Who is CiviCRM?

CiviCRM has a diverse community centred on developing, using, and documenting the software. It includes the CiviCRM core team; people at non-profits that use CiviCRM; consultants working with non-profit organizations; programmers and developers; power users; volunteers; and community organizers. The community is also closely related to many other open source projects.

People interact with CiviCRM in different ways, improving both the software and how the community organizes itself. This diversity, and the ease with which someone can join, helps the community keep changing and improving, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Your place in the community grows through your interactions. Treat others well, have some fun, and help others, and you can find the community rewarding. Complaining, using a disrespectful tone, or treating the community only as a resource rather than as a group of generous and knowledgeable people is unlikely to get much of a response.

History

CiviCRM started in 2004 by Dave Greenberg, Donald Lobo and Michal Mach. The founders had a lot of previous experience working with non-profit organizations and tools. The group was influenced very early by Zack Rosen and Neil Drumm, who convinced them to use Drupal as a fundamental cornerstone for CiviCRM. This decision has meant that the developers have been able to leverage a lot of the functionality that Drupal provides, freeing the team up to focus on building the features necessary to make a great CRM.

In 2005 the first version of CiviCRM was released with two of the core modules in place: CiviMail and CiviContribute (you can read more about these later). Since those early days CiviCRM has become the leading open source CRM for nonprofits. It has built a large community of users and contributors (as of early 2019, there were over 11,000 installed sites), has added more components to the software (there are now 8 core modules and additional third party components), and has broadened its integration with other popular CMS's including Backdrop, Joomla! and WordPress.

CiviCRM includes a large ecosystem of free software contributors around the project and high-profile non-profit organisations such as Amnesty International, Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, and Wikimedia Foundation use CiviCRM.

Currently, CiviCRM operates using a group based structure focused on various aspects of the project including development, maintenance, marketing, etc. CiviCRM continues to be coordinated by a Core Team.

It's good to talk

CiviCRM is an open, learning community where people are ready to hear your ideas. If you have an idea, nothing stops you from carrying it out, but talking about it is a good place to start.

If you are unsure where to begin, try CiviCRM's Mattermost, which offers live discussion in chat rooms and direct messages. Ask what others think. Someone may have tried something similar before, and collaboration is a guiding philosophy of the community.

Depending on your idea, people may direct you to a next step: an article on the blog (http://civicrm.org/blog/), CiviCRM's GitLab, a teleconference, or an in-person meeting with another community member.

Be the change

An idea needs an action plan and someone to implement it. The CiviCRM community is friendly and supportive, and people will want to be involved and kept up to date, but you will need to drive your project. Consider how to gather resources and fit the work around your day job. Finding a way to meet your own objectives while benefiting the CiviCRM community can help you get things done.

And finally...

If you use CiviCRM and have an ongoing relationship with a consultant, you can still be an active community member. The community benefits from direct feedback from end users. Your consultant is one person or organization; asking on the forums opens your question to help and input from the wider community.