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By phillipadsmith on
Inspired by awsamuel's "stirring first person narrative" on the Telecentre.org's reasons for choosing Drupal, I was compelled to share the experience of choosing Drupal for Greenpeace Canada's Kleercut campaign.
Even though our exploration was mostly in the area of e-advocacy tools and the biggest decision was whether to build on Civicspace or Drupal, the Kleercut camapaigners and I felt that documenting our story would be helpful for the Drupal community at large. The campaign started in November of 2004 with a small budget and big ideas ... and it has steadily grown over the last eight months to include a network of over 10,000 activists and steady on-the-ground wins for this anti-corporate campaign.
Now, faced by the loss of our action tools provider, we are again looking to the Drupal and Civicspace communities, as we start to investigate options for a bilingual advocacy system. Recent announcements and releases certainly point to a movement of passionate developers that are making powerful tools available to progressive causes. However, as our case study about Kleercut campaign explains, it took a lot more than tools to help make the campaign a success.
I hope that there are other people here with similar stories to share and that if you're doing similar work that you'll let us know. The open-source advocacy community that I've personally been able to access over the last few years has been an inspiration and helpful beyond words -- if you're excited by these ideas, please take the time to get involved in this important movement in some way.
You can find our case study in the handbook. And, we've posted an original version with photos and illustrations on the Kleercut.net site.
Comments
Thanks Phillip!
The contribution of your case study is much appreciated. We hope by sharing stories such as yours and Alex's, as well as by all working together in the spirit of FOSS, we can make Drupal better every day.
I know that often, tinkering away in some dark corner of Drupal-land, I think to myself "Drupal sucks!"...but then I remember the great community we have, and the fact that it "sucks less" than many other alternatives.
We'd love to hear some more technical details as well. What modules are you using? What work well for you? Where do you need changes? What customizations have you made? Is there anything you have or will contribute back?
Thanks again.
Modules, changes, customizations and an Ed note
Hi Boris,
Thanks for the positive feedback and helpful questions.
Quick editorial note here: the current entry in the handbook is a bit out of order (have to figure that out!), so if folks want to read the case study sequentially (and with photos!), please visit:
http://kleercut.net/en/open-source-campaigning
Drupal certainly does "suck less" that most option I've looked at in the past. I personally feel that one of the main reasons it sucks less is because the community is vibrant and helpful. And, personally, witnessing the continued successful collaboration and cross-pollination between Drupal and Civispace is one of the key indicators for me.
I'll try to answer a few of your questions here:
Honestly, there's nothing fancy on the Kleercut site. It's a vanilla install of 4.5 and a modification to the Bluemarine theme (phpTemplate wasn't integrating nicely at first with 4.5).
Again, all out-of-the-box modules (event, book, etc.) except for the img_assist module to help campaigners get photos into their posts. Locale was used a lot on the French site to help with the interface translation.
None that I can recall (just goes to show how flexible the system is!)
What worked well?
Where do we need changes?
The biggest challenge at first was the question of having a truly multi-language site, i.e., having the ability to click the "en français" link and to have the interface and translated content be available (have a look at http://ndp.ca where they've achieved this using Drupal). In the end, it worked out okay, as the French content wasn't exactly the same and there are separate campaigners in Quebec, so the idea may not have flown anyway.
Right now we're exploring options to replace our current e-action tools, which include sending targeted e-mail/fax to decision makers, sending e-mail to our members and membership management, e.g., sending just to sub-sets of the list like volunteers or people in Vancouver.
Would also love to eventually see more integration between the Kleercut Groups (Sympa) and the main site.
Contributing back
Other than the theme, there's not much that would could be remotely considered "contributable." That's part of the reason that we wanted to contribute our experiences to the handbook. :-)
If something is developed -- you can be sure it'll find it's way back here.
Phillip.