CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

This is a suggestion to create a stripped-down version of CiviCRM that would be meant for use by small membership organizations that do not need all of the fund-raising and some other functions the the full-blown of CiviCRM contains. After working with a few non-profits and CiviCRM I can see that most newcomers are overwhelmed by all of the terminology and it's very intimidating for them, often generating a sense of unsureness and confusion.

There are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of small clubs and other organizations that need something like CiviCRM, but the the current version is too much to tackle due to the complexity. Most people simply want to load the application and expect it to to intuitive enough to get up and running quickly. These sorts of organizations simply need a way to track members (paid subscriptions or not) and have event registration and management capabilities with the email functions CiviCRM provides. (For example.) The current required learning curve and complexity suits programmers and developers much more than the average small organization executive which usually does not have a budget for CiviCRM development. A sort of "democratization" of CiviCRM for the masses approach might be very productive for everyone in the long run. (I am not suggesting CiviCRM is not already very democratic, rather that it be made more accessible to a larger audience through some sort of simplification. )

I propose that if there were such a version of "CiviLight" that was easy to use for simplified small organizations then it would rapidly gain wider adoption by a much larger user base than is likely at the present time. The CiviLight version would then serve as "training wheels" and as the small organizations grew their increased needs would likely prompt them to upgrade to the the full version of CiviCRM, thus growing the overall CiviCRM user base more quickly over time.

Maybe in the future CiviCRM could be more modular, i.e. functions un-needed by users might not be installed by default, rather they could be added as needed instead of the "all or nothing" installation as it currently is.

If there was a CiviLight that could be installed on top of a basic Drupal installation that would instantly provide simplified small organization membership management that got users up and running while needing very little documentation I think usage would increase and spread very rapidly. If there was an easy upgrade path from CiviLight to the standard version all the better.

* Thank you to everyone who has ever donated their time and talent to the development of CiviCRM in the interest of building a better world.

 

That simple approach would likely be an excellent starting point. To new users, I suspect CiviCRM often feels not quite right due to the nature of it's history and inadvertently alienates them to a degree. The things currently visible that they may never need or use can be show-stoppers, especially if you are a developer showing CiviCRM to prospects and clients that are not all that computer literate. It scares them, in my experience, or they think I'm suggesting something not quite appropriate to their needs. If they think their learning curve will necessarily be huge they shy away instinctively.

Maybe also a starter kit, for example a Drupal/CiviCRM "Light" installation which comes pre-configured as you describe with a demonstration that contains some data for a very basic membership organization, for example. This sounds pretty easy to do and (IMHO) would likely increase the adoption rate for CiviCRM possibly even dramatically. Your "mode" selection suggestion sounds excellent.