CiviCRM is one of the very few nonprofit focused free and open source applications. It can be a powerful tool for nonprofit organizations. You can use it to track donors, send blast emails, set up events, and do case management. Learn about the details of implementing and using CiviCRM.

Date/Time: Tuesday April 29th, 11:00 AM PT / 2:00 PM ET

This webinar will be conducted by the CiviCRM team, so it is a great opportunity to get all of your questions about CiviCRM answered. Find more detailed info on their blog. Register on the NTEN site.

The next NOSI/NTEN webinar will be on CiviCRM, and will be conducted by the CiviCRM development team. They will give an overview of CiviCRM, examples of its use, and there will be lots of time for questions. Register on the NTEN Site. More details about the webinar are on the CiviCRM blog.

There are a surprising number of open source tools for CRM and fundraising.

The NTEN CRM satisfaction survey showed that people who were surveyed were quite satisfied with the free and open source tools that many of them have chosen to implement. This webinar will be an overview of free and open source CRM tools. You’ll learn about what’s available and how you can implement these tools in your organization.

We'll talk about why use open source tools for CRM, review both desktop and web based tools, and talk about the process of implementation of these tools.

It will be a great introduction to CRM tools in general. There will also be a webinar in April that Focuses on CiviCRM.

This webinar is on March 27th, at 2pm EDT, 11am PDT

Register on the NTEN site

We've finalized the report on the survey we did early last month. There are some interesting results, and it is worth a read. The summary:

Our sampling wasn't sufficient to allow us to draw firm conclusions about software choices in the nonprofit sector as a whole, but our responses did come from a broad range of organizations. These groups are diverse both in size, mission and their use of free and open source software, and it is clear from their responses that FOSS is actively used in the nonprofit sector. FOSS is common on web servers, and while FOSS desktop operating systems are still uncommon, many nonprofits use free and open source applications on proprietary desktop operating systems. Many people in the sector use FOSS everyday, or at least quite frequently. Nonprofits do have a clear understanding of the strengths of FOSS, and at least some organizations have made organizational commitments to open source and open standards.

Read it here.

NOSI is very interested in the use of free and open source software in the nonprofit sector. We want to understand better how FOSS is used, what people's attitudes are towards it, and what resources are necessary for organizations to choose and use FOSS.

This is the first of an annual survey, so we can track trends of the use of FOSS in the sector, and so we can strategize to meet the needs of the sector.

It will take about 10 minutes to fill out. We'd very much appreciate your time!

Take the survey.