets.
–CiviCRM + ModX for online team recruiting
Power of many
•Book Sprint
•12 people - 5 days - 300 page book!
•“Understanding CiviCRM”
Plugin to the future
•Twitter, Facebook and Social Actionintegration are all available as free plug-ins for Drupal sites
Is Open Source for You?
•Free as in beer
•Free as in kittens.
•There are costs
–Configuration and data migration
–Training
–Hosting
–Upgrades
“It may be time for organizations to thinkabout rejecting the standard “everyorganization for themselves” mentalityof software acquisition anddevelopment, and consider investing inopen source tools that enrich the sectoras a whole.”
Michelle Murrain - OpenIssue.com
Learn more…
•CiviCRM.org
•“Understanding CiviCRM” (the book)
–http://en.flossmanuals.net/civicrm
•Drupal.org
•Joomla.org
•Floss Manuals - http://en.flossmanuals.net
•Professional resources
–OpenConcept - http:/openconcept.ca
–raSANTIAGO and Assoc - http://rasantiago.com
–Rayogram - http://www.rayogram.com