Supporting Drupal Amid COVID-19

As the world continues to cope with the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, we recognize that people and organizations are up against unprecedented challenges. Many nonprofits are suffering from loss of income as corporate and individual donors undergo financial strains of their own. One nonprofit facing an uncertain future right now is the Drupal Association. It was recently announced that the Drupal Association’s largest revenue-driving event, DrupalCon North America, could potentially be postponed or canceled, creating financial hardship for the organization.

Since Acquia was born from Drupal, we feel it is our responsibility as the top company contributor in the Drupal community to help the Drupal Association get through these challenging times. We are also joining many other organizations and individual contributors helping to sustain the Drupal community, including Amazee Group, Centarro, Contegix, FFW, Lullabot and Palantir.net who have all pledged to donate their DrupalCon sponsorship if the event is canceled. Acquia is contributing in many ways to the Drupal Community and I’d like to encourage other organizations to do so as well. We are also contributing the following: 

• Financial donation: Acquia will make a significant financial contribution to help offset the potential revenue losses from DrupalCon. As part of that, Acquia will not request a refund for its tickets or Diamond Sponsorship for DrupalCon North America.

• Technical programs: Acquia is sponsoring technical programs, including the Drupal Steward Program, a program that helps to protect Drupal end users before the security release is available. By being a sponsor, Acquia helps the Drupal project provide protection that closes the gap between security releases and site updates. 

• Code contribution: Acquia continues to be the largest code contributor for Drupal 9 and pledges to continue investing during the current crisis. 
• Training materials: Acquia is providing free training materials, including certification study guides, for those who want to advance their Drupal careers or start a new career in today’s economy around Drupal. Acquia will offer one free Drupal certification exam for six months to the first 150 participants who can use the “DrupalCares” coupon code at https://www.webassessor.com/acquia/. Partners do not qualify. 
• Code upgrade tools: Acquia has also donated resources to support the upcoming release of Drupal 9 and is providing tools for easy upgrade to Drupal 8 or Drupal 9.
• Advertising for top contributors: Acquia will highlight the top partners contributing to the Drupal community in its advertising on Drupal.org.

At Acquia, we believe that we are stronger together. We embrace the community-first mindset of organizations like the Drupal community who recognize that by giving back we can accomplish much more. Drupal has been successful because so many people have contributed code, written documentation, sponsored training, fixed bugs and much more. The community as a whole is why Drupal continues to succeed.

Since its founding, Drupal has helped empower the digital experiences and communications that people depend on. Supporting Drupal is crucial and we encourage Drupal users — both large enterprises and individuals — to come together and give back to the Drupal Association.

Learn more about how you can contribute to the continued success of Drupal through the #DrupalCares campaign.