Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

About This Book

• Develop an integrated online system that manages contacts, donations, event registrations, memberships, bulk e-mail, campaigns, case management, and other functions such as activity tracking, grant distribution, and reporting.
• Plan a constituency relationship management strategy with ladders of engagement that will improve how your organization realizes its mission.
• Use case studies and step-by-step examples to put the raw concepts into real-life terminology and build your solutions.

Who This Book Is For

The book is primarily for administrators tasked with implementing, configuring, maintaining, and updating CiviCRM, and staff users who are looking to better understand the tools available in order to become power users. CiviCRM is software that may be used by advocacy groups, non-profit, and non-governmental organizations, elected officials, professional and trade associations, government entities, political campaigns and parties, and other similar organizations, and this book will prove useful to all such users.

What You Will Learn

• Install and configure your CiviCRM
• Analyze your current workflows and processes to translate them effectively into the CiviCRM model
• Build an integrated system to solicit, retain, and manage your donors and members through robust management and reporting tools for administrators
• Raise more money with CiviCRM with effective solicitation campaigns
• Market events effectively and track registrations and payments
• Improve communications with constituents using targeted broadcast e-mail campaigns
• Track ongoing communications with constituents including from Outlook and Gmail using activities and case management tools
• Take advantage of the many CiviCRM tools to generate both simple and complex event structures and manage registrants through every phase of the project

In Detail

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.

Style and approach

This guide is packed with step-by-step tutorials and real-life examples interspersed with practical advice and best practices on how to use CiviCRM strategically. You will be able to quickly grasp and implement the basic elements of CiviCRM before moving on to more advanced tools.

Erik Hommel has been an active member of the CiviCRM community since 2009. He is one of the founders of CiviCooP (http://www.civicoop.org) and one of the partners in EE-atWork (http://www.ee-atwork.nl). With both organizations, he has supported CiviCRM implementation and customization projects with customers such as MAF Norge, Amnesty International Flanders, De Goede Woning, PUM Senior Experts, Wikimedia The Netherlands, and many more, as a project manager/developer/consultant. Erik has hosted sessions at CiviCon in London and Amsterdam, and several CiviCRM Developer Training workshops. He has taken part in the development of a number of extensions for CiviCRM and has taken part in several CiviCRM sprints in Europe. You can find Erik regularly on the CiviCRM Stack Exchange site, the IRC channel, and at CiviCRM events in North West Europe. Joseph Murray is the owner and principal of JMA Consulting, specialists in e-advocacy, e-consultation, and citizen engagement for progressive organizations. He has extensive experience on nonprofit boards, at senior levels of government, and in running electoral, referendum, and advocacy campaigns. JMA Consulting has provided CRM systems to hundreds of political campaigns, tracking interactions with tens of millions of voters, as well as providing CiviCRM, Drupal, and Wordpress strategy, implementation, development, and training services to numerous nonprofits, associations, and advocacy groups. JMA Consulting has published extensions for CiviCRM integrating it with mail, social media, chat, and other services, as well as enhancing the core functionality for grants and other areas. Joe is an active contributor to the CiviCRM ecosystem, and assists the CiviCRM core team in areas including accounting functionality, sponsorships, and community governance. Brian Shaughnessy is the owner and principal of Lighthouse Consulting & Design, a web development firm specializing in Joomla! and CiviCRM implementations. For over ten years, Brian worked with an association management company providing services to not-for-profit professional, trade, and charitable organizations. Upon starting his own business, he channeled that experience into effective implementations of CiviCRM for not-for-profits. He has worked with organizations around the world, helping to achieve greater efficiencies and expand functionality through CiviCRM. Brian has served on the CiviCRM Community Advisory Group and helped author the first edition of Understanding CiviCRM (later renamed CiviCRM: A Comprehensive Guide). He has worked with the core development team to provide end user training and maintains a strong working relationship with the project leaders. Brian has also been active in the Joomla! project, serving on the Google Summer of Code program as a Joomla! mentor. He has provided professional Joomla! training through TechnicalLead.com. I'd like to thank my family for their support while writing this book, and to Joe for helping spearhead the project and partnering as co-authors. I'd also like to give particular thanks to the core development team and CiviCRM community for helping make a terrific piece of software. Lobo, Dave, Kurund, and the developers spread around the world – thanks for bringing the power of an open source CRM to the not-for-profit community.