Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By : Erik Hommel, Joseph Murray, Brian P Shaughnessy
Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By: Erik Hommel, Joseph Murray, Brian 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 (20 chapters)
Using CiviCRM - Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Customizing and extending


Earlier in this book, we presented CiviCRM's open source licensing as one of the chief selling points of the software. Open source means the source code is readily available and can be altered or added to without infringing on the license. In short, it means you can open up the hood and tinker with it to your heart's content.

Of course, tinkering isn't really what benefits you. It's the ability to truly customize, expand, add on, restructure, or do whatever you need to make sure that this software suits the needs of your organization. Then you can share with the community so that they can benefit from your efforts to improve, document, support, and extend the software—and in turn, you can benefit from what other's share. This is the true value of open source. Unlike proprietary closed source software, you're not wholly dependent on the roadmap plans of the company that owns the software (crossing your fingers in hope that they build your desired functionality), nor...