Food Co-Op Initiate (FCI) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a more just food system and partners with communities to provide critical support as they organize and open community-owned grocery stores.
FCI uses CiviCRM for contact management, mailings, donation processing, and event registrations (FCI’s brochure site is on WordPress). Giant Rabbit, inherited FCI's Drupal 7 site in 2013 (!), and have partnered with them ever since to support this tool as an essential part of FCI’s daily operations and mission-related activities. With D7 end-of-support just around the corner, it was time to move to Backdrop.
Giant Rabbit has worked with several of its clients to move from D7 to Backdrop, but this was the first site we upgraded that uses CiviCRM.
As a non-profit organization, it is critical for FCI to make the most out of a small budget. CiviCRM is a core system for FCI’s work (events, donors, and mailings), and we didn't want to leave this data in Drupal 7 once it's not receiving official team support.
A rebuild in Drupal 10 would have required budget they don't have, and a move to WordPress would have required a rethinking of the site that simply did not make sense at this point in time.
Backdrop was the clear choice: a budget-friendly solution that allows FCI to continue their work without having to scrap the past decade of technological investment and fundamentally alter their front and backend operations.
