CiviCRM is an open source project that produces software for nonprofit and civic sector organizations. CiviCRM, the software, is a web-based, highly customizable CRM released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (GNU AGPL v3). CiviCRM is used by a diverse range of organizations around the world and translated into dozens of languages.

Founded in 2005 as a California-based Limited Liability Company, CiviCRM was conceived as an alternative to proprietary CRMs serving the nonprofit sector. As open source software, CiviCRM was made freely available for use and improvement, allowing it to attract a passionate community of software developers and nonprofit professionals to drive its roadmap and feature set. Its vision was and continues to be:

That all organizations – regardless of their size, budget, or focus – have access to an amazing CRM to engage their contacts and achieve their missions; that they own their data and their code; and that they can modify and extend their CRM without restriction.

CiviCRM as a project is community driven and is sustained through contributions and financial support from its community. A key measure of CiviCRM's success is the social good that it generates as well as the stories and case studies provided by organizations that are doing amazing and innovative things with CiviCRM.

Today, CiviCRM continues to be created and used by a global community of tens of thousands of individuals and organisations whose fundamental objective is to make a meaningful difference in the world. Likewise, the project continues to attract contributors that help shape CiviCRM such that it can continue to achieve its vision. At the center of CiviCRM is a Core Team of staff employed to coordinate the release of the software and provide leadership for the project.

We invite you to not only use CiviCRM, but to to actively get involved and support the community’s efforts to build a better CiviCRM, and to truly impact the world.