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

Summary


In this chapter, we looked at the reasons that organizations develop a CRM strategy, the importance of considering the work processes as well as the supporting technologies when developing your Constituent Relationship Management strategy. We also saw the ways in which non-profit constituent relationship management is similar to, but different from, business Customer Relationship Management in objectives and techniques. We learnt to identify and prioritize the constituents and interactions to be managed by your CRM, when CiviCRM is more appropriate as a tool to support your CRM strategy rather than single-purpose tools, custom software development, or other CRM systems. The common advantages that CiviCRM provides include the following:

  • Better focus on non-profit needs

  • Greater user satisfaction

  • Avoidance of vendor lock-in

  • Excellent integration with popular and powerful Drupal, Joomla!, and WordPress content management systems

  • Lower total cost of ownership

  • A strong and active development community

  • Extensive documentation for all kinds of users

  • Good free and paid support

  • The benefits your organization will likely see when it adopts CiviCRM

It might be tempting to jump in and start installing and configuring CiviCRM and migrating data from your existing systems. However, our experience is that there are great advantages in developing a CRM implementation plan that identifies, at a minimum, your team, your requirements, and the major tasks that will need to be accomplished. The next chapter will walk you through how to develop a CRM implementation plan that is suited to your organization's size, culture, and needs.