CiviCRM (original) (raw)

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CiviCRM

CiviCRM-logo-2019-F2
Developer(s) CiviCRM LLC
Initial release March 2005; 20 years ago (2005-03)[1]
Stable release 6.0 / March 6, 2025; 44 days ago (2025-03-06)[2]
Repository lab.civicrm.org/dev/core Edit this at Wikidata
Written in PHP (7.4+)[3]
Type Customer Relationship Management
License AGPLv3
Website civicrm.org Edit this at Wikidata

CiviCRM ( SIV-ee C-R-M) is a web-based suite of internationalized open-source software for constituency relationship management that falls under the broad rubric of customer relationship management. It is specifically designed for the needs of non-profit,[4][5] non-governmental, and advocacy groups, and serves as an association-management system.

CiviCRM is designed to manage information about an organization's donors, members, event registrants, subscribers, grant-application seekers and funders, and case contacts. Volunteers, activists, and voters - as well as more general sorts of business contacts such as employees, clients, or vendors - can be managed using CiviCRM.[6]

CiviCRM's core system tracks contacts, relationships, activities, groups, tags and permissions, while additional components keep track of contributors (CiviContribute), events (CiviEvent), member lists (CiviMember), cases (CiviCase), grants (CiviGrant), campaigns (CiviCampaign), petitions (CiviPetition), bulk mailings (CiviMail), and reports (CiviReport).[6] These components can be activated or deactivated to meet the needs of the specific organization. These and other features could be available on a smartphone through CiviMobile.[7]

As of version 6.0, CiviCRM can be used by itself (Standalone) or can be deployed in conjunction with either the Backdrop CMS, Drupal, Joomla! or WordPress content management systems (CMS). It is supported by many hosting and professional services companies[8] and there is an official cloud-hosted version called CiviCRM Spark.[9] Both the Drupal and Joomla! professional associations use CiviCRM. CiviCRM's license is the GNU AGPL 3.

CiviCRM's latest version supports Backdrop CMS, Drupal 7/8/9, Joomla 3.x and WordPress.[10] There are a wide and growing number of integration modules with these CMSes to leverage their strengths. A large number of tokens are available for inclusion in HTML or plaintext emails, or for producing PDF files for printing. Data-integration formats supported include RSS, JSON, XML, and CSV. Supported programming interfaces include REST, server PHP and client JavaScript APIs,[11] a CMS-agnostic extensions framework,[12] and Drupal and Symfony style hooks.[13]

Extensive administrative, developer, and user documentation is available on the project site.[14] There is an active community chat[15] and most community and development discussion can be found on CiviCRM's Gitlab.[16]

CiviCRM downloads are available from both the official site, CiviCRM.org, and SourceForge, where it was 'project of the month' for January 2011.[1]

A number of notable optional extensions have been released over the years, including an integration with the responsive open source email template builder Mosacio,[17] the RiverLea theme - a new default theme for the administrative interface,[18] and the CiviRules extension - which allows the system to apply actions based on rulesets.[19]

CiviCRM is used by many large NGOs including the Canadian Ski Patrol, Creative Commons,[20] the Free Software Foundation, [21] CERN,[22] and the Wikimedia Foundation[23] for their fundraising. CiviCRM is also used by Kabissa to provide CRM capabilities to over 1,500 organizations, mostly in Africa [24] and by the National Democratic Institute to provide CRM capabilities to emerging political parties in several countries.

Other users include the Green Party of England and Wales,[25] the Institute of Fisheries Management,[26] the Australian Greens,[27] the Libertarian Party (United States)[28] and the British Association of Social Workers.[29]

  1. ^ a b "Project of the Month, January 2011: CiviCRM". Sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2011-06-13.
  2. ^ "CiviCRM 6.0". 6 March 2025. Retrieved 6 March 2025.
  3. ^ "Requirements". CiviCRM System Administrator Guide. PHP section. Retrieved 26 March 2025.
  4. ^ "An assessment of CiviCRM for non-profits". Opensourceexperiments.wordpress.com. 2008-07-25. Retrieved 2011-06-13.
  5. ^ "CiviCRM, Free CRM for Nonprofits". Tmcnet.com. Retrieved 2011-06-13.
  6. ^ a b About CiviCRM Archived 2013-04-30 at the Wayback Machine, official site, accessed July 22, 2010.
  7. ^ "About | CiviMobile - a mobile application for CiviCRM". civimobile.org. Retrieved 2023-04-25.
  8. ^ "Find an Expert | CiviCRM". civicrm.org. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  9. ^ "CiviCRM Spark | Spark gives you the power of the leading open source CRM for non-profits without the overhead of managing or maintaining the system". civicrm.com. Retrieved 2025-03-26.
  10. ^ "Requirements - System Administrator Guide - CiviCRM documentation".
  11. ^ "API Intro - Developer Guide - CiviCRM Documentation". docs.civicrm.org. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  12. ^ "Extensions - System Administrator Guide - CiviCRM Documentation". docs.civicrm.org. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  13. ^ "Hooks Introduction - Developer Guide - CiviCRM Documentation". docs.civicrm.org. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  14. ^ CiviCRM Docs
  15. ^ "Participate". CiviCRM Community Site. Retrieved 2022-07-23.
  16. ^ "Participate". CiviCRM Community Site. Retrieved 2022-07-23.
  17. ^ "Mosaico CiviCRM Integration | CiviCRM". civicrm.org. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  18. ^ "RiverLea theme | CiviCRM". civicrm.org. Retrieved 2025-03-25.
  19. ^ "CiviRules | CiviCRM". civicrm.org. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  20. ^ Yergler, Nathan (2010-04-22). "Transcript of Creative Commons CTO talk on using CiviCRM". Yergler.net. Archived from the original on 2015-10-23. Retrieved 2011-06-13.
  21. ^ "Free Software Foundation: Time for nonprofits to leave proprietary fundraising software systems behind". Fsf.org. Retrieved 2011-06-13.
  22. ^ "Application draft 2015 - CRM - CiviCRM Wiki".
  23. ^ Wikimedia & FourKitchens support CiviCRM development Wikimedia blog, June 10th, 2009
  24. ^ Ekine, Sokari (2008-03-27). "PBS MediaShift: Africa's Social Media Conundrum". Pbs.org. Archived from the original on 2012-11-13. Retrieved 2011-06-13.
  25. ^ Third Sector Design
  26. ^ Institute of Fisheries Management https://ifm.org.uk/civicrm/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm%2Fevent%2Finfo&reset=1&id=150
  27. ^ "The Australian Greens". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
  28. ^ "CiviCRM Report & Next Steps from our CTO". groups.google.com. Retrieved 2023-07-01.
  29. ^ "The new CiviCase Blog Post 2: Using CiviCase for Case Management | CiviCRM". civicrm.org. Retrieved 2022-07-20.