CiviCRM's 3.0 Review: Where are the weaknesses?

I wrote a post in 2006 about CiviCRM's weaknesses. With the upcoming CiviCRM 3.0 release (try it out), I thought I would revist those weaknesses and see if I could add some more.

1. Ecology. The ecology is now mature enough to support virtually any size customer.

http://civicrm.org/professional (support the active contributors!)

Community reviewed list of hosts

2. Documentation. Online docs done by the esteemed John Kenyon and just released a CiviCRM book! I think the documentation is certainly on par with anything out there.

3. Donor Management. Pledges, soft credits and user configurable LYBUNT reports, what more can anyone want? (there are some things, but the basic functionality in now all present)

According to my criteria, CiviCRM has long surpassed the sustainability tipping point:

• Lots of competant consultants are avaliable.
• Nonprofits can pay for hosted CiviCRM or an install.
• Documentation and online training is avaliable.
• People are extending CiviCRM and contributing back. Go CiviCase!

So what are the weaknesses now? Since the CiviCRM team moves very rapidly, many of the key weaknesses are getting addressed in the 3.0 release... I probably should do this post yearly.

1. Usability. This was a recent bug-a-boo that the CiviCRM team took a big swing at in the 3.0 release. The new navigation bar is pretty much to die for. The configuration checklist that makes setting up a new site a snap is underadvertised and perhaps underappreciated. Oh, and the recent items list is a basic but import feature. There is still room for improvement, but CiviCRM is certainly now on par with any competitive piece of software.
2. Reporting. The new CiviReport framework addresses the basic reporting gaps and allows the community to fill most remaining reporting gaps.
3. Donor management gaps. Things like postal mail merge are not tightly integrated into the application or into the CRM history. Prospecting and proposals have yet to be addressed directly.
4. Accounting integration. This need to be smoothed out and improved. And the community is already on it.
5. Volunteer management. Not sure this is a weakness, per se, it just hasn't been a priority.

And other things people can add to the comments.

Overall, the 3.0 release represents the end of fundimental gaps in the utility of CiviCRM for most nonprofits.

Social Source Four Years Later

I love it when thoughts converge.

Sonny Cloward tweeted a nice reminder of the nonprofit technology open source vs. commercial debate that has been going on for awhile [his post, my post]. He was congratulating Johanna Bates on a very nice post on her personal view of open source and nonprofits.

All this was catalized by Eben Moglen's NTC Plenary and has been covered by Holly Ross's post.

Four years latter basically nothing has changed in the discourse, but facts on the ground have seen a sea change.

The discourse is stil either/or & black/white.

The CiviCRM guys don't point out that Salesforce has a more polished functionality and better reporting tools. The Salesforce guys don't point out that CiviCRM can do membership management, events management, seamless acceptance of online donations and mass email -- all things that nonprofit users ask for every day on their message boards.

Why?

Simple marketing.

It is virtually impossible for platform providers to acknowledge one another or integrate because you are trying to get the customer to select your platform. Salesforce says select our platform and our ecology will help you out (though over the last 4 years I have seen little in the way of software innovation avaliable on the same terms as the platform donation - volunteer management tools, member management tools, event management tools, etc. CiviCRM says wait a few months and you'll get the stuff on our roadmap (better reporting, case management, improved events, etc.). I'll leave others to invent a better model of marketing a platform.

The facts on the ground, however, are finally getting really inspiring.

Salesforce has done a great job of penetrating the market through their donation program. In the last month, they finally seem to have got their act together and put the infrastructure in place to support long term, sustainable impact on nonprofit technology. And in doing so, low and behold, they have embraced open source.

Four years ago Sonny pointed out "I could easily use Salesforce as a model of proprietary/open source partnership—a corporate developer that embraces open source integration into their product." Yet it took them until today for them to actually take the lead and open source the starter pack.

The Nonprofit Starter Pack is now and open source project and they can begin the process the CiviCRM team began 5 years ago of building out nonprofit software that works for day to day users (events, memberships, etc.). By Salesforce embracing open source, they have finally, IMHO, put the critical pieces in place to transform nonprofit technology as part of a mission rather than as part of corporate philanthropy/marketing.

As an interesting side note, the traditional commercial nonprofit software providers are being assimilated into the Salesforce borg (Convio's CommonGround, recent MicroEdge announcement). Not sure of thos implications, but very interesting.

On the CiviCRM side, the juggernaugt continues to innovate and expand with features that regular nonprofit staffers need to use every day.

Four year ago Sonny took me to task and highlighted the key point: "nonprofit staff are pining away for affordable and effective apps that allow them to do their jobs"

Today, the situation is far better than it has ever been before.

Keep Evaluation Simple, Stupid

So I served on the advisory board of the TechImpact project done by NTEN and NPower. That project confronted a key problem faced by Nonprofit Technology Assitance Providers (NTAP):

It’s common to hear examples of how technology has helped nonprofits achieve their missions. However there are few studies that demonstrate this impact in a measurable way.

The project got off to a great start but never quite got to the point of generating performance metrics for NTAPs. Well, over the past year I've been developing the performance metrics for NetSuite.org. We are basically an NTAP, so I very much looked at all the research and evaluation data on NTAPs out there.

I got a headache.

Lots of data, lots of academic mumbo jumbo (which is fine unless all you are trying to do is measure outcomes), lots of ideas and no overall simple solution for building a measurement system.

So what did I end up with?

(1) Second order social impact ( the social impact of a charity attributable to an NTAP) is hard, so

1. Don't bother with it
2. Allow the charity to self report on a question like "What social impact was most enabled by working with us".
3. Collect narrative data on the project and, if your can afford it, do a content analysis.
   

I personally use #3 becuase I suspect we'll be able to do the content analysis in the future.

(2) Use a simple proxy.

1. I like the Net Promoter score. Adjust the question a little to "How likely would you be to recomend XYZ to somone that needs to use technology to expand their social impact" That will generate a simple metric you can manage to (read the details, linked below) 

Net Promoter

http://www.netpromoter.com/site/

TechImpact Project

http://www.nten.org/research/techimpact

Content Analysis

http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/research/content/pop2a.cfm

What is Donor Management Software?

So NTEN decided not to include CiviCRM as a listing in their Donor Management Survey. On the face of it, that was an OK decision because CiviCRM wasn't specifically designed as donor management software.

That kind of made sense to me, plus we have plenty enough users that use CiviCRM that we'll have just as many responses as the named systems. [If you use CiviCRM for donor management, Vote Now!]

Then they modified the front page of the survey to define donor management and I started thinking this is another conflict between the platform solution vs. "best-of-breed". Their definition of donor management is:

1. Manages relationships with current and prospective donors
2. Sends/Tracks correspondence and relationship history
3. Is more than just a donation processor (i.e. PayPal, Google Checkout, DonateNow)
4. Tracks ALL types of monetary gifts (on- and offline, events, etc.)
5. Is available for purchase/download

CiviCRM was probably excluded since it does so many other things, but from CiviCRM v1.0 oh so many years ago we supported each and every on of these "features". But as a platform, we tend not to support "deeper" version of these features... for example, you could track pledges in v1.0, but real useful pledge management / automation functionality had to wait for the current release.

As a platform, we weren't included, but I bet if we called ourselves fundraising software from day one, we would have been.

Platforms like CiviCRM are designed very much on the 80% rule... try to get most of the way there for most of your users. But when you are trying to be a platform for operating a charity, most of the way there for most of your users doesn't look anything like most of the way there for most of your users if you are just building a gifts database. Features for a platform tend to be broad and shallow.

Over time, however, each aspect of the platform becomes deeper and more capable as more users use it, more contributions (code and financial) are made and time simply allows you to get around to a specific piece of functionality.

And finally, there is another reason that CiviCRM doesn't show up on the comparision lists (Techsoup, Aspiration, NTEN, etc.). I think the assumption is that if you can't install it on your Windows PC or access it as SaaS online, it is simply too complex for charity users and therefore shouldn't be put out there as an option. I agree a little with this, but the simple fact is that installing and maintaining a MYSQL application is not beyond an advanced accidental techie... I'm not sure we are helping too much by excluding a high-quality solution for the reason it requires some technical competence to deal with.

OK, they get the benefit of the doubt

I've watched Wild Apricot since it came out of the gate and been impressed with their product as a solution for small groups. I've also been impressed with their well thought out blog and they seem like all around good guys.

I see this blog post about how they are going to:

...take a closer look at free and open-source software: the real costs, the barriers, and the trade-offs; some of the best FOSS alternatives to “brand name” software; and online resources to help you make the most of it.

And I start to wonder if it is going to turn into a stealth vendor hit piece / FUD on open source. But as I mentioned, they don't seem like those type of folks, so I'm looking forward to what they write up.

PS, if anyone wants to compete head to head with Wild Apricot using open source software, you could run a CiviCRM-based ASP ;)

Need some powerful software to run your nonprofit, social enterprise or green startup?

I'm happy to announce an opportunity to apply for a NetSuite product donation. Please spread the word!

NetSuite is launching a pilot program to donate NetSuite software and NetSuite employee volunteer assistance to charities and for-profit firms that generate positive social impact. NetSuite (www.netsuite.com) is a public company with over 5,4000 customers-- you might have seen NetSuite in the news recently for our Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Our software is a web-based platform for running all aspects of a business from ERP to CRM to ecommerce. It is a modern, flexible ERP/CRM/ecommerce platform so it can be customized and extended to meet a variety of needs.

Things our current customers use it for that might be relevant to potential grantees include:
- Running an ecommerce store.
- Organizational accounting / general ledger.
- Fundraising / donor & donation management.

We have some great grantees up and running like Special Olympics and Goodwill, and some great partners helping us with this initiative including TechSoup, NPower Michigan and the Tech Museum Awards.

We are looking for three types of applicants:
- Registered charities in the US , UK and Canada .
- Social Enterprises, specifically fair trade organizations.
- Green Startups.

Competitive applicants will:
- Have the capacity to implement an ERP/CRM/ecommerce system.
- Be able to articulate and provide at least one metric for their social impact.
- Be a good match for NetSuite functionality.

To learn more, download our guidelines, or apply for a product donation, visit http://shopping.netsuite.com/giving.

Mergers, Open Source, Open Standards and Wishes

The esteemed Holly Ross writes,

I also think that the physical act of integrating two disparate systems, especially in the case of Convio and GetActive, will cause them to create the kinds tools that will be used to share data internally at first, but can then be spit polished and prettified for use by the general consumer.

Lets chew on this a bit. I have a corporate quarterly profit goal. I build tools to port data from Get Active to Convio as fast as possible. (1) Those tools are probably not general purpose, they are designed to get the job done and get it done fast. (2) If they are general purpose, who is going to polish them? Convio will if it leads to porting data from Blackbaud to Convio, but I doubt they would release the tools to facilitate the other direction.

And here an aspect of the difference between (distributed) open source and open standards. If the clunky tools were released into the community, all kinds of people would have an incentive to polish and prettify. If they aren't released to the community, they will serve quarterly profit targets.

I was thinking that the CiviCRM/Drupal community should run a marketing campaign... "you have to migrate anyway, migrate to open source." I suspect the tools and the companies have a few more years of maturation before they compete head to head with Convio, but I like the marketing campaign. :)