For the past 15 years, I've dabbled a bit in the world of open source software. During most of that time, I've worked within communities free of corporate structures, many of which have produced some of the best software the world has ever seen without any corporate governance.

The background explains why I'm so interested in seeing things done in a different, corporate structured way, in the Salesforce.com world this week. Starting today, the Salesforce Foundation is bringing together a small team of developers to Washington DC for code sprints on the Nonprofit Starter Pack, a set of tools that organizations can use to more effectively use the Force.com platform for fundraising, contact management, and more.  I'll be among those folks contributing ideas and code to the project, and looking forward to collaborating with my buddies in the Salesforce world.

Make no mistake about it: the Nonprofit Starter Pack is the single most important open source contribution Marc Benioff has put his company's 1/1/1 giveback model towards supporting. And, with the not-so-new-but-still-new-to-me code repository (hello to GitHub) and great leadership, the project is moving down an exciting path that I foresee disrupting the nonprofit CRM marketplace in a very positive way.

For those hit by the news from Blackbaud last week that Convio Common Ground will be discontinued in 2014, the pressing question at hand is the same that any refugee faces: where to now?

In considering options, there are three important aspects of the move to take into account: 1) which CRM platform should be my new home?; 2) how will I move and who can help?; and 3) how will that CRM platform integrate with my website?

We dig the community we work with: smart folks committed to the social good who are seeking innovative ways to bring about positive change as effectively and efficiently as possible. Of course, we know that all the smarts and ingenuity don't get you too far without the funky dollar bill.

Data cleanliness and data integrity.  Ah, such fun things to work on, right?  Kind of like spring cleaning, but for some reason all the more frustratingly painful.  Since spring is coming early here in North America, we thought it could be useful to share some new insights we've had on this topic of data cleanliness, especially for inbound data to Salesforce.

A few of us penguins worked through this last night and today as we're gearing up for a new release of our Soapbox Engage products, and I thought I'd share some of the highlights of a good brainstorming session that could be useful for others thinking about matching rules.

Our discussions generally broke down into three main areas:

1) Matching scenarios to keep in mind

2) Matching rules

3) Data updating rules

Let's dive in to our best practices...

Benefit Corporations are no stranger to being ahead of the curve, and that especially true for B Lab’s new website that spotlights these trailblazing organizations. For those of you who haven’t heard the word about Benefit Corporations, they are a “new class” of corporation that are re-imagining the way that business does business in order to affect positive change in the world.

If you’d like to see a list of this growing community of socially responsible businesses, the new BenefitCorp.net website will grant that wish. And given that their Benefit Corp search directory is fed live from B Lab’s CRM database—Salesforce.com— you’ll be able to see the list automagically grow almost before your eyes as more and more organizations join the ranks.