Code for Change is over (for now)

As of last Friday (August 17), the first Code for Change summer has officially come to a close. We set out to turn CiviCRM into a better system for helping organizers spend more time organizing and less time shuffling things around on their computers. CiviCRM is a constituent relationship management system, but that's just a nerdy way of saying that it's a program to save you from spreadsheets-pasted-into-Outlook hell when it comes to keeping track of and in touch with all of your contacts. I'm pretty excited about what we got done.

Code for Change is my brainchild, so I'm a little biased. However, other people seem to think it's cool too. The basic idea behind Code for Change is that by putting a little effort into an existing open source project, we get a lot more out of it than if we wrote something ourselves from scratch or paid someone else to modify an off-the-shelf system. We hired some computer science interns--current students and recent grads, downloaded the source code to CiviCRM, and set about turning it into a system that everyone can use (from large, complex organizations all they way down to my mom who sends out a regular newsletter to her home-based business contacts). In the true spirit of openness, all our work is open source and is planned to be released with the CiviCRM 2.0 release later this year.

From June 4 to August 17, we hacked away at it. We had a lot of help from others in the CiviCRM developer and user community, and their contributions were invaluable. Here's what we all accomplished:

• We made CiviCRM a standalone system. This means you no longer need Drupal or Joomla to use it. (Those are web content management systems, and not everyone who wants to use CiviCRM uses those.) For people who just need a CRM, this makes it much easier to get CiviCRM up and running and doesn't put a lot of unnecessary CMS functionality between you and your contacts.


• We added OpenID logins. OpenID is a pretty cool new technology that allows you to use one login for all systems that use it. No more having to remember umpteen different passwords for every system you have to login to.


• We added support for complex groups and organizational structures. The organization I work for, U.S. PIRG, is a national network of state-based organizations. This means we need a system that can keep all its data separate for each state, but still allow those of us who work centrally for all the organizations (I'm an online organizer, for example) to aggregate that data when necessary. Other organizations (such as political parties) have similar geographic and departmental structures that they need a CRM system to model. CiviCRM is now pretty powerful in this regard. You can put groups inside other groups (inside other groups, inside...) and you can affiliate groups with organizations and sub-organizations.

I'll be working over the next few weeks to actually roll out CiviCRM as the new system that U.S. PIRG uses for its online organizing, so we'll be eating our own dog food. If you want to give it a try now (instead of waiting for the official 2.0 release), you can download a preview release of CiviCRM Standalone here.

And we're not done there. We're looking to hire an intern for the current fall semester and another in the spring to continue working on CiviCRM. If you or anyone you know is interested in applying, let me know.

Cross-posted at Future Majority

Code for Change at YearlyKos

I'm in Chicago at YearlyKos, currently in a panel on building a grassroots funding culture for progressive infrastructure. In other words, small donations to fund all kinds of progressive work, not just political candidates and parties. That's an interesting idea for funding Code for Change... I'll have to think about that some more.

I'm excited about talking to people about Code for Change and the work we're doing here at YearlyKos. I've already had one person stop me to ask what Code for Change was all about when he overheard that we were working on CiviCRM. So there's definitely enthusiasm out there for open source software that helps build the progressive movement.

One thing that I haven't heard much about from the panelists is the idea of not just raising more money for progressives, but also encouraging progressives to be smarter about what they spend that money on. One of the goals of Code for Change is to show the progressive movement that open source software is a better "third way" for getting the software that we need to help us build progressive infrastructure. It's the flexibility of writing your own code combined with the ability to get up and running quickly by not re-inventing the wheel that you get when buying an off-the-shelf solution. Not only that, but you don't have to spend anywhere near as much money on it, nor is it totally on your shoulders to keep the code maintained and build new features.

I believe progressive organizations, bloggers, candidates, and individual activists should aggressively adopt open source software solutions, and they should find ways to not just be a consumer in that community (which there's nothing wrong with, per se) but to also contribute back to the community. It's been our experience in Code for Change that when we engage those communities and start working with them to add features that a particular organization needs (in this case, U.S. PIRG), those contributions are enthusiastically embraced and become official features of that software.

This is the software equivalent of a broad, small donor base that amounts in a huge funding source. It's just a smarter way to get software developed for our movement, and we need to get that word out. I'll be working on doing just that here at YearlyKos.