CiviCRM

What is CiviCRM?

CiviCRM is a powerful, web-based contact relationship management (CRM) system which  focuses on the needs of nonprofits. CiviCRM emphasizes communicating with individuals, community engagement, activism, outreach, managing contributions, and managing memberships in order to organize your operations and achieve your mission’s goals.

CiviCRM allows an organisation to record and manage information about the various people and organizations it interacts with. CiviCRM is more than just an address book, it also allows you to track your interactions with people and organizations, engage with constituents, and solicit donations through your website. The information you gather is all stored in one place but you can access it from almost anywhere.

At it’s most fundamental level, CiviCRM:

  • records basic contact information such as

    • name: first, last, nickname, greeting, etc

    • address: home, mailing, work, etc

    • email address, social media contacts

    • and fully customizable to meet any organization’s needs

  • defines relationships between contacts such as

    • client/provider

    • teacher/student

    • and fully customizable to meet any organization’s needs

  • sends emails

    • complete email management

    • email blasts, email to a group or even an individual

    • targeted and personalized letters with tracking capability (opened, clicked, bounced, etc)

    • create templates of common emails, again fully customizable to meet your needs

  • keep a record of your interactions with you contacts including organizations

    • full reporting, built-in and fully customizable

Now, more than ever, non-profit organizations need the power and versatility of the same kinds of tools that are used in the business world to meet the goals and mission statement of your organization and the needs of your constituency, legislators, subscribers, donors and supporters.  CiviCRM is not only developed, supported and maintained by a vibrate, growing community of software professionals, it is open source and designed from the ground up with a focus on community.

Here’s just a partial list of the many different types of organizations using CiviCRM:

  • NGOs

  • Government agencies/entities/offices of elected representatives

  • Member-based, advocacy, grant giving, service providing organizations

  • Neighborhood Associations

  • Political Campaigns and Organizations

  • Business Associations/sports clubs/dance studios

  • Unions

Customization

CiviCRM is designed to be customized to meet the needs of a wide variety of organizations.

Components

CiviContribute

An online fundraising and donor management component which enables you to track and manage contributions to your organization. It also allows you to quickly and easily create customized web pages to accept one of and recurring online donations.  Part of CiviContribute is CiviPledge, which allows you to record and track pledges, send pledge acknowledgements and payment reminders, configure online contribution pages to support self-service pledging and pledge payments.

CiviMail

A robust mass-mailing component which allows you to engage your constituents with personalized email blasts and newsletters.

CiviMember

A flexible membership management component which includes convenient online signup and renewal.

CiviEvent

Provides integrated online event registration and management for paid and free events. It allows you to quickly and easily create customized web pages for event registration and then track participants.

CiviCampaign

Lets you link together events, mailings, activities, and contributions under one “umbrella” so that you can track the progress of all your efforts towards one programmatic goal or campaign.

CiviCase

Integrated case management component, including a dashboard with “my cases”, automated case timelines and configurable audit reports.

CiviGrant

Designed to be used by organizations that distribute funds to others, for example foundations, grant givers, etc.

Features

CiviCRM supports the following functional areas:

For more information about CiviCRM and the community around it, visit www.CiviCrm.org