This year CiviCRM celebrated its eight birthday. Leveraging the open source model of collaboration and transparency, a global network of passionate people have built an enterprise quality CRM solution, which provides a compelling alternative to closed source proprietary products, and supports the mission critical activities of thousands of nonprofit and civic-minded organizations in more than 25 countries and five continents. Nonprofits of all sizes are adopting CiviCRM, from local arts groups (such as San Francisco Center for the Book), to multinational membership associations (International Mountain Biking Association), political parties (British Columbia NDP), advocacy organizations (Electronic Frontier Foundation), national charities (Leukemia & Lymphoma Research), and government entities (New York State Senate).

This "Cookbook" represents another exciting milestone in the evolution of the project. As an enthusiastic chef, I learned long ago that cookbook recipes provide a launching point for creativity. Good cooks take a recipe, test it out, and then modify and improve it based on their personal taste and knowing their "audience" (family, friends, and guests). Cookbook recipes are a perfect analog for sharing, leading to innovation.

CiviCRM's strength is based on shared innovation. In the two years since Packt's Using CiviCRM was published, we've seen an explosion of invention as users and implementers shape CiviCRM-based solutions to increasingly complex problems. Some of these are one-off customizations, but many have developed into full-fledged projects such as the CiviCRM-Webform integration module highlighted in this book. The power of these tools was brought home to me at a recent CiviCRM meetup, where Lisa Hubbert demonstrated the complex summer camp management interface she had built as a volunteer for San Francisco Arts Ed – a wonderful nonprofit that runs arts programs for inner-city kids. Lisa is not a software engineer, but a curious and passionate "cook". She developed an effective solution for her organization, and she taught and inspired others by sharing her work at a meetup and on the CiviCRM.org blog.

The introduction this year of "native" CiviCRM extensions, a built-in extension browser for site administrators, and a searchable Extensions Directory (http://civicrm.org/extensions) on CiviCRM.org, will facilitate even more shared innovation—including sharing major new extension-based functionality such as the forthcoming CiviVolunteer module across all three CMS platforms.

For those of you working with CiviCRM in a Drupal environment, this book includes a wide array of techniques. Take advantage of the integration capabilities and openness of both platforms. For those of you working with CiviCRM in WordPress or Joomla!, my hope is that these recipes will stimulate you to explore, build, and share analogous integrations with those CMSs.

This Cookbook is well-suited to bridge the gap between nontechnical end users and software engineers. Whether you are a volunteer, in-house staff person, or a consultant—I'm confident it will provide you with ideas for using CiviCRM more effectively.

Ultimately, the strength of any open source project is the strength of the community behind it. If CiviCRM helps your organization (or your clients' organizations) with mission critical tasks, I urge you to participate actively in the community. Sponsor new features and improvements via the "make it happen" campaigns (http://civicrm.org/mih), post new recipes and modules on the Extensions Directory (http://civicrm.org/extensions), use social media to share success stories, introduce your peers at other nonprofits to CiviCRM, join a local meetup (or start one), help others who are getting started, and ensure the long-term sustainability of the project with a recurring contribution at http://civicrm.org/contribute!

David Greenberg,

Co-founder of CiviCRM

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And remember, CiviCRM is continually evolving and growing, so make sure you're on top of the latest news, by subscribing to the community newsletter at http://civicrm.org.