Author Topic: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign? (Read 2075 times)

arkansas · August 14, 2010, 12:53:19 pm

I just found out about CiviCRM, and I think it looks like a great solution for a low budget campaign. I think it will be a excellent to manage volunteers, donations, events and more.

But I'm still unsure on what its capabilities are for voter file management. Can CiviCRM manage a voter registration file of 1.3 million voters? Does it have the ability to organize by county? I've read that there is an extension in the works called Civi Voter & Canvasser. Is this available yet?

If this is not available yet, does it make sense to manage the voter lists with something else. Can anyone recommend a workflow?

Also, I'm actually working on a initiative petition. Are there any tools to track signatures by volunteer and organize this by county? Can a volunteer log on to the system and submit how many signatures they have collected? Any ideas on how this can be accomplished?

Thanks,

Donald Lobo · August 14, 2010, 02:38:11 pm

Check:

http://civicrm.org/blogs/lobo/support-canvassing-and-gotv-get-out-vote-functionality-civicrm

help support that project and hopefully we'll have a lot of voter management in a future release

also check:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC32/CiviEngage

lobo

p.s> hmm i do think CiviCRM / CiviCanvass will also make a great solution for a high budget campaign

petednz · August 14, 2010, 02:40:21 pm

(posting though I know Lobo just hit 'Post' too)
Hi - no CiviVoter and Canvasser haven't made it back from the dead yet but CiviEngage provides capabilities for Walk and Phone lists. If you search for 'size' and 'records' i think you will find reference (by Dalin?) about the size of dbs they have coped with and think your figure is in the ball park.

Organize by County? Well you probably need to explain what you mean/want? How many counties? ACL and/or multisite set up can provide the granularity you are looking for.

Logging petitions? Hmm. Set up the Counties as an Organisation sub-type. Add a custom field for 'how many signatures'? Depends if you want this collected at front-end or just at back - back-end seeming to be much easier.

Donald Lobo · August 14, 2010, 02:47:21 pm

Quote from: Donald Lobo on August 14, 2010, 02:38:11 pm

Check:

http://civicrm.org/blogs/lobo/support-canvassing-and-gotv-get-out-vote-functionality-civicrm

help support that project and hopefully we'll have a lot of voter management in a future release

also check:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC32/CiviEngage

for petitions, check:

http://drupal.org/project/petition

lobo

p.s> hmm i do think CiviCRM / CiviCanvass will also make a great solution for a high budget campaign

xavier · August 14, 2010, 02:54:58 pm

Quote from: arkansas on August 14, 2010, 12:53:19 pm

But I'm still unsure on what its capabilities are for voter file management. Can CiviCRM manage a voter registration file of 1.3 million voters?

You will probably need to use memcached, and solr for the search, but civicrm has been benchmarked at > 1 million, and worked.

Quote from: arkansas on August 14, 2010, 12:53:19 pm

Also, I'm actually working on a initiative petition. Are there any tools to track signatures by volunteer and organize this by county? Can a volunteer log on to the system and submit how many signatures they have collected? Any ideas on how this can be accomplished?

We are working on a petition, but with collecting the signature online. Are you going to have each signature recorded as a different contact ?

And we aim to use it for European Citizen Initiative, ie > 1 million.

This being said, you will need custom dev. Could you detail what your need is in this forum (or the wiki), we can help you see what is missing in CiviCRM (if any) and give you an estimate of the dev/budget needed to make it real.

X+

arkansas · August 14, 2010, 04:31:58 pm

Thanks for the reply.

xavier, could you elaborate a little on what memchache & solr are & why I would need to use them.

As far as I can tell the drupal petition add on, looks more suited for online petitions, and not for tracking a legally binding initiative petition.

I think I'm looking for something a little different. For example, the state of Arkansas has 75 counties and we need half of the signatures to come from at least 15 counties. I would like to be able to easily track the quantity of signatures and decide where we need more from. I don't want to type in names of people who have signed as this will take too much time. I need more of reporting form that volunteers can log in to and report how many signatures they have collected & record this by county, city, etc.

I may use CiviCRM to run the campaign, but may use google docs reporting forms to allow volunteers to send the data (number of signatures collected) back to us.

Also is it possible to create walk list maps using CiviEngage?

CiviCRM looks very promising. I've used the VAN on other campaigns before and know how expensive it can be to use, this is great that there is an open source alternative out there.

Donald Lobo · August 14, 2010, 05:04:41 pm

Quote from: arkansas on August 14, 2010, 04:31:58 pm

Also is it possible to create walk list maps using CiviEngage?

currently no. Would be great if you can contribute code that add this feature to the walklist report

lobo

xavier · August 14, 2010, 06:04:05 pm

Quote from: arkansas on August 14, 2010, 04:31:58 pm

xavier, could you elaborate a little on what memchache & solr are & why I would need to use them.

Tools to avoid having to query the database. This being said, if you don't record each signature as different contact, you might not need 1 million contacts, hence not these cache.
Start without, you can always ask a provider to configure them later if you have a performance issue.

Quote from: arkansas on August 14, 2010, 04:31:58 pm

As far as I can tell the drupal petition add on, looks more suited for online petitions, and not for tracking a legally binding initiative petition.

I think I'm looking for something a little different. For example, the state of Arkansas has 75 counties and we need half of the signatures to come from at least 15 counties. I would like to be able to easily track the quantity of signatures and decide where we need more from. I don't want to type in names of people who have signed as this will take too much time. I need more of reporting form that volunteers can log in to and report how many signatures they have collected & record this by county, city, etc.

I may use CiviCRM to run the campaign, but may use google docs reporting forms to allow volunteers to send the data (number of signatures collected) back to us.

You might want to use a custom activity with the fields you need (how many, county...) for each reporting, and custom reports to get the overview (how many signatures per county, per volunteer...

X+

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Author Topic: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign? (Read 2075 times)

arkansas

Is CiviCRM right for our campaign?

Donald Lobo

Re: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign?

petednz

Re: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign?

Donald Lobo

Re: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign?

xavier

Re: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign?

arkansas

Re: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign?

Donald Lobo

Re: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign?

xavier

Re: Is CiviCRM right for our campaign?