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

Working with campaigns

Before we delve into the details, let's first understand what a campaign is in CiviCRM. The terminology can be a little misleading, as the word "campaign" may have a specific connotation in different contexts. For example, you might hear the word and immediately think of a political campaign, seeking to elect a person for office; or you might think of a member outreach campaign, which is seeking to increase membership by a certain percentage over a fixed period of time. Both are good examples of how campaigns can be used in CiviCRM; but we want to be flexible enough to think beyond those more common uses of the term.

In essence, a campaign is a project—defined by goals and executed over a fixed period of time. The goals may be monetary in nature, such as a campaign to raise $20,000 in donations to fund a new program; it may be measured in numbers, such as a campaign to increase membership by 10 percent over the course of 2 months; or it may be...