CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Can anyone help us? (I really mean 'will anyone help us' as reading the posts on here I'm sure there are a lot of people who can!). I am a volunteer for a small UK charity called 'The Restricted Growth Association'. I have installed civiCRM on our server with Joomla with the aim of automating our membership subscriptions and renewals. I have had a 'play' with it but now have to admit that although I know it can do what we need, I can't figure out how - I am not technical enough.

I know you can buy in support for development but I have tried that route and we can not afford it. We do need to have a system that automates the membership online and controls our members area of the website. As from April, we can no longer afford to have an employee to manage memberships manually. This means that we will be fully relient on volunteers (including myself) to keep up the work of the association.

I am asking if anyone would lend a hand to get the system up and running. I have planned out a basic structure for the database (in my opinion it should be fairly standard but again, I am no expert). We can't afford to pay anyone but would be very grateful if anyone could lend a hand.

A bit of background about us and our current system:

We are a very small UK charity that supports individuals and families affected by resticted growth (better known as Dwarfism). We have over 500 memberships that consist of individual members, families, joint memberships and associate memberships that means there are a total of over 1200 individuals. At present this is managed through a stand alone MS Access database. We also have a website with a members area that is restricted to members only by phpBB3.

Many thanks in advance

Stephen Birch
RGA Trustee

Really late reply - i'm sorry I've not seen this before now...

I could probably be of some use - send me a private message (PM) if you are still in need.