A few weeks ago, I went to CiviCon. As a fairly new end-user, this was an incredible experience. Not only did I learn an insane amount of information and receive a wonderful training at the User and Admin training, but I got to interact with other people that use CiviCRM in the same way I do. I am a fundraiser for the Secular Student Alliance, and everywhere I looked I saw other people using CiviCRM to raise money: from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco Baykeeper, and so many more.
I wanted a place where I could keep coming back to these professional relationships. CiviCRM is such an incredible product because of the community built around it. Throughout the conference, all I was thinking is, “How can we make sure these interactions among users aren’t lost after this conference ends?”
One of the suggestions I heard was to take advantage of the forums. However, the forums can be a scary place if you aren’t a developer. Digging through the forums on using CiviCRM, the first post I saw was titled “CRM-8744 breaks sending emails to SMTP servers requiring TLS & authentication”.
Huh?
As a person untrained in any sort of coding, that is terrifying gibberish.
There is already a place on the Community Forums geared towards users: the “User Groups” subforum. However, it is heavily focused on language and country specific user communities. These are very important, but I want to see more communities focused on how non-profits use CiviRM. Two of these currently exist on the forums, but neither is very active.
I would like to propose an expansion of this user community. Rather than calling it “User Groups”, title the sub-forum “End-user Discussions: A place for End-users to exchange ideas, ask questions, and share suggestions.” This would be a board where End-users can come together and, in non-technical language, discuss problems and share solutions and innovations.
It would also be a place for more subforums to spring up. Using CiviCRM to send mass communications to people? Take part in a “Using CiviMail” subforum, where participants can share some of the tricks they have learned to dedupe mailing lists. Are you a professional fundraiser like I am? Check out “Fundraising with Civi” and see the cool customizations people are doing to their donation pages, or get advice on how best to construct your donation page.
I think these End-user forum spaces will be a starting point for an expansion of the End-user community. If you are interested in helping to make the forums a friendlier place for CiviCRM end-users, send me an email! I can be reached at jessica DOT kirsner AT secularstudents DOT org, and I would love to have help and input as I try to make this happen.