Author: Carlota Conceição

This post was produced by bgm – member of the CiviCRM community and Core Team member.

Special thanks to our post translators:

TL;DR? Here’s a quick summary…

Image source: Pexels.

Every year, non-profits sign up for Salesforce expecting a powerful, affordable solution, only to quietly discover the real cost. Not just in dollars, but in consultant hours, staff training, and the creeping realization that switching would cost even more. This post is about what to consider before you get there.

Competition is healthy, it pushes us all to improve, and we want organizations to find the best tools. However, in the 21 years since CiviCRM began serving nonprofits, we’ve seen too many non-profits fall for glossy marketing – for costly features that are never used because they are too complex, leading the nonprofit trapped in a long-term expensive contract. To that end, let’s call out the elephant in the room: Salesforce.

In this case, I’m not shy to call them out. Salesforce has become huge, at least in the United States. It has good features and their marketing is unbeatable. CiviCRM and Salesforce are very different solutions, but they are often compared. I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a few differences.

Full disclaimer: I have been working with CiviCRM for 20 years, and have migrated organizations from Salesforce to CiviCRM. I also have a close relative who works at a non-profit that uses Salesforce. They contributed to this post, as have a few CiviCRM partners who work with both platforms.

We can modestly say that CiviCRM competes well with Salesforce for non-profits, but not when it comes to marketing. We’re not a billion dollar company, backed by large investors and who must answer to shareholders. We’re hundreds of organizations working together. Some are organizations using CiviCRM, some are professional partner service providers, some are volunteers. We have a few modest funding sources, including from partners, from donors and from payment providers. Most of the money is spent on development, not marketing. Like most non-profits out there, we want your money to have the most impact.

For many non-profits, CiviCRM can cover the vast majority of day-to-day CRM, fundraising, membership and event management needs at a fraction of the total cost of a Salesforce-based solution. Collaboration might take longer, but we go further together. If many startups have come and gone, CiviCRM is still there and innovating 20 years later.

We’re also brutally honest. Does CiviCRM have the best user interface? Maybe not, but it’s built using actual user input. Organizations should be aware that proprietary platforms can create switching costs that make future migrations more difficult. AI, for example, should be opt-in, and controlled by your organization.

Budgeting can become difficult because costs often depend on a combination of user counts, products, add-ons and third-party applications. As organizations grow or adopt additional functionality, costs can increase in ways that are difficult to predict during initial procurement. If your organization has a bad year, it might have to make a difficult decision, to be cut off from your data.

On top of the licenses and hosting fees, you will need consultants. They might say that you won’t need them, but you will need them. It’s a complex platform, constantly evolving. Even if there are some “no-code” components, they are complex and require either training or consultants.

A common myth is that Salesforce is free for non-profits. While Salesforce’s former nonprofit solution NPSP (Nonprofit Success Pack), and their current solution NPC (Nonprofit Cloud) allow for 10 free licenses, unlike CiviCRM you can’t start taking online donations, membership, or event registrations without adding additional tools. This adds complexity and cost, as all these add-on tools either have subscription costs or higher transaction fees.

Overall, if you are struggling with Salesforce, you will be told that you need to invest more. This or that component will help, at an extra cost. It will be a dilemma of sunk costs. Keep throwing money at it, hoping it eventually works, or cut your losses?

Salesforce offers extremely granular permissions and a large ecosystem of third-party integrations. While this flexibility is powerful, it can also increase administrative complexity. Organizations without dedicated expertise may find it challenging to consistently audit access controls and integrations.

For example, when a data leak impacted more than 40 Salesforce customers in 2025, from AirFrance-KLM to Home Depot and IKEA, Salesforce blamed their customers, rather than the complexity of their systems. (see: TechCrunch article and Fortra.com analysis)

There are also concerns about how Salesforce uses client data to train Einstein and Agentforce. Salesforce has published a FAQ addressing these concerns, but the details are buried in the fine print and the subtitles are somewhat misleading.

Beyond vendor-level incidents, the security of the software itself is worth considering. Proprietary software typically has regular updates for “general maintenance and stability fixes”. CiviCRM takes a different approach, by publishing detailed security reports. Whether that’s more or less secure than proprietary software is debatable, but the transparency isn’t. You and your software provider can have a better understanding and control of the impact on your data. Additionally, CiviCRM Standalone (a version that runs without a separate CMS) reduces your attack surface by keeping your software stack simple.

Who actually controls your donor data? It’s a question most non-profits don’t ask until it’s too late. Choosing the right CRM isn’t just a technical decision. It’s a question of organizational sovereignty.

Is CiviCRM any different? That’s a safe bet. With CiviCRM, you own your data. You can host it wherever you want and you control who can access it. Not a pro? No problem, we have a wide range of experts, many of whom are based in your jurisdiction, whether it’s the United States, Europe or elsewhere. You’re also investing locally, into your local economy, local skills, in a community whose interests and values are more likely aligned with yours.

Large technology companies are increasingly influential in public policy debates, and their executives often make headlines for political statements. Whether you agree with those views or not, it serves as a reminder that when critical infrastructure depends on a single vendor, your organization is ultimately affected by decisions and priorities that it does not control. (see: TheVerge article)

Salesforce may be the right choice for some organizations. But before committing, understand the long-term costs, dependencies and governance implications. A CRM is not just software. It becomes part of your organization’s infrastructure. The decision you make today may shape your operations, budget and flexibility for the next decade.

If you choose CiviCRM, you’re not simply buying a product, nor are you the product. You’re joining a community that collectively builds and governs the software it relies on. You can contribute code, hire a local partner, or simply choose where your data lives. You’re part of something built for people, not shareholders.

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This illustration was generated using AI

To Partner or not to Partner that is the Question…Partnership has many meanings, be it a work partnership or a romantic partnership, family partnerships a business partnership. But one question that keeps reoccurring on Ambassador Calls and new client meetings is, what does it actually mean to work with a  CiviCRM Partner?

If you are looking at this from the perspective of someone wanting to work with CiviCRM, use it for your charity, non profits, small business, you already may have some understanding of using open source software as using something which is free. However, it’s as free as a kitten someone once said, the kitten needs feeding and looking after and that’s the role of the partner with your CiviCRM. 

The great thing about a Partner is they can take any kind of scenario and make CiviCRM work for your situation. Essentially, a tailoring service which requires skill and experience —  that’s your vet with the kitten.

You might be starting from scratch, you might already be running CiviCRM but not using it efficiently and need advice, or you might want to migrate away from your current set of spreadsheets, donor management CRM or other disconnected tools. You might need a tailored system which possibly only existed in your head till this point and is currently using many spreadsheets to show for it, and you need to consolidate all of that to get clarity on your constituent data.

• Partners will need an initial meeting that may include a questionnaire; this gives them an understanding of the size of your system, what you use it for and what you are looking to do, this will also help them start to think about pricing. You might need deeper customization or utilising features that are out of the box.
• Once they have had an initial meeting and they have a clear understanding how you are looking to use the system they can write a proposal for you stating the various stages and with preliminary costs.

This is essential for any project and gives the Partner time to effectively assess what is going on with your organisational needs, and if you already have a system in place see what on your current system is working or not for you.

A discovery stage can take anywhere from a week to a month to determine what’s best. It can be part of the sales process or a paid discovery with the latter involving setting up a demo, conducting user interviews and mapping functional requirements to concrete outcomes. The result: a roadmap for success!

Discovery cannot be skipped, careful thought and planning of your intended outcomes; will determine the scope, timeframes of the next stages and the cost.

Related: Relationship Advice: Finding and Engaging the Best CiviCRM Vendor for Your Organization

Depending on the size of your organisation this should be broken down into phases. This could include getting your CiviCRM up and running rather quickly with out of the box functionality, by 

• Importing data you already have
• Form building be it complex or simple
• Members Portal set up
• You might have some really specific needs, such as WhatApp integration for your members’ events. Many of the Partners have been involved in contributing to building and maintaining extensions you wish to use, which means you are turning to the experts to implement what they have made effectively; a real positive of open source.
• Training to feel comfortable with configuration options and daily tasks so that everyone uses your system efficiently.

This is the caring of the kitten, the hosting means, all your data is kept safe and secure, looked after and updated as there are security releases (2-4 times a year). Monitoring of the site in case goes offline, and manage bulk emails. Your hosting cost depends on the demand you’re making on your CiviCRM.

As time goes on you might decide you have new needs, the kitten turns into a cat and has a litter of kittens. This is also something your Partner can help you with and the journey of your CiviCRM develops with this.

The great thing about partnerships in any form is they can change and are flexible. If you are not with the right partner you can switch, just take your data with you.

Below are the different criteria of Partners:

• By country, which helps understand your language and culture (how you do business).
• By Partner Type (size of Partner will determine if they can support your needs) you might have a Munchin Kitten or a large Maine coon cat.
• By Spark – you might use the CiviCRM Spark instance, and just need support in doing your imports and getting all your forms working as they should.
• By CiviAcademy – a solid resource for inhouse training or ongoing learning for common components/tools you could use in CiviCRM. Some Partners offer this for free as part of using their services.

Agency

CiviCRM Agencies are the largest service providers and usually have several developers and implementors in the team. Bringing together diverse skill sets to deliver a full spectrum of CiviCRM-related services for larger organisations. They have the capacity and structure to support the most complex, large-scale projects.

Implementor

CiviCRM Implementors are typically mid-sized organizations with broad expertise. They are well-suited to managing both smaller implementations and complex projects simultaneously. Implementors can also scale their capacity efficiently by collaborating with other partners, making them flexible and adaptable to evolving project needs.

Professional

CiviCRM Professionals are smaller providers with specialized skills and focused service offerings. They deliver highly personalized support and are ideal for organizations with clearly defined needs and smaller projects. 

All are CiviCRM Experts!

For example: you might have a small project/charity and want to use Whatsapp integration for your events as you see this as something essential. You might search for a partner who is an implementor and active developer to help get that essential integration working for you.

All in all, to grow your kitten and take care of it, it’s pretty amazing that there’s many different partnerships out there that can support you with your CiviCRM needs and help your organisation grow. 

This post was produced by Josh Gowans of the CiviCRM Core Team and edited by Allen Shaw of Joinery. Exploring CiviCRM and want to learn more?

Special thanks to our post translators:

Way back in 2015 when I started with CiviCRM, its brand tagline was “Growing and Sustaining Relationships”. You can still occasionally see it around today.

A year or two afterwards, we started playing around with different taglines, one of which was “Own your data. Own your impact.” I especially liked this one as it spoke to the heart of a major feature of CiviCRM: Data Sovereignty.

But, as prescient as it was at the time, it didn’t stick.

Fast forward to 2025 and the term ‘data sovereignty’ is getting a lot more attention in the tech world – for a few reasons.

One is the growing concern that the Big Tech corporations are unavoidably entangled with government power structures; and depending on who’s holding that government power at any given time, varying groups start to feel very worried about that entanglement.

And a second is, I think it’s pretty safe to say, a collection of serious concerns about the unbridled growth of artificial intelligence.

We could view those as separate concerns, but I think they have something very important in common; the risk of betrayed trust.

Let me explain.

For years, the Big Tech companies have sold us a dream in which their technology makes our lives better, as long as we trust them enough to let their products become central to our everyday lives. They’ll manage all the details (and our personal information); we’ll reap the benefits of convenience and ease; and we’ll all just assume that our data will never be misused to our detriment.

That’s the trust I’m talking about. That’s the trust that’s at risk of being betrayed.

In the United States, where most of these companies are headquartered, they’ve shown a willingness to bend their policies and procedures to fit the demands of whoever happens to be in control of the government at any given time. The power of the federal government, and of the Executive Branch in particular, to exert pressure on these companies is simply astounding – under any administration.

In the years when you or I personally support the sitting U.S. President, it may seem easy to wave away claims of abuse of executive power, to believe that government intrusion into Big Tech’s ongoing activities is acceptable, or even necessary.

But in the years where we believe the President is an incompetent abuser of power at his core, such control becomes very troubling. And unfortunately, you and I don’t always get our way when it comes to choosing the next President. But take away the “abuse of government power” concern for a moment. Let’s just pretend that no government would want to interfere in the workings of the Big Tech corporations. Would we then suddenly trust them to act only in ways that benefit us? Surely would could expect them to continue trying one thing or another that harms us:

• promotion of technologies for wartime use;
• influencing public discourse by skewing factual and historical information to fit their own interests;
• fostering addictive behaviors among users regardless of age;
• practicing abusive and unfair compensation among executives and employees;
• name your own complaint here – it need not be one of mine.

So it’s not a question of whether you or I happen to agree with the powers-that-be of the moment. Sooner or later, we can all expect the Big Tech corporations to begin doing things we don’t want with data that we have given them.

As sad as it is to see such innovative companies bow before the unavoidable pressures of avarice, I myself kinda feel like saying… errrr… thank you!

For decades, the open-source software community has fought to justify its existence in the face
of proprietary software and its huge clout. But now, Big Tech is helping make the case for us.

Because if you want full transparency and full control over your tech stack, Big Tech is making it clear: you don’t want them in charge of it.

Instead: you gotta own it.

And that’s exactly what you get with open-source solutions: full control of the data, features, and infrastructure that power your systems.

If, on the other hand, you’re okay with Big Tech inhaling your data and productizing it in any way they think will benefit their shareholders, you can let them. They’ll happily do it, and in exchange they’ll give you access to some convenient features, for just as long as it’s also convenient for them.

I only ask that you recognize first what you’re trading away, and what you’re getting in return. You’re giving up control of your systems and your data – not only your ability to use it as you wish, but your ability to prevent others from abusing it in any way they wish. You simply have no idea how it’s being used, whom it’s being shared with, or how it could be leveraged against you when the regime (political or corporate) to which Big Tech is beholden turns against you. That’s what you’re trading away. And in return, you get … well, convenience.

That’s not a trade I could recommend to anyone. That’s why I’m all-in on open-source CiviCRM and other solutions that support true data sovereignty. That’s why I hope you will be, too.