The Ecosystem

Building a reliable data foundation takes time, skill, and focus. If you are running a lean advancement shop, you have a choice in how you climb the maturity ladder.

The Do-It-Yourself Path

The methods, tools, and templates in this book are open-source and free to adopt. You can download the tools (like DuckDB, OpenRefine, and dbt), map your database to the Advancement Common Data Model (ACDM), and write your own scripts and rules.

If you have the staff time and technical expertise to drive them, the open resources at fundcommons.org give you the complete map to build this foundation yourself.

The Platform & Partner Path

Some shops want the destination — a unified constituent 360 view, real personalization, and AI agents that act on data they can trust — without the months of manual assembly and pipeline maintenance. Others want a guide to help them transition their existing legacy systems to the open standard.

To serve these shops, the Fundraising Commons maintains a public, vendor-neutral directory of:

• Conformant Platforms: Software platforms (CRMs, events tools, email platforms, and giving pages) that natively support or export to the Advancement Common Data Model (ACDM).
• Implementation Partners: Consultants and service providers specialized in helping shops cleanse their databases, build standard pipelines, and train teams on these practices.

You can find the active registry of conformant tools and partners at: fundcommons.org/ecosystem