Flags flying at 2012 Boomtown festival

Latest updates

A 'Community Shares' extention for CiviCRM

Image coutesy of http://www.coopalternatives.coop/community-shares

I am assessing the feasibility of a CiviCRM integrated 'Community Shares' extension on behalf of the Kindling Trust .

Community Shares are a fundraising and investment mechanism available to Co-operative Societies and Community Benefit Societies in the UK - see CommunityShares.org.uk if you want more info.

Kindling are a not for profit organisation based in Northern England, who have been using Civi for a number of years, and are planning on launching a community share offer in the future, in order to raise funds for a community owned farm, to develop sustainable food...

Joined the Drupal Association

Drupal Assn Badge

I'm proud to announce that I am now a member of the Drupal Association - you can view my public profile here. Recently I signed a contract with the Kindling Trust to provide Supported Hosting and Maintenance, plus mail accounts for four of there websites. Because I was able to provide these services at such an affordable price, they told me they wanted to pay me extra on top of what I quoted. In response I said that I would accept the extra payment on condition that I used it to make a contribution to the Open Source Community. It made sense therefore, for me to use this funding, to join...

Green server for Permaculture Magazine

Geo / hydro data centre in Iceland

I was given the task of helping Permaculture Magazine find a new green Internet Service Provider (ISP) to relocate their web services. ISPs are based in data centres which are buildings rammed with servers running 24/7. A data centre can be described as a giant socket, where the internet plugs into the electricity grid, and uses power to run the servers, and importantly to keep them cool.

As environmentalists we are aware of the high CO2 emissions through aviation, and take actions to reduce our impact in this area. What we don't realise however, is that emissions from...

New Vegbox site for Kindling Trust

Vegbox People logo

Kindling Trust made a business decision to develop an organic veg box scheme , and after nearly two months of intensive development, we launched the shiny new Drupal 7 website in April 2015. The site is an intrinsic part of the business, providing a shop front, along with a customer relationship management system(CiviCRM), and a publicity machine. Boxes are paid for by monthly direct debit with GoCardless, which is a snip at 1% per transaction, compared with typically 3.5% + 20p per transaction for Paypal.

The project is a partnership involving Kindling, local growers (aka...