For our second Tools Trial of the year, we’re continuing our theme of open-source platforms that support community engagement by hosting a session about CiviCRM!
ABOUT THE CIVICRM TOOLS TRIAL
Date: Wednesday, 25 March 2026 | Add to calendar
Time: 2pm US EDT / 6pm UTC (90 minutes)
Zoom link: join the call
Speakers:
- Lauren Collister (IOI)
- Yo Yehudi (OLS)
If there’s an open-source platform that you think STEM community managers should know more about (especially if it’s something you’re an expert in using and would be willing to present about or demo), please let us know by emailing info@cscce.org. We’d love to continue this series!
What is CiviCRM?
CiviCRM is an open-source constituent relationship management (CRM) platform designed for nonprofits. It can be used to manage community member data, design and implement communications campaigns, and support fundraising efforts. For STEM community managers, like those in the CSCCE community of practice, CRMs like Civi hold the potential to better understand their members and how they interact with the community and each other. How to unlock that potential, however, can feel overwhelming, with significant technical and financial barriers (not to mention initial setup time).
At the Tools Trial, we’ll explore some of these topics, and get a better sense for what is possible with Civi.
What happens at a CSCCE Tools Trial?
CSCCE Tools Trials began in the summer of 2020 as a way of testing out new online tools. It was a response to the rapid pivot to online convening necessitated by the COVID-19 pivot. We’ve since hosted a number of Trials, and you can find recap blog posts about each of them here.
Tools Trials are intended to be practical and participatory, so we encourage you to come with questions or use cases that you’d like to talk to the speakers about, or share with the other community managers or OS specialists who join the call.
If you’re interested in joining this Tools Trial, we encourage you to let us know ahead of time if you have a specific use case or question that you’d appreciate exploring. 90 minutes can fly by, and we want to make sure the session is useful! You can let us know you’re interested in joining the session, and add a note about your specific queries, using this brief Google Form (if you’ve already told us about this specific trial, there’s no need to fill in the form again – we’ll reach out with a calendar invite). Or, send us an email: info@cscce.org.
As with all CSCCE-hosted events, we expect anyone attending to abide by our Community Participation Guidelines and respect our Core Values.
Sharing materials after the Tools Trials
We plan on recording presentations and demos where possible, and will make these clips available via the CSCCE YouTube channel. In general, we turn recording off during Q&A and discussion to facilitate open sharing and problem-solving. We always synthesize (and anonymize) these conversations in a recap blog post (catch up on January’s Zulip Tools Trial), so even if you can’t join us live we’ll consolidate as much information as possible on the blog.
We also sometimes co-create additional new resources after a Tools Trial with CSCCE community members e.g., We’ll have a quick start guide to Zulip available soon – and like all of our published scaffolding materials, it’ll be licensed CC-BY for reuse with attribution.
Additional resources
- Summary blog posts from previous Tools Trials
- Summary of a CSCCE Community Call in 2022 when we heard about 3 different CRM tools in use by community members
- CSCCE scaffolding materials (including Quick Start Guides to Slack, Canvas, and Mural)
Disclaimer
Please note that by hosting and presenting in these trials neither CSCCE nor any of the participants (or their organizations) who attend these trials are endorsing the platforms.