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

Contacts

Simply put, a contact is any entity you interact with. It may be people, businesses, government institutions, households, organization chapters, regional districts, or anyone else you are collecting data for in your system.

Individuals, organizations, and households

Since all contact entities are not the same and the nature of how you interact with them will be different from one to the other, CiviCRM segments contacts into three main types, with the option of further segmenting them into subtypes:

  • Individual contacts: These contacts represent people. As you work with the contact record, you will record things, such as first name, last name, date of birth, gender, and other types of data that is relevant only for interaction with people. In addition, individuals are the only contact type that may have a corresponding user account within your Joomla!/Drupal/WordPress website; after all, businesses don't log into websites, people who work for the business do. CiviCRM provides tools...