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

Chapter 9. Growing Your Membership and Interacting with Members

If you are a member-based organization—whether a professional or trade association, a society, or a charitable not-for-profit organization using membership structures to encourage recurring support—your members are your lifeblood. They are most likely your primary constituents, and much of your organizational identity and vision revolves around serving their needs. Having an integrated system to solicit, retain, and manage your members is essential to your organization's success. As such, you will want to take advantage of CiviCRM's membership management tools.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Reviewing the initial setup and configuration of membership structures in CiviCRM
  • Understanding how the daily management tools work
  • Soliciting new members and retaining existing members with online forms
  • Searching and building reports to track members
  • Putting membership in context and reviewing...