Join us for the San Francisco Net Tuesday on September 9:
Involver: How Nonprofits Can Create Video Campaigns for Social Networks.
We've been using a number of open-source products (Drupal, CiviCRM, WordPress, Firefox) for some time now.
What I'm most interested in are two things: the possibilities for integration and contributing back to the community.
• Integration of these tools into other FLOSS and pay software (e.g. Drupal and Democracy in Action), in particular which types of advocacy and fundraising tools — like DiA but also Kintera, Convio, Constant Contact, CapWiz, etc. — have the best APIs for such integration. I don't mind doing it myself (or paying someone to do it for us) but I don't want to stuck with a subscription for something that doesn't integrate. And as much as I love CiviCRM and CiviContribute, I don't think they're there yet for full-time donations processing; while I think Drupal's tools could handle advocacy, on the other hand, I'm not particularly interested in maintaining all the data (like all the congressional contact info). So, for now, I need to be sure of integration.
• Good arguments to cash- and personnel-strapped nonprofits why it's a good idea to contribute back to open-source communities. I think this is important, but sometimes I have trouble convincing others of the same.
I'm really looking forward to meeting some of the folks behind these great open-source communities!
(Incidentally, I was confused as to whether I should post a comment or "click here" to post a question ... and telling me to pick "open source" wasn't too helpful since there were two options ... and there seems to be a Drupal error going on in the "related questions" ... OK, enough nitpicking.)