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

Searching, examining, and working with contributions


Thus far, we have focused our energy on understanding the key configuration options related to fundraising and working with single contact and pledge records within the contact record. In this section, we will work with contribution records in bulk and review recipes for implementing fundraising techniques through CiviCRM. While working through this section, we will also highlight noteworthy features or places where you may see unexpected results if not handled correctly.

Finding contributions

While you will often be working with contributions directly through the contact record, it is likely that much of your time will also be spent searching for and reporting on contribution records in bulk. For example, you will periodically need to know how many contributions were received over a period of time, such as the last month or year-to-date. You may need to export all contributions of the type Donations in order to send end-of-the-year statements...