Last night I went to a Net Squared meet-up at the Oxfam International office in New York City.   Attending the meeting were representatives from a number non-profits around the world (change.org, TheElders.org etc).  In retrospect, there was one theme that tied all of these organizations together: Drupal.  Joshua Wiese, the Online Director for TheElders.org, mentioned how his organization has needs for online mapping software.  When I approached him after the meeting and talked to him about Open Layers, the first question he asked me was if there was a Drupal plugin for it.  After the meeting I also had a long conversation with a board member from Community Mediation Services (CMS).  CMS is looking for volunteers to help revive their website.  What platform are they are planning to create this website on?  Surprise, surprise: Drupal.

After talking to a few co-workers about Drupal earlier this week, I am pretty sure why it is the non-profit framework of choice.  Drupal is trivial to setup and simple to configure, and has an enormous developer community.  Sure PHP takes its shots, but people seem to get a lot of things done with it.   Since I am a member of the non-profit tech community, many of my peers are using Drupal, and thus I think it is worth my while to learn some basics.  As I experiment more with the framework, I will be sure to blog about my experiences.