[5] The project's mission is to "enable people to build highly customized websites affordably, through collaboration and open source software".

[13] The project is maintained by volunteer developers on the GitHub platform, with shared code contributions reviewed and approved by community members.

As of November 26, 2020, there were 136 contributors to the core Backdrop project on GitHub,[14] and 92 contributors maintaining 717 user-contributed modules, themes, and layouts[15][16] The Backdrop community hosts weekly development, design, and outreach webcasts with recordings available on YouTube.

This membership allows Backdrop CMS to operate as a charitable initiative without having to manage their own corporate structure, administrative services, or legal team.

[17] CiviCRM, the open source CRM focused on non-profits, officially supports Backdrop, in addition to Wordpress and Drupal.