Andy Burns

If your treasurer asks for the same contribution report every month, automate it. In CiviCRM, the simplest path: Build the contribution report in CiviReport > enable Email Delivery > create a Scheduled Job for it. Now it lands in their inbox. Every month. No exports. No reminders. I just had a client needing this for […]

One distinction I see organizations struggle with is the difference between valuing volunteers and being overly reliant on them for long-term infrastructure. Volunteers are essential. They bring energy, creativity, and commitment to the cause. But they are serving the mission; they are not the mission itself. It’s part of the human condition when identity, ego,

Most clients don’t care logging in CiviCRM, much less the benefits of detailed logging. Until they really do. Sometimes it’s staff or volunteers “trying to make reports cleaner” with a proverbial hammer, data being overwritten or some user mistakenly removing data. In my case, events with participants were deleted. And to be clear, that should

I don’t include email or SMS costs in my managed hosting offering. If you’re sending email through AWS, SendGrid, or SparkPost, you pay them directly. Same with SMS via Twilio. Here’s why. I’m not interested in pass thru costs and adding a markup because it’s not in your best interests. FWIW, this cost will range

When I buy domain names or client’s are needing to secure one, I point them to Cloudflare. More importantly, that’s my go to for managing DNS. Even if a client buys a domain somewhere else, I’ll still point the nameservers to Cloudflare. I do that so traffic is handled before it ever reaches the web

I’ve been using ProtonMail on my andyburns.co domain since 2018 before Civicopilot was a thing. And then I added the civicopilot.com to it as well. They don’t sell, scan or invade your privacy. I’m on their Mail Plus plan at $4 a month, no complaints. But when I set up OS Ticket back in May,

During the October CiviCRM sprint in Lunteren, Netherlands, I made a small extension that fixes one of the minor annoyances I’ve had for years and I think others have too — dashboard reports crammed side by side so you can’t see all the columns without using an inner horizontal scrollbar, at the bottom the report.

Leaving the president’s role up to a fresh vote every year or two brings uncertainty, and sometimes politics into things. And we all want less of that, right? One client I work with built stability right into their structure. They use a three-part presidency model: President-Elect, President, and Immediate Past President. Each person serves one

I spoke yesterday with the team at Inekawa Conscious Awakening Center for a quick demo of CiviCRM under the ambassador program, their request was simple: We need a CRM for our church and a way to manage membership sign-up and renewals automatically. The church is part of a broader foundation that already uses Salesforce and

After completing a recent CiviCRM implementation, one client of mine that is a professional society reported back their membership has grown by 25% year over year. They told me they’re attracting people who never used to come their way — because they’ve look more professional, more cohesive, more credible. In their words: We look bigger