Supporting the Drupal Community through #DrupalCares

As everyone is aware, the world is in the grips of a crushing global health crisis. Our day-to-day lives have changed dramatically. Our children are learning from computers at home, some of us are without work, and others are working from home for the first time. Events and social gatherings have been canceled or are going digital. Without a doubt, the global business climate has changed. This is no different for non-profit organizations like the Drupal Association (DA).

At the end of March, Drupal Association Executive Director Heather Rocker posted on the DA blog — Drupal Association Statement re: Financial Effects of COVID-19. This post outlines the DA’s financial impact if the Association could not host DrupalCon this year. With the rapid changes and stay-at-home orders, the Association is potentially on the hook for event fees whether or not attendees showed up — this is all dependent on force majeure being activated. She calls for support from the community to help us close this gap so we may continue to support Drupal, thrive and serve you. A second post from Drupal Project Founder Dries Buytaert titled Sustaining The Drupal Association in Uncertain Times highlighted the need for the community to step up and help.

Dries and his wife Vanessa pledged to match individual contributions up to $100,000. And last week Oomph and nearly thirty other businesses in the Drupal community stepped up with a pledge to triple match individual donations. Listen to Chris Murray, CEO of Oomph and Matt Westgate of Lullabot discuss this fundraising effort on Talking Drupal #245.

At Oomph we feel it’s our responsibility to answer this call from the Drupal Association and support a community that has supported our work through the years. This support will be in addition to our previously committed community support efforts. We will still be the event sponsor of the New England Drupal Camp, sending Oomphers to attend and speak at conferences and camps, committing patches and fixes to issues on Drupal.org, and continuing to help in any way we can.

If you are feeling inspired by this news, please join us in supporting the Drupal Association. Visit the #DrupalCares page on drupal.org for more information on ways to give.

Our hope is that you (as we do) will feel it is your duty to support the Drupal Association. We all benefit from this great open source community and we pay nothing to be part of it. Dries reminds us in his post how “Drupal has weathered many storms.” Drupal and the Drupal Association will come out of this stronger and that will be in large part to the community of individuals and organizations helping to support this effort.

Join with Oomph in its support of this community! After all, we come for the code and stay for the community!