CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am a non-techie trying to grasp CivicCRM and understand which CMS- Joomla or Drupal would be better for my organization!
Thanks a ton for your answers to my 2 questions below.

1. From the previous discussions, I am assuming that Civic CRM accomodates the following chapter based operating structure. Please let me know if otherwise.

My non profit has a chapter based operating structure.

Our organization is split into multiple chapters [ based upon geography and other factors].
Each Chapter shall consist of volunteers and shall have a committee to manage the chapter and shall have access to information pertaining to the chapter alone. Similarly, the organization shall have a central committee to oversee the chapters and monitor all information.


2. Additionally, I would like to know if DRUPAL or Joomla is better for this operating structure for the website portion [details below].

This is the part which visitors [donors, volunteers, event participants] will view and obtain information about the charity.
This portal shall be dynamic and shall be customized for each chapter within the organization.

For eg: Our global domain [ consider xyz.com] will have content reflecting that of the overall ogranization and many chapters.

Sub domains reflecting the chapter: for eg: njny.xyz.com will use content from the main domain.
However, specific sections of pages and additional pages will have chapter specific information.
Additionally, the visitor will have event registration and other information specific to the chapter when visiting the chapter.

That sounds like a situation where our approach would be to use Drupal Domain Access to give us the subdomains with the ability to share content across the multiple domains, and then potentially civicrm multisite so that each subdomain/site works as a portal to its own Level 2 container in civicrm.
Note that civicrm multisite has some issues, but provides an additional form of acl and means any data transactions that occur at a specific subdomain/site tie that contact directly to the 'organisation' that 'owns' the subdomain/site.