Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By : Hommel, Murray, P Shaughnessy
Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By: Hommel, Murray, P Shaughnessy

Overview of this book

CiviCRM provides a powerful toolbox of resources to help organizations manage relationships with constituents. It is free, open source, web-based, and geared specifically to meet the constituent relationship management needs of the not-for-profit sector. Beginning with broader questions about how your organization is structured, which existing workflows are critical to your operations, and the overarching purpose of a centralized CRM, the book proceeds step by step through configuring CiviCRM, understanding the choices when setting up the system, importing data, and exploring the breadth of tools available throughout the system. You will see how to best use this software to handle event registrations, accept and track contributions, manage paid and free memberships and subscriptions, segment contacts, send bulk e-mails with open and click-through tracking, manage outreach campaigns, and set up case management workflows that match your organization’s roles and rules. With specific emphasis on helping implementers ask the right questions, consider key principals when setting up the system, and understand usage through case studies and examples, the book comprehensively reviews the functionality of CiviCRM and the opportunities it provides. With this book, you can help your organization better achieve its mission as a charity, industry association, professional society, political advocacy group, community group, government agency, or other similar organization and position yourself to become a power user who efficiently and effectively navigates the system.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
15
Index

Thinking through your case management system


As with the other areas of CiviCRM, your implementation of the case tools begins with planning. In fact, the planning and configuration step is absolutely essential for working with cases.

However, before we dig into that process, let's take a step back and understand what case management is and how it differs from activity records.

In the opening section, we described a case as the management of a multistep process, surrounding a single theme, issue, or project. In essence, a case is a container for activities and relationships—a mini CRM within CiviCRM. Each case surrounds a single theme, issue, or project attached to one or more constituents. Within this container, we track case activities (our multistep processes), roles (the staff and key players involved in case resolution), and relationships (internal or external contacts who are involved in the case or connected to the contact). By grouping these various pieces of data in a case record...