We've seen it coming since we first started developing with CiviCRM at the beginning of 2006, but now the Free Software Foundation (FSF) agrees that it is "Time for nonprofits to leave proprietary fundraising software systems behind"!

"With this announcement, the FSF will also be adopting CiviCRM for its own use, and actively encouraging other nonprofit organizations to do the same."

Over the past 4 years, our clients have benefited tremendously from the thousands of hours contributed by the global CiviCRM development community to make CiviCRM one of the most highly rated CRM systems in the Not-For-Profit sector.^*

We are pleased to have given the CiviCRM team a little bit of help along the way and are currently helping lead the charge to bring better financial recording procedures to the system, which already boasts powerful online payment integration with many of the worlds leading payment gateways including PayPal, and eWay (for Australian users).

CiviCRM has gone ahead in leaps and bounds in areas such as membership management (CiviMember) for both individuals and organisations, donation management (CiviContribute), pledge management (CiviPledge), events management (CiviEvent), bulk e-mail delivery (CiviMail), grants management (CiviGrants), case management (CiviCase) and most recently, reporting (CiviReport).  We have also developed an SMS component (CiviSMS), which we hope to be able to package up for release around the middle of the year, or earlier if you would like to:

If you are thinking about implementing CiviCRM, you should consider purchasing nten's 2009 Data Ecosystem Survey Report and read what the FSF has to say about it:

"I look forward to encouraging other nonprofit organizations to escape their current proprietary or 'software as a service' systems and give CiviCRM a try. As a nonprofit, the FSF manages over 40,000 contacts and 15,000 donation transactions per year, a book publishing operation, online store, and several advocacy campaign websites with associated mailing lists — all with free software. A general purpose donor and contact management system will be the final piece of the puzzle for charitable organizations looking to operate using only free software. We plan to publish a guide offering our experiences as a resource for other nonprofits concerned with the social implications of their technology."

You can kick CiviCRM's tyres over at the demo site or check out the development site to see the new features available in the next version.

There is also a great manual available for free download or hard copy purchase.

If you would like some help to assess whether CiviCRM is right for your organisation, please contact us.

^* as reported in the nten 2009 Data Ecosystem Survey Report