The past few months have been a time of great change at the Drupal Association headquarters. We've been focusing on the future of the organization, the community and the project by adjusting our governance model. We also understood that there has been some confusion about how Drupal VZW (the Belgian nonprofit that holds our membership) and DrupalCon, Inc. (the U.S. nonprofit that produces DrupalCons) interacted, and we've been working to remedy that confusion and also increase efficiencies between the two organizations.

Initially, the Belgian nonprofit Drupal VZW conducted most Drupal-related activities, including oversight of Drupal.org and the granting of memberships.  DrupalCon, Inc. was formed in the United States to run DrupalCons and otherwise spread the word about Drupal. The Board of Drupal VZW has decided to assign the majority of its functions to the U.S. nonprofit, which it believes is better positioned to further its charitable mission moving forward. In order to signal this change, DrupalCon, Inc. is assuming the Drupal Association business name.

What this means to you.

September 1, 2011: Effective on this date, Drupal VZW will cease to offer its membership program, and the Drupal Association (formerly DrupalCon, Inc.) will open its memberships program. The Drupal Association will provide memberships to all Drupal VZW members at no charge. If you purchased a membership with Drupal VZW in the past year up to August 31, 2011, your membership (along with its start and expiration dates) will be valid with the Drupal Association. This requires no action on your part. When you renew, your membership will be with the Drupal Association a U.S. 501(c)(3).

October 1st, 2011: Drupal VZW will accept membership cancellation requests until October 1st, 2011. If you do not wish for your membership to be recognized by the Drupal Association, please contact Drupal VZW.

What we’re (still) about.

The Drupal Association will continue to educate the world about Drupal, fostering the growth of the community and projects in countries around the globe. Even though the Drupal Association is located in the US, we are a global organization and understand our mission applies to all regions of the world.

If you have any questions, we want to hear them. The next Town Hall meeting is scheduled for September 26th. Specifics about the time and place will be announced closer to the conversation.

Comments

Benjamin Birkenhake’s picture

So … without any judgment, just to understand, what ist going on: You merge the non-profit VZW and the Inc, and in the end, you have a Inc. right? Are you planing on making profits?

psuway’s picture

DrupalCon, Inc. is US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. In addition to paying for large community initiatives like the migration to Git and the Drupal.org redesign, as well as purchasing more server equipment for Drupal.org, we're going to continue to financially give back to the community in the form of scholarships for DrupalCon and the Drupal Community Cultivation Grants.

mudsurfer’s picture

I am also still wondering what the drivers behind this change are?
Is it financial, political? there must have been a lot of information presented to the boards/committees to make this decision? Can we see some of that detail?
This just feels like there is something going on that is not transparent to me.

highermath’s picture

The primary driver is the efficient management of the Association's resources. We basically outgrew our original governance model, and are moving to one that, simply put, empowers more folks to do more stuff in pursuit of our mission.

There has been quite a lot written about this, a lot of it on this site.

That said, we need to do better at communication, and we are working on that, as well.