The following are minimal guidelines required to list and promote events on CiviCRM's infrastructure:
- All events must adhere to CiviCRM's code of conduct (participants must agree to these) or to an equivalent code of conduct provided by the event host.
- Events that charge registration fees are only available to "supporters", where a supporter is either an active contributor or a financial donor (within past year).
- All events promoting CiviCRM must adhere to CiviCRM's trademark policy.
The guidelines below are for reference only and no longer apply to events not already agreed to prior to 1 Feb 2020. These are currently under revision by the community.
The guidelines have been put together based on the experiences of past event organisers in conjunction with the CiviCRM Core Team. They are split into a small number of requirements (“Requirements”) that all CiviCRM events must follow in order to be recognised as official CiviCRM events, and a larger number of key considerations, tips and suggestions that we think are useful. They aim to make it as straightforward as possible to organise a CiviCRM event and to ensure that all events are as successful as possible for the attendees and organisers, and for the project in general.
CiviCRM events come in many shapes and sizes from small local meetups to international conferences, and from trainings to sprints. They cater to different audiences from the new to the very experienced, from consumers of and contributors to CiviCRM, and for end users, implementers and developers. Events are a key way in which we can increase the involvement of our community and contribute to the financial sustainability of the project.
If you’re interested in organizing a CiviCRM event, please contact us via email. For a full list of CiviCRM events, visit https://civicrm.org/events
What is a CiviCRM Event?
While CiviCRM encourages anyone to host an event in which CiviCRM is a focal point, only those adhering to the following key points will be considered sanctioned and recognized appropriately by CiviCRM. Events must be:
- Focused on raising awareness of CiviCRM the product and providing funding for the project
- Community driven and equitably accessible by all community members
- Fair, consistent and transparent in its finances and objectives, and aligned with the project’s programs and overall direction
CiviCRM events are intended to be inclusive and to foster community participation. Such events may leverage CiviCRM’s infrastructure for communications and are, upon approval by the Core Team, automatically able to use the CiviCRM trademark and logo, consistent with CiviCRM’s brand standards. Events promoted and covered by these guidelines include:
- CiviCon - intended to be national in scope (1 per country per year), multi-day events with trainings and sprints. Attracting an even mixture of new users, administrators and developers.
- CiviCamp - intended to be regional events (multiple events per country per year) with low financial commitments, focused on end user exposure, skill development and community growth.
- Sprint - post conference sprints and/or individual sprints that focus on key topics (largely technical) that benefit the overall product.
CiviCRM also promotes workshops, meetups and webinars. These events are covered separately outside of these guidelines.
Detailed Requirements
We’ve tried to keep these requirements simple and clear, remaining consistent with the core principles that underlie our operational objectives (sustainability and growth).
- CiviCRM events must be approved by the Core Team in advance.
- Event organizers, and hence the events, must agree to abide by and enforce CiviCRM’s terms of use, trademark and brand standard, code of conduct and these event guidelines. Event organizers must also disclose any additional terms of use, such as photo and video releases, to attendees in advance of registration.
- Event organizers must provide financial transparency to the Core Team via a proposed budget in advance as well as a detailed final profit & loss statement.
- CiviCRM may act as a financial sponsor and can assist with financial arrangements to ensure that each event can be undertaken. Event organizers may also manage event finances. CiviCRM will cover a portion or all of an event’s losses. Proceeds from CiviCRM events fund and are used at the discretion of the CiviCRM Core Team, with a priority for marketing (future events, external conferences, etc.).
- CiviCRM prefers for CiviCamps and CiviCons to be organized by volunteers, and discourages the use of paid event organizers, especially for smaller events. CiviCRM will recognize volunteer organizers either via the contributor framework or as event sponsors (paid organizers will not receive contributor or sponsor recognition).
- Event organizers will have access to CiviCRM’s infrastructure for the duration of their need to successfully manage the event. The CiviCRM Core Team should be included on communications to the community sent through civicrm.org.
- Event organizers should use the infrastructure provided by CiviCRM. In cases where it makes sense to do otherwise, data may be collected outside of CiviCRM. In these cases, the data may not be used for any other purpose than organizing this event, and the data shall be migrated into civicrm.org then any remaining copy be destroyed.
Core Team Support
The core team is happy to support events that contribute to our vision and meet our objectives of growing the ecosystem and deepening community engagement with the project. Since we are a small team with a finite capacity, there is only so much we can do for each event. Hence we prefer to work with event organisers within our community, supporting them as conference organisers.
We are happy be help new teams get off the ground, be involved in initial brainstorming, offer ongoing advice, be part of planning meetings, etc. But we expect the organising teams to so the bulk of the work and take responsibility for the event. We may be able to offer seed funding to start conferences in parts of the world where we are keen to grow the ecosystem.
We aim to send at least one member of the core team to each of our larger events and typically choose 1 or 2 events per year to have a large core team attendance.
Non-CiviCRM Events
CiviCRM encourages the growth of events by the community and recognizes that some events, for one reason or another, may not qualify to be officially sanctioned. Such events are often run by community members as for profit endeavors, or in such a way that they do not fully adhere to CiviCRM’s own requirements. That’s perfectly fine. Here’s what you can expect for non-sanctioned events:
- Ineligible to use CiviCRM’s trademarks or logo to promote the event or in any way that denotes endorsement by CIVICRM LLC.
- Cannot use CiviCRM infrastructure for registration or promotion.
- Core Team members can participate at the expense of organizer.