CiviCamp Admin Training: program and presenters

We’re gearing up for a 2-day deep dive into CiviCRM administration next month at CiviCamp Toronto (trainings May 25-26; main event May 27).

I’ll be hosting a group of presenters with years of experience making CiviCRM work for non-profit teams.

If you haven’t registered yet, there’s still time.

Today we announced the presenters and the program details. See the full blog post for more, but here’s a quick look at the program, snipped from the announcement:

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CiviCamp Toronto kicks off with a two-day Admin Training, May 25th and 26th, aimed at folks much like yourself, who need to manage CiviCRM on a day-to-day basis.

Program:

The Admin Training program lays out the major components and most common use cases for CiviCRM’s diverse features, covered in an orderly structure, with a mix of live demonstration, discussion, and hands-on exercises for participants.

Day 1, May 25th

09:00 - 09:15     Arrival with coffee
09:15 - 09:30     Introductions and ice-breakers
09:30 - 10:30     Session 1: Introduction to CiviCRM
10:30 - 11:30     Session 2: Organizing Data
11:30 - 11:45     Break
11:45 - 12:15     Session 3: Custom data: organization and usage
12:15 - 13:30     Lunch (provided on-site)
13:30 - 14:00     Session 4: Finding data (Reports, Searches, SearchKit)
14:00 - 15:00     Session 5: Contribute management
15:00 - 15:15     Break
15:15 - 16:15     Session 6: Event management
16:15 - 16:30     Closing Session
16:30 - 17:00     Extra time, to be used for 1-on-1 assistance and answering questions raised so far

Day 2, May 26th

09:00 - 09:15     Arrival with coffee
09:15 - 09:30     Brief recap of Day 1
09:30 - 10:30     Session 7: Duplicate contact management
10:30 - 11:30     Session 8: Communications: mass mailings, scheduled reminders, message templates, etc.
11:30 - 11:45     Break
11:45 - 12:45     Session 9: Membership management
12:45 - 14:00     Lunch (provided on-site)
14:00 - 15:00     Session 10: SearchKit and FormBuilder: Advanced searching and data intake
15:00 - 15:15     Break
15:15 - 16:15     Session 11: SearchKit and Charting: Data analysis and visualization
16:15 - 16:45     Session 12: Flexible breakouts: small groups on specific topics of interest to the group
16:45 - 17:00     Closing Session

If that all sounds awesome to you, you can still register online, for both the Admin Training May 25-26 (or a Software Developers' Training on the same days), and for the main CiviCamp event itself on May 27.

Hope to see you there!

All the best,
A.

The inconvenience of security

Have you ever missed a package delivery because the driver couldn't get past building security?

It happens.

I've even seen expected VIP guests turned away by event security who were just doing their best to enforce strict protocols.

In the past couple of weeks, I've helped a few clients deal with similar issues on their websites:

• Anti-spam protections blocking legitimate users from public forms.

• Oganization staff, even admins, prevented from logging in on their own sites.

When this happens, you have two basic options:

• Get rid of the security and accept the risks.

• Invest time and effort tweaking the security parameters, training staff, and deciding on an acceptable margin of error.

That's usually not an easy decision.
Security is valuable, but so is your time and effort.

Either option is completely valid.

It's just a question of deciding where you want to invest, and what risks you're willing to carry.

All the best,
A.

Operational Assurance: getting your questions answered

Folks in my Operational Assurance program have been asking -- and getting answers to -- some pretty interesting questions. Here's a sample of some issues we've worked through in the past couple of weeks:

• Why isn't this field auto-updating with the correct values?

• Can we do QuickBooks integration?

• Addresses are not getting geocoded. Why not?

• We're seeing several annual memberships with expiration dates several years in the future. How can we fix this?

• Why are price fields are showing prices with odd coding characters, like <span class="crm-price-amount-amount">$ 35.00</span> ?

• My report doesn't include all the contacts it should. Am I missing something?

• Addresses aren't saving correctly -- why would it save only city and state, while everything else is getting lost?

• Anti-spam protections are blocking real human users. Can’t we fix that?

• CiviCRM says it's sending emails, but a few of our constituents are insisting that they haven't received them. What's going on?

• Our event's public "registered participants list" isn't showing at all. Why did it always work before, but not now?

• On contribution pages using Stripe, the "zip code" field never displays on mobile devices. Why not?

• Why are our scheduled mailings never being sent out?

Not to give away the ending, but the answers are usually one of these:

• That's a bug in your version of the software, that is (or in some cases, isn't) already resolved in the latest version.

• The trouble is caused by this specific configuration that you could change like so.

• The functionality you want is available from this extension here, if you install it.

Often just having the answer is enough -- organization staff can change configurations or adjust usage on their own. Or they can make an informed decision about whether it’s worth investing in custom development. Either way, getting answers removes the mystery, and that’s no small thing.

For what it’s worth:

There happen to be a couple of slots open in the Operational Assurance program. If you're curious, you can read more about it here.

All the best,
Allen

Toronto, anyone?

Would you like a free admission to CiviCamp Toronto on May 27?

This morning I signed up Joinery as a CiviCamp sponsor, which means I now have one extra ticket.

You'll still have to get to Toronto, and work out your own accommodations.

But if this makes it any easier to pull the trigger on

• a full day of presentations, networking, and community

• optionally (and paid separately) two full days of admin training, May 25-26

• and lovely late-spring Toronto ...

Then shoot me a reply to claim this one extra ticket.

It’s just sitting here all giddy with excitement, waiting for you.

All the best
Allen

Debugging without a developer

This week's "big win" is from a list reader and sometime coaching client who solved a frustrating problem so her organization could finally implement their automated text-messaging system.

She had already jumped through all the hoops to get Twilio set up and working, and her testing had proved it.

But on the live site, any SMS-related action -- even editing the config -- led to mysterious errors.

In technical jargon, this is what we call "a major WTF."
It works over here.
But it doesn't work over there.

Her solution?

On a hunch that some other extension was interfering, she selectively disabled and re-enabled one extension at a time.

Sure enough, one particular extension was somehow causing this strange behavior.

Even better: it wasn't even an extension that she needed.

Here's the thing:

Complex systems can act mysteriously.

Without deep technical knowledge, solutions feel elusive.

But persistence, careful thinking, and a systematic approach are usually enough, eventually.

Congrats to this critical thinker for sticking it out.

She now gets the benefit of a complex and robust system that really does what her organization needs.

All the best,
A.

“Choose Your Hard”

Marriage is hard.
Divorce is hard.
Choose your hard.

Obesity is hard.
Being fit is hard.
Choose your hard.

Being in debt is hard.
Being financially disciplined is hard.
Choose your hard.

Communication is hard.
Not communicating is hard.
Choose your hard.

Life will never be easy.
It will always be hard.
But we can choose our hard.

Pick wisely.

-- Devon Brough, “Choose Your Hard”

I don’t know much about the author, but he makes a good point.

Running an organization with an inflexible CRM is hard.
Doing it with one that’s complex and customizable — also hard.

You’ve probably chosen the latter.

Sometimes it will be hard.
That’s unavoidable.

But in those moments it helps to remember why you chose it:

Because it lets you shape the system
to fit the work that actually matters.

All the best,
A.

The giant cabinet

As if on cue, following yesterdays note on building something valuable:

My buddy Austin told me today what happened with his recent custom-built cabinet.

I remembered it because a couple of weeks ago he’d asked for my help loading this massive and well-built thing into his pickup truck from his workshop next door.

I could see he had really built something nice.

Here's what became of it:

He drove it home,
struggled mightily to get it into the house,
and placed it neatly in the cubby of his hallway,
which he had carefully measured.

It was a perfect fit.

But when he showed his wife, her comment was simply:
"Austin, that's way too big. I just wanted a little bookshelf."

That cabinet is no more.

Austin hauled it out.
He went back to the workshop and spent a few hours building a
nice
little
bookshelf.

And everyone was happy.

It's the same lesson as before:

Bigger is not always better.

But early clarification of desired outcomes ...
usually is.

All the best,
A.

Build something valuable

In the past few weeks, I've heard from non-profit teams in some uncomfortable situations:

• Event registration has been open for weeks, and now we realize we never asked about dietary restrictions.

• We sent the quarterly report to the board; now they say they wanted it broken down by program instead of by campaign.

• We released a slick new online volunteer registration workflow, but most of our volunteers won't use it -- they still just show up unannounced.

... et cetera.

It happens.

But it's not random or unavoidable.

You probably wouldn't have a custom home built without reviewing the mockups and floor plans first.
You probably wouldn't host a dinner without counting guests and discussing the menu.
Heck, you probably wouldn't even paint your kitchen without considering a whole list of details.

In my own work, I encourage clients to go through /some/ phase of discovery and planning for almost any substantial undertaking:

1. What does "success" really look like -- not just features, but real-world outcomes?

2. Who are the stakeholders here, and what would make this awesome (or awful) for them?

3. What little contradictions are hiding in our initial concept, and how can we deal with them?

Those questions matter whether you're hiring an outside specialist or implementing small changes in-house.

Define the outcomes.
Acknowledge the stakeholders.
Challenge the assumptions.

This makes all the difference between "building something new" and "building something valuable."

All the best,
A.

Bunny in the mailbox

Over this past weekend my wife found a chocolate bunny in our mailbox.

We have a neighbor makes a habit of dropping small gifts and encouraging notes into our box — and, I assume, doing the same for the others in our little neighborhood.

It’s safe to say they’re not doing this for their own benefit:

No advertising value.
No public recognition.
No subscriber counts.
No votes on elecction day.

But clearly they’re “getting” something. It could be anything:

A sense of belonging.
A belief that they’re making their world brighter.
A warm feeling.
A way to dispose of their massively overbuilt chocolate bunny stockpile.

Here’s the thing:

People give for their own reasons.

They just need to know you’re willing to receive, and to believe their gift is well placed with you.

All the best,
A.

Choosing

When things go wrong, you can say:

"Not again. This is all just craziness."

Or:

"Okay, there's a pattern here, and if I can spot it, I can take action."

You already do a little of both, depending on the situation.

But you do have a choice.

The second option points toward solutions.

Choose that one.

Thousands of receipts, batched

Are end-of-year receipts a big deal for you?

By "big deal", I mean:

• Important

• Lots of work

• A headache

CiviCRM already has basic features for this.

But the headaches usually start when:

• A donor needs a corrected receipt

• Finance needs consistency across thousands of gifts

• Someone asks, “Are we sure every receiptable gift actually got one?”

If you're issuing receipts at scale, there’s a new extension worth knowing about: Donation Receipts.

It's not flashy, but it brings a lot to the table:

• It finds what should be receipted before you send anything.

• It lets you dry-run the whole process.

• It locks things down so records don’t drift after receipts go out.

• It can batch, queue, and send at scale.

In other words:

It assumes things can go wrong --
and builds structure so they don’t.

You can find it in CiviCRM under
Administer → System Settings → Extensions → Add New

One caveat: it comes with just one receipt template (in German).
You might want some help creating one in English.

Here's the thing:

The CiviCRM community keeps on producing great tools like this --
practical, powerful, and usually free.

They’re not always plug-and-play.
But they beat building from scratch.

And they definitely beat doing it all by hand.

All the best,
A.

P.S. Yes, it’s April. That’s exactly why now is the time to try this -- not the week your receipts are due.

Sharp tools

Last weekend I helped my dad fix some plumbing at his house.

Got four blisters on my hands.
And took forever to cut that pipe.

Ran by the supply house to get some fittings.
Spent $3 on a new cutting wheel while I was there.

Blazed through the second half of the job.
The new wheel cut that pipe like butter.

Turns out, keeping your tools sharp helps a lot.

(Hint: The moral of this story isn't really about plumbing.)

All the best,
A.

Early warnings

Today I met with a coaching client who was having a very hard time applying CiviCRM's latest security update.

She kept getting fatal errors, with very uninformative messages.

Turns out, it was caused by an issue that CiviCRM had been warning everyone about -- in it's System Status warnings -- for a very long time.

She's not alone there.

In the past few days, I've fixed several sites with the same problem.

On the call today we worked through it together, and she's now fully upgraded -- yay!

But it reminded me:

Those little status messages CiviCRM pops up for you when you log in?

They're worth noticing.

Eventually, keeping up with them might just save you a lot of trouble.

Believe me, I know it's easy to let things slide when they don't seem urgent.

But eventually they can become urgent.

And you usually don’t get to pick when that will be.

All the best,
A.

One thing at a time

When multiple problems arise in your system, it’s tempting to think everything’s falling apart.
But it’s there’s often a more useful way to think about it.

---

Your check engine light has been showing, and your mechanic says the part you need won't be in for another week.

Now it's almost midnight and you're stranded at a gas station because your car won't start.

You turn the key and get nothing.
No clicks, no noises, no nothing.
You can't even roll up your open window.

So do you:

1. Assume that the pre-existing problem has finally made your car totally inoperable, and have it towed to your mechanic?

Or:

2. Consider other possibilities, and maybe avoid a 2-hour wait on the tow truck and the inconvenience of being without your car tomorrow?

My daughter called me late last night with this very situation.

We talked it through, and she very wisely decided to at least consider the two problems separately.

The essential question was:

If there had been no pre-existing problem, and my car suddenly behaved this way when I tried to start it,
what would be my first guess about the cause?

The answer was pretty clear:
“Dead battery.”

She got a jump from her friend, drove home, and went this morning to have a battery tested.
Yep, bad battery.

She bought a new one, and went on her way.

This illustrates some important points about complex systems:

1. Misbehaviors are not necessarily related just because they correspond closely in time.

2. Isolating the misbehaviors can allow us to solve some of them and avoid a lot of inconvenience.

It's true for your car, your laptop, your house,
and for your CRM, website, email systems, and all the rest.

When these systems misbehave, it's terribly frustrating and inconvenient.

But you don't have to let that force you into throwing up your hands.

Addressing each problem separately will very often put you back in control and save you a lot of trouble.

All the best,
A.

A gift

Ever try to buy a gift for someone you don't really know?
Yeah, it's hard.
That's why you got them a gift card.
Not the most thoughtful gift, but you can give it.

Now:

Ever get a gift from somoeone who's really been paying attention?
You didn't even know you wanted it, or that it existed.
But there it is, and it's perfect.

So:

How is it that someone can know you wanted that thing,
when you didn't even know yourself?
Without asking you to make them a list?

Because:

They listened.
They watched.
They saw through your eyes.

Here's the thing:

You're constantly in the business of giving things to people.
Opportunity.
Support.
Education.
Belonging.

If you can listen to them,
ask about their day-to-day,
pay attention to what moves them ...

You can give them something perfect,
without even emailing them another annoying survey.

Upgrade now for security: CiviCRM 6.12.1

CiviCRM has just released a security update, version 6.12.1

This update covers 17 security issues — which are now known to the public and to any bad guys who want to mess with you.

Security updates are important. You don’t want to let this slide.

If you’ll be handling this update yourself, now is the time to do it:

• Review the official documentation on upgrades, including the specifics for your CMS (Drupal, WordPress, Backdrop, etc), and make sure you understand it.

• Ensure you understand how to perform a full site backup — and how to restore your site from a backup if needed.

• If this is your first time, block out a couple of hours for the actual upgrade.

If you’re a subscriber to Joinery’s Operational Assurance plan for ongoing support, and/or a Joinery hosting subscriber, we’ll be handling this upgrade for you, including full pre-upgrade backups and post-upgrade verification.

If you need help performing this upgrade, consider booking a coaching call so we can walk through it together, or subscribing to the Operational Assurance plan. Or heck, just hit reply here and ask me a question about it.

Whatever you do, don’t put this off.

• A security release is a fix for issues you probably don’t even know you have.

• But just as importantly, it’s an announcement to the world that all un-upgraded sites have a specific set of security vulnerabilities. You don’t want to be one of those.

All the best,
A.

Feels like a swarm of bees

I've come to accept that "overwhelmed" is the default state of being for most non-profit leaders.

• You have more tasks to do than you can possibly take care of.

• Focusing on any one of them risks leaving the rest undone.

• It feels like you've got a swarm of bees buzzing around your head -- each one as troubling and elusive as the next.

A big part of my coaching work is helping to restore calm in situations like this.

Most people try to solve it with force of will:

• "I'll work harder."

• "I'll try to remember all the deadlines."

• "I just have to stay on top of things."

But this isn't a question of desire or commitment.
Beating yourself up won't fix it.

Among my coaching clients, the ones who make real progress have done one thing different:

They don't focus on trying harder.
They focus on adding structure.

• Noticing their todos are scattered all over the place …
  they commit to maintaining one central list.

• Acknowledging that not all tasks are equal …
  they set priorities and tackle the high-priority items above the rest.

• Admitting that the demands will always be greater than the available time …
  they allow the lower priority items to take a back seat.

That's it.

With a little practice, the noise subsides.

They regain their sanity, and learn to focus high-quality effort on high-value tasks.
And they start to see things actually getting done.

And it. Feels. Awesome.

Keeping one list.
Setting priorities.
Letting go of the small things.

When the bees are buzzing, there is a way through.

All the best,
A.

Could we …?

Yesterday a client asked a great question about their online member directory:

Is there a way we could let members create their directory profile in any language they wish, and then display our directory in all those languages?

Technically, the answer is: Yes, you could.

But "could we" is not usually the first question I like to ask.

The first question is:

Could you actually operate that system?

Who reviews those profiles?
Who checks the quality of the translations?
Who communicates with members if something needs to be fixed?
Who supports users submitting content in languages your staff may not read?

Here's the thing:

In software systems, it's easy to focus on whether or not something can be built.

But the real question is whether the organization can actually run it.

Often the best answer is the 80/20 one:

Instead of building a full multilingual data system, we can simply add automated translation to the site.

Not perfect.

But it gives members and visitors access to the information they need, without multiplying the complexity of managing the directory.

Because after all:

The goal isn't having the most sophisticated system.
The goal is a system your team can run.

All the best,
A.

“How to Pull This Door”

Sometimes I land on a page that clearly wants me to do something.

Donate.
Renew.
Subscribe.
Register.

And there are twelve paragraphs explaining how.

Apparently the theory is:
"If we explain it clearly enough, people will follow the instructions."

But let's face it:
The other day I pushed on a door that was clearly marked "PULL" -- in red capital letters.
A full-page poster labeled How to Pull This Door would not have helped.

Because most people don't read instructions.
They scan the page and look for the next step.

If that step is obvious, they move.
If it isn't, they stall.

So when something on your site isn't working --
isn't moving people to the next step --
the solution usually isn't another paragraph.

It's making the next step obvious.

Without adding words.

All the best,
A.

CiviCamp Toronto: May 25-31

CiviCRM is just one tool in your arsenal,
but it’s a pretty powerful one.

if you’d like to
make connections with other organizations who are using it,
get high-quality training on how it all works,
and hear the latest on new developments and creative use cases …

Then CiviCamp Toronto is worth considering. Better mark your calendar.

Here’s the announcement from today’s CiviCRM.org blog:

May 25-31, 2026 - downtown Toronto

We’re excited to announce that we'll be gathering in Toronto, Canada for seven days of training, sessions and a sprint focussed on improving the user experience of CiviCRM.

Join us for two days of Admin and Developer training, a conference/camp day with sessions for all skill levels, and four days of sprint where you will work together with peers and core team members.

Whether you're looking to build new skills, exchange knowledge, or contribute to sprint projects, this event will offer valuable opportunities to connect and make progress together.

When and where:

Admin training - Monday-Tuesday May 25-26
Developer training - Monday-Tuesday May 25-26
Conference with insightful talks and sessions on Wednesday May 27
Collaborative sprint days to build and improve together Thursday-Sunday May 28-31.

The event will be hosted at Victoria College downtown.

We'll have pricing and more information when registration opens on Thursday.

Mark your calendar—we look forward to seeing you there!

- A.