Real World Examples

CiviCRM is used by all shapes and sizes of organisations that are located all over the world. Some have no paid employees while others might have several hundred. Their needs range from very simple to fairly complex. In this chapter, we will have a look at some real world examples of how some organisations are using CiviCRM.

WWOOF UK

WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) UK places volunteers on organic farms where they can learn about organic agriculture in exchange for food and accommodation. They list 400 farms in the UK and have approximately 3000 volunteers annually. Before starting with CiviCRM, they used a number of different offline systems to process memberships. For example: People sent in paper application forms and volunteers were sent a printed directory of the farms.

What They Did

They used CiviMember, integrated with a payment processor and Drupal, to allow people to sign-up online to become members and to pay online using a credit card (or later with cheque or cash). They also used CiviCRM Profiles to create an online searchable directory of contacts and, using Drupal's CiviMember Roles module, they were able to control access to this directory by synchronising users with their membership database.

Since they wanted to continue to make data accessible to people that didn't use the internet, they used the CiviCRM admin interface to allow staff to manually process paper applications and, using CiviCRM's export functionality, to export data for a printed directory.

The Results

Simple online sign-up and instant access to the directory meant they doubled their membership income in the first month of implementing the new system! Staff are able to access the data from anywhere, which allows for much more flexible working practices and the ability to recruit more volunteers to help run the organisation. Membership administration time was reduced to zero for the majority of members that chose online access.

What They Learned

Transferring all office systems to CiviCRM was a 'change management' challenge! - and was more than they had anticipated. If they were to do it again, they would try split the process up, perhaps putting the directory online before switching to CiviCRM for online sign-up. They also underestimated the amount of training that was needed on the new system and would plan more time for testing and getting used to the system before 'going live'.

Wellington Circus Trust

 

This example shows how clubs can use CiviCRM for summer camps, sports clubs, dance classes and other events.

Wellington Circus Trust is run entirely by volunteers. They have a mailing list of 500-600 people and run blocks of classes in circus skills such as trapeze and hula hoop. They also host events. For safety reasons the Trust needs to gather information about who to contact in the case of a student being injured. The Trust processes about 200 enrollments a year.

Prior to using CiviCRM, the trust maintained a Microsoft Access database, but data entry was time consuming, keeping information up-to-date was difficult and emailing the resulting contact information on a regular basis to the tutors, was challenging. The treasurer wanted people to be able to maintain their own details and wanted the tutors and volunteers to be able to access people's contact details from anywhere. 

What They Did

After some research WCT realised CiviCRM could do the things they needed.

Using the CiviEvents modules they set up online enrollment for the classes. This decision led to another, which was to pay a commission to a payment processing company so that credit cards could be used for online enrollment in classes. They also used CiviEvent to set limits on the number of students that could enroll in a given class.

In order to track emergency contact information, they created custom data fields that were added to a profile that was used as a form for event registration. This information was then stored in CiviCRM.

They integrated CiviCRM with Drupal and set up user accounts for every contact in their database and then instructed people on how to use the Drupal 'reset my password' link to gain access to the system for the first time.

Once CiviCRM was installed and running the WCT decided to implement CiviMail.

Since Wellington Circus Trust applies for grants from funding bodies, the last thing they decided to implement was the CiviGrants module. 

The Results

Simply by implementing CiviCRM, tutors and volunteers could access information from anywhere in the world where they had Internet connectivity.

By implementing CiviEvent in the way that they did, people were able to enroll in and pay for classes online and to provide their emergency contact information while doing so. By allowing people to sign-up online, data entry was greatly reduced.

By integrating CiviCRM with Drupal and setting up user accounts, people were able to maintain and update their own contact information, which greatly reduced administration time.

Implementing CiviMail made it very easy for them to email the tutors, volunteers and students. It also removed the administrative burden of manually updating the mailing list and contact information because CiviCRM automates all of that by allowing people to do it for themselves. The treasurer also found that it saved her from having hundreds of sent items in her outlook e-mail, which used to happen when she used Microsoft Office mail merges to send out newsletters.

Prior to implementing CiviGrant, Wellington Circus Trust had not been effective at tracking the status of the grants. By using CiviGrant, they were able to see at a glance, what grant applications had been sent and the status of each grant.

All up Linda estimated that installing CiviCRM saved hundreds of volunteer hours over the course of a year. 

What They Learned

After moving to CiviCRM, WCT found that contact management and class registration were both easier. One issue they did find was that some people got confused about having to reset their Drupal passwords. WCT thinks that putting more effort into the way they explained this on their website would have helped.

People found the paypal standard interface difficult to use and after six months they invested in developing a payment processor more appropriate to New Zealand.

They also learned that a cheap hosting provider is not always the best option. They wasted quite a bit of time before they switched from a free provider to one that costs them approximately $NZD20 per month.

Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah

 

HEAL Utah is a grassroots environmental organization working to protect Utahns from nuclear and toxic waste. Before moving to CiviCRM, they were stuck on a Microsoft Access database. In fact, they may have called it a database but it really was a glorified spreadsheet that made their day to day operations difficult. The goal for the CiviCRM project was to move to a system that would centralize all of their information across their organization including email lists, volunteer tracking, donor history and more. As an advocacy and community organizing organization, it is critical to their mission that they effectively engage their supporters and track the relationships they build with their constituency over time. They needed a tool to support that mission.

What They Did

HEAL has been using CiviCRM since the early days of the software. CiviCRM is now the central place to track all of their donors, volunteers, legislators, foundations and contacts. They use CiviCRM for donor management, email communications, event management, volunteer tracking, and advocacy.

• For advocacy purposes, they track their constituents' legislative districts so that when issues arise that need action, they can mobilize their members on a district by district basis. 
  
• They track volunteers, the activities they participate in, and their interests.
  
• For event management, they primarily hold large fundraising events that are free but solicit donations at the event. CiviEvent handles all of the online registrations and collects data such as guest names and interests. They send invitations, reminders, and follow-up messages via postal mail and the CiviMail component
• CiviContribute allows them to run donor reports as well as accept online donations.
  

The Results

There is no question that CiviCRM streamlined and consolidated their data management and saved them valuable resources. It is interesting to note that over the last several years their advocacy campaigns have been more successful and their impact in their community more noticeable. While one cannot and should not solely credit CiviCRM for their recent successes, the biggest change that CiviCRM has brought to HEAL is to force them to always think about what role technology will play in their outreach and organizing work.

American Friends Service Committee

The American Friends Service Committee is a large, Quaker based, peace and social justice organisation that has over 400 employees. Worldwide, they have programs that work to relieve and prevent suffering through both immediate aid and long-term development and they seek to serve the needs of people on all sides of violent strife.

Their main headquarters are located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They have 9 Regional headquarters located throughout the United States, some 50 Area offices also located in the US, and numerous International "field" offices located in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America/ the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Lists of constituents are maintained by each office. Specific CRM system needs vary but, in general, needs are: searching for constituents that meet certain criteria, sending emails, newsletters, postal mail, announcements, collecting the contact information for people who sign on-line petitions and on-line registration for events.

Through a survey that was conducted by the Information Technology Department at AFSC, it became obvious that AFSC staff were using a number of varied "systems" to keep track of their constituents. It also became obvious that these systems were not working: repositories of data were everywhere, contact information was duplicated, staff were having a hard time managing their contacts and the IT Department was unable to provide adequate support.

The survey also revealed that staff were frustrated with the systems they were using because they lacked functionality that was necessary for them to effectively communicate and do outreach. Specifically: search capability was limited, there was no ability to send high-volume emails which meant that it was not possible to send newsletters or announcements, and there was no ability to collect information on-line.

After investigating several database systems, the IT Department finally decided that, all things considered, CiviCRM might be the best fit for the AFSC.

What They Did

Initially, CiviCRM sites, that were managed by an external vendor, were established for offices in Los Angeles, Rhode Island, San Francisco and Seattle and CiviMail was implemented. Los Angeles also decided to use the CiviEvent module to track registrations for events and the CiviMember module to track contact information for their committee members.

After implementation, an LA staff person discovered that certain functionality was missing from the CiviMember export module and this was preventing them from being able to compile a membership directory. AFSC talked to the CiviCRM Core development team and contracted them to add the missing functionality. This was a win-win situation: AFSC got the functionality they needed and because it was integrated back into the CiviCRM product the entire CiviCRM community was able to benefit from the addition. An extra advantage for AFSC is that because the functionality became part of CiviCRM they don't have to worry about it not being compatible with any future upgrades.

The Results

The decision to have their sites hosted and managed by an external vendor turned out not to be a good one because the particular vendor that was chosen ran into difficulties and was not responsive to issues or in providing the services that had been "promised", like timely updates for CiviCRM. Once the hosting issue was resolved, staff were able to take full advantage of the capabilities of CiviCRM, which allowed them to do all of the things that they had previously been unable to do.

The Los Angeles office is in full swing, using CiviCRM as the main repository to track their constituents, board and committee members and volunteers. Their constituents are now able to sign-up for events and petitions on-line, and staff are now able to send volume emails for their newsletters and announcements.

Getting rid of their old system and being able to send out their monthly newsletter was the main goal for the Colorado office, who came onboard with CiviCRM a little later in the process. They are now able to find the constituents that are to get the newsletter and to send the newsletter to them via CiviCRM. They couldn't be happier!

The AFSC currently has nine CiviCRM sites and the IT Department is now recommending CiviCRM as the "database of choice" for its offices. Support from the CiviCRM community is excellent and CiviCRM itself is improving every day, with more and more functionality being added. AFSC staff are now able to access their data from anywhere that has internet access, do complex searches, on-line event registration and send online newsletters and postal mailings. CiviCRM is allowing them to better manage their constituents. This makes their life easier and in turn, is of great benefit to AFSC.

New York State Nursery Landscape Association (NYSNLA)

NYSNLA (www.nysnla.com) is a member-based association providing resources and advocacy support for nursery and landscape professionals throughout New York State. The organization seeks to advance the interests of New York State's nursery and landscape businesses and professionals by promoting sound business practices, expanding state and local markets, and exercising leadership in the development of sustainable communities.

Prior to migrating to CiviCRM the Association went through several iterations of member-management solutions, beginning with a series of spreadsheet documents and later moving to an MS Access database. The migration to CiviCRM was prompted by the desire to consolidate data, provide members real-time access to contact details, and to create a searchable member directory to site visitors who may be looking for a nursery or landscape professional.

What They Did

NYSNLA, working with a CiviCRM consultant, began the process of analyzing the structure and content of their existing database and mapping the various functions to CiviCRM structures. They determined they would use CiviMember, CiviEvent, CiviContribute, and CiviMail to address their core database needs, and would consider using CiviPledge at some point in the future for soliciting contributions to their sister non-profit, the Nurserymen's Foundation.

One data area that required particular attention was their Certified Nursery Landscape Professional program (CNLP). CNLP is an intensive, on-going educational program designed to increase the skills of garden and landscape employees. The program was designed by members of the nursery and landscape industry with assistance from Cornell University. Interested individuals must apply to the program and successfully pass a test. The certification lasts two years, after which time the individual must recertify.

NYSNLA used CiviCRM's membership functionality to track the status of CNLPs. The ability to define a rolling-period membership and to gauge when they are nearing expiration perfectly met their management needs. The initial application process, which also must be tracked carefully, was handled through CiviEvent, as an application to the program is essentially a registration to attend one of the bi-annual test events.

The Association also took advantage of CiviCRM's open source platform to make some interface customizations that improved the way they looked at their records. Because of the importance of the CNLP program, they wanted to be able to look at all employees for a certain nursery/landscape company and quickly know if any of them are CNLPs or Lifetime CNLPs. They also needed to quickly know which employees are authorized to manage the company's records. Adding the membership field and an authorization icon to the relationships view provided them this snapshot.

 

The Results

The Association has worked hard to communicate to the public the importance of using a qualified landscape professional. Essential to this effort was the inclusion of a searchable member directory on their website. Using CiviCRM they were able to create a search page that included geographic segmentation (the Association divides members into 8 regions statewide) and a list of services provided by members (using CiviCRM's tags feature). The resulting search tool, because it is directly connected with their contact data, ensures website visitors are always looking at current information. The Association is also able to provide members direct access to their contact details so they can update and maintain their list of services provided and other information.

Green Party of Aotearoa - New Zealand

The Green Party has been the largest third party in NZ politics for most of the last decade, and for periods back as far as the early 1970s. They achieved parliamentary representation in 1999 and after the 2007 election had 9 Members of Parliament, 4-5,000 members and c. 50,000 contacts. The Party has 9 Provinces, over 50 branches, some of which are split across Provinces, and contest elections across all 67 electorates (which do not align with either Provinces or Branches). Prior to adopting CiviCRM the party and parliamentary units had a range of systems for managing members, donations, contacts, campaigning, media and advocacy.

The Green Party policy states:

• Development of IT must be socially responsible and sustainable.
• The use of Free and Open-Source software should be encouraged.

What They Did

CiviCRM was adopted in 2007 (version 1.7). This was encouraged in part by the work that had been done developing a voter canvassing Drupal module by the Canadian Greens. A switch to Drupal was undertaken as a parallel project. A Party database was set up using CiviCRM and online donations, memberships and event registrations were instigated.

The Greens have over 100 different issues that they put media releases out about. These were reconstructed as a checkbox custom data field, and Smart Groups were built for each of these, for use when sending out media releases via CiviMail.

The highly complex 'access control' requirements of the party necessitated the development of an alternative approach to the use of ACLs in order to provide a more easily managed, highly granular system. This approach has now been incorporated as a hook (something that can be utilised by developers to extend CiviCRM) in to core code.

For the election campaign in 2007, a look-up function was developed that meant as new contacts were added to the database, they were checked against a table containing the Electoral Roll, and links were created where matches were made. 'Soft' matches were also recorded.

The Results

In the 2007 election campaign, the Party made extensive use of online fundraising and greatly exceeded previous online income. The membership renewal has been streamlined with more online renewals occurring.

As of May 2009 the Greens are still using 2.0 on Drupal 5 and therefore have not yet benefited from the many features that became available through the 2.1 and 2.2 releases. An upgrade is in progress.

What They Learned

In a complex organisation such as the Greens, training is often going to be a limiting factor, as well as the need to develop more in-house superusers. New features in CiviCRM have caused some rethinking about usage of custom data fields, particularly in terms of the use of CiviMail for media releases. The new options for both nested groups, and Drupal Organic Groups suggest that a more time effective approach may be possible.

QuestBridge

QuestBridge is dedicated to helping bright, motivated low-income high school students get accepted and pay for college. QuestBridge recruits high-school juniors nationwide and asks them to fill out the QuestBridge application online. QuestBridge also partners with America's most highly-selective colleges and universities that are looking to increase the socio-economic diversity of their student bodies. QuestBridge's college partners accept the QuestBridge application in lieu of their own admissions application.

What They Did

QuestBridge built most of its business processes around the CiviCRM. They wrote their online admission application using CiviCRM and extended it using PHP. They used CiviCRM to store biographical/application information and communication histories about the students.

The Results

In 2008-9, QuestBridge helped more than 1200 students get accepted and pay for college at one of its 25 partner schools. It accomplished its goal in a very efficient manner, in part due to its effective implementation of CiviCRM. QuestBridge is currently planning on upgrading to CiviCRM 2.x in order to take full advantage of the new email features.

Learning

If Questbridge were to start over they would have invested more in training on CiviCRM upfront.

Schoolhouse Supplies

Schoolhouse Supplies (SHS) is a Portland, Oregon, USA based non-profit organization which gathers and distributes school supplies to students and teachers.

Prior to CiviCRM SHS used a combination of software programs including Exceed, EROI, Constant Contact, Salesforce, Auction Pay (for online contributions) and, of course, hundreds of spreadsheets. In addition, SHS had a custom web application for managing store inventory and for processing in-kind donations.

What They Did

SHS has centralized their operations to CiviCRM to manage all their constituent data and to unify and coordinate several of their core business processes.

All data from each source has been migrated to CiviCRM Standalone. CiviContact and CiviContribute have replaced Exceed and Auction Pay. CiviMail has replaced EROI and Constant Contact. Salesforce data was moved into CiviCRM and the custom ecommerce application it supported was integrated with CiviCRM. Lastly, the inventory/in-kind management system was integrated with CiviCRM. Spreadsheets have been imported.

The Results

Each business process at SHS now can take advantage of their full constituent database and it is easier to coordinate business activities. More importantly, SHS is now in the process of taking manual business processes (e.g. volunteer coordination) and moving them to CiviCRM. New campaigns are now being planned and executed which would have been impossible or prohibitively expensive before.