CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I work with several non-profits that work with underprivileged children. Many of them do some sort of sponsor/mentor program where people can sponsor a child, a home, a school, or some other person/place that needs funding on an ongoing basis. Basically, it typically works by the sponsor sending in a set monthly amount and then receiving updates specific to the child/building/etc that they are sponsoring.

Right now pretty much all of these orgs do this by keeping large Excel spreadsheets and doing a lot of manual labor. It would be great if I could find a component that would allow them to track sponsors/mentors through the system. Things they would need to track would include (but wouldn't be limited to):

    * Sponsor name
    * Sponsor address
    * Sponsor email
    * Who/what sponsor is sponsoring
    * Monthly sponsorship dollar amount
    * Date and amount of last sponsorship payment


In addition, the system should allow communications to be sent via email to the sponsors regarding the child/place/etc that is being sponsored and should probably allow a way to house content online that can only be viewed by a group of sponsors specific to the content (ex: 5 sponsors sponsor one child, so all 5 would be able to view pictures, letters, etc. online that are specific to that child).

How could this be accomplished with CiviCRM?

Have a look at the SF school module, it offers features not unlike what you need, but instead of having a sponsor, you have a parent.

http://civicrm.org/node/624 (read the other posts as well)

Should provide you a solid base for your use case and the modification shouldn't be too complicated/expensive

X+