Civicanada

IATS is a subsidiary of Ticketmaster that offers an excellent way for non-profits in Canada to get transaction processor services - you don't even need a merchant account, and it's relatively inexpensive. It's a step up from a service like 'canadahelps' because you can integrate it into your site and get the donor data into a CRM automatically, and can also be used for e-commerce (in theory).

We are pleased to announce that CiviCRM 1.7 stable is now available for download.

CiviCRM is the first open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, internationalised, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.

New to CiviCRM? Read more at http://civicrm.org/

What's New in 1.7

The big news for 1.7 is CiviEvent - providing integrated online event registration and management for paid and free events. This release also includes a new "Contact Dashboard", which gives constituents a consolidated view of their subscriptions, contributions, event registrations and more.

Other release highlights include:
* Create and save re-usable email templates (with mail-merge tokens)
* CiviContribute plugins for Authorize.net and Google Checkout
* Use customized versions of templates for any screen
* One-click copying for existing Profiles, Contribution Pages and Events
* Restrict access to selected custom data fields and selected profile screens

I'm planning to organize some Civicrm sessions at the upcoming drupalcamp in toronto http://drupalcamptoronto.org/

I'm noticing that the civicanada group (http://groups.drupal.org/civicanada where i'm posting this), which I setup after an ad hoc session on civicrm at the last toronto drupal camp, is pretty defunct. I'm hoping that's due to a lack of leadership on my part rather than a lack of interest in the topic. In any case, if you're interested in helping out, or have some input into the content of such a session, let me know.

CiviCRM 1.6: A Free and Open Source eCRM Solution

We are pleased to announce the latest release of CiviCRM – version 1.6.

Special thanks to the dedicated folks who contributed to this release by testing the alpha and beta revisions — and to everyone in the community who provided new ideas, feedback (especially critical feedback), and patches.

CiviCRM is the first open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, internationalised, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.

We are happy to announce that our 1.6 Alpha release is now available for preview and testing on our servers. We'd like to get as many folks trying out the new features as possible over the next week. This will help us move quickly to a downloadable Beta release - which is currently scheduled for November 29.

You can login to the sandbox at:

http://sandbox.trunk.civicrm.org

User - demo
Password - demo

Highlights of the release - and things we especially like folks to try out are:
* Ajax-based suggestive search in the Contact Search box (left column)
* Dynamically loaded sections in Advanced Search and Contact View Screens

Check out the new CiviCRM web-site at http://civicrm.org .... !

We've re-designed and re-organized the site from the ground up, and we hope folks will find it easier to locate resources and learn about the project...

The new site includes a Professional Services directory, and we encourage you to check out the listings if you need technical resources to implement or extend CiviCRM...
http://civicrm.org/professional

We'll be using the Team blog to post interesting news and updates as to what's happening on the project here...
http://civicrm.org/blog/1

We've also collected some of your "success stories" and have them rotating on the front page. Let us know if you want to add your story to the site...

We are happy to announce that our 1.5 Beta release is now available for download. This release includes CiviMember - a new membership management component, significant memory and speed optimizations, and Search Builder - a new tool for building complex search queries.

Other release highlights include:
* Log and display who last updated a contact and when
* Include mapping links in Profile search results and details
* Optional CAPTCHA validation for Profile forms
* Generate mailing labels
* Attach photos, documents and other files to contacts

..You can read the roadmap release summary here: