The panelists in our Open API Debate (five for-profit vendors, one nonprofit vendor, one open source vendor, and one nonprofit) talked about everything from the current state of APIs to why nonprofits should care to what the future holds for APIs. You can listen to the entire debate in this podcast and read some of our favorite quotes below.

On the Current State of APIs

"The market is bringing [Open APIs] to the surface... At the same time, though, I think the elephant in the room is how impactful these APIs are to the business models to the vendors."

- Zack Rosen, Chapter Three and Drupal

On why APIs are opening up

"There are two voices out there that are coming. One is, "open up, open up." The other is "close down like a bank." So the challenge for us on the vendor side is, we have a real cry for compliance and "make sure my data's safe," and then on the other side, "hey, I want everything free and open." That's the balancing trick that I think is going to be hardest for all of us."

- Dave Crooke, Convio

On the resources it takes to use open APIs

"The thing I'm interested in is how I can integrate my systems. How do I get one closed application talking to another, because that's what I have right now. It's hard to get data in and out. I have some systems where the vendor has basically said, "your warranty is gone if you try to push data in from another system automatically." If that vendor instead were to provide me with an open API and the tools to either build a data warehouse or get the information back and forth, they'd be supporting my business instead of being the company that I pay in order to stop me from doing what I need to do."

- Peter Campbell, Goodwill Industries of San Francisco

On the future of APIs

"Mashups are taking siloed functionality and bringing them together. I think we will eventually see mashups as being quite crude. It goes back to the question, "can a vendor provide everything a nonprofit needs?" I've actually, on occasion, had folks come to me and say "Salesforce, can you provide everything we need, because our board will only approve this if we're sending a check to one vendor." And the response is "no!" and you shouldn't be asking that and that's a piece of education for your board."

- Steve Wright, Salesforce

On nonprofits and APIs

"Nonprofits can do more than vendors can imagine they can do, and I think they should be able to do that... It should be the case that partner organizations can feed your database if they want to. It should be the case that if you want to maintain your own data warehouse, you should be able to do that. I think, ultimately, it gives [nonprofits] the flexibility that larger organizations have, or organizations that might have a little more technical skills. They should be able to take advantage of that."

Nick Ballenger, Democracy in Action

On Blackbaud's API philosophy

"One of the key tenets for us was to make sure that we built an API... Now open API in that perspective was more opening up all the functionality and access to the data in our system via a well-defined interface. It is important that we present our interface and that it was then immutable. So that future changes by Blackbaud wouldn't break customizations on top of using the API. That's the great buy-in you have to make as a company when you open your API is to understand that it has to be resilient."

- Shaun Sullivan, Blackbaud

On ways nonprofits are using APIs

"American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees ran a microsite called ActNow.org... They had a petition campaign, but they had a bit of a twist on it. Essentially they were able to map all the petition signers using the Google Maps API on a Google Map, but gave each of them a virtual yard sign where they could pick what is their virtual catchphrase or yard sign. They also used a third party geocoding service to get lawns to put on the map. And then they used the GetActive remote participation API for our remote advocacy product to fulfill the petition signing and to do the viral marketing and tell a friend aspect. So it actually combined three different services and made a very, very rich and different experience for folks than generally signing a petition."

- Tom Krackeler, GetActive