GiveCRM was designed and developed at the inaugural GiveCampUK in London, October 2011. The aim of the project is to provide a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that has been explicitly designed with charities in mind, with a focus on simplicity of use.

GiveCRM.Admin is the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosting layer of GiveCRM. This is deployed to the cloud to provide managed instances of GiveCRM on behalf of charities that do not have the expertise to host their own instance.

If you want to contribute to the project, check out the list of open Issues.

You can:

• raise an issue
• suggest a feature for the application

If you would like to contribute code to the project:

1. A bit of background reading: - Setting up Git for Windows and connecting to GitHub - The Simple Guide to Git - How to GitHub: Fork, Branch, Track, Squash and Pull Request.
2. Fork the repository (how-to)
3. Make some changes to the code base
4. Send us a Pull Request once you're happy with it (how-to)

We'll do a bit of a code review before accepting your patch.

Our solutions are compatible with both Visual Studio 2010 (with Service Pack 1 applied) and Visual Studio 2012. We do not support any earlier versions of Visual Studio, including VS2010 RTM. If you are using Visual Studio 2010 SP1, you will also need to install the SQL Server Developer Tools (SSDT), the replacement for the retired Visual Studio Database Projects. You can download SSDT from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=237127&clcid=0x409, or via the Web Platform Installer.

To deploy the SSDT projects to a SQL Server database instance (SQL Express or full), right-click the project file and click Publish.... Provide a connection string for the target database instance, and click the Publish button.

You will notice when you fork the GiveCRM repository that the default branch is develop rather than the more usual master. We use the Git Flow branching model, first described by nvie, so GiveCRM's master branch moves on only at specific points, when we're really sure we want to promote something to production.

Use of Git Flow is not required for contributing to GiveCRM, particularly if you're submitting a bug-fix or small feature. Its use is recommended for larger changes where develop might move on whilst you're completing your work.

There is a set of helper scripts that will work on both Unix-based operating systems and Windows. Follow the appropriate installation instructions for your operating system, and configure your working copy repository for use with Git Flow by typing git flow init. Accept all the default options to the questions that it asks you.

Pick a feature or bug to work on and create a new branch for that work by typing git flow feature start <featurename>. This will create you a new feature branch for your work called feature/<featurename>, and you can use git as usual from this point.

Once your feature is finished, type git flow feature publish <featurename>. This will copy the feature branch to your origin repository on GitHub and you will then be able to submit a pull request to have it merged into GiveCRM's own develop branch. Note: do not use git flow feature finish <featurename>! This will automatically merge your feature branch back into develop and delete the feature branch, making it harder for you to submit your pull request.

If you wish to update your published feature branch after the initial publish, use a regular git push origin feature/<featurename>. This will also update your pull request if you have one open for that branch.

If you find GiveCRM's develop branch has moved on, and you need/want to take advantage of the changes made there, you can update your feature branch as follows:

1. Ensure you have a remote configured for the upstream repository. You can use git remote add upstream git://github.com/GiveCampUK/GiveCRM.git to add it if it doesn't already exist.
2. Type git pull upstream develop:develop to update your local repository with the upstream refs.
3. Type git flow feature rebase <featurename> to rebase your feature branch on top of the new develop.

There is a lot of help available for Git Flow, which can be accessed by typing git flow feature help.

We're on Twitter (@GiveCRM) using the hashtag #GiveCRM. We have a Trello board for creating and detailing tasks, and a JabbR chatroom; why not pop in and say hi?