CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi folks, I'll try to keep this quick and to the point.

We're a non-profit org that runs a once yearly exercise event in hundreds of schools across several states. We're looking to expand and we want to know if civiCRM might be our db/management solution. Currently we manually crunch our data into filemaker (ugh.) and have it spit out some letters and shipping lists for us.

Here's what we do:
1) Teachers sign up and are sent a confirmation email
2) we pull this data and send them their activity kits
3) the teachers run their events for a month
4) Teachers sign back into the website and fill in (custom data field I'd assume) the numbers and names of the kids that completed the event, we pull down the data and assign randomized prizes etc... and ship them off their goodies.

The key for us is using CiviCRM to manage the sign-ins, gather and record shipping address info etc, send confirmation emails and maybe even reminders, and most importantly allow them to sign back in and update a form with all their event completion information.

We have very limited IT rescources (me!) and I'm new to Joomla! and civiCRM, but I'm nerdy enough to be dangerous.

Do you think it can help us?

Thanks alot for your reply. Can I sort of say back what I think you were saying to make sure I understand it?

I'm thinking that maybe:
--we have them sign up using Drupal/Joomla as our front-end (confirmation email gets sent saying they've signed up), gather the information for us to ship them their kits as part of their contact info (search replace or export the data out for us to manipulate in excel or whatever). We put them into a 'Teachers' contact group so we can email them etc... all at once.

--teachers do their thing for a month

--we use civiCRM to create an event that they then sign up for where we gather more information such as the specific names of kids who have completed, how many etc.. as part of the event sign-up form. we broadcast this event to the 'Teachers' group. we then can export that data and use it to do what we need to do (generate our prize lists and shipping lists)

Is there a way in Drupal to include a customized drop down list when they register on the site? So, for example, we'd have a list of schools they can pick from in a drop down list.

Thanks for very much your advice on this. Our budget is pitiful but the interest in our program is exploding, so we're trying to find a way to make all this work without spending much money.

Thank you very much. I'll be diving in to that free book.