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Author Topic: Multiple distinct organizations  (Read 2206 times)

akinsey

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Multiple distinct organizations
October 06, 2011, 01:38:44 pm
I work for a company that is investigating different options for tracking donors/members/gifts/etc for multiple distinct organizations.  We have 100+ clients, each of which has their own member list, donation list, etc.  We currently manage all of those clients using a customized database similar to Raiser's Edge.  If a person is a member of multiple organizations we have separate records for that person with each record linked to only one of the organizations. 

I'm currently looking at various options to see if replacing our current tool is cost-effective. 

I can see that CiviCRM looks like a very versatile tool for managing a single group, but can it handle multiple groups?  Or would I have to install a separate instance of CiviCRM for each distinct group that I manage?

For the sake of example, suppose that two of my clients are a local library and a local charity. 

The library and the charity each of distinct member listings, donations, capital campaigns, mailing lists, goals, fiscal years, etc.  Some people may belong to both the library and the charity, so they would need to have two entries in the database- one for each. 

Can I do this in CiviCRM? 
If I can do this, how easy/manageable is it?
How hard would it be to pull a donation report for only the library?
How hard would it be to pull a list of all members of the charity that have bad addresses?
How hard would it be to send out a e-mail newsletter to just donors of the library?

Eileen

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Re: Multiple distinct organizations
October 06, 2011, 01:48:47 pm
I think that if there is no information sharing you would probably look at separate civicrm DB instances. However, the Aegir tools may make this fairly maintainable (ie. you can get efficiency in your admin tasks)
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Eileen

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Re: Multiple distinct organizations
October 06, 2011, 01:51:31 pm
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/download/attachments/39452787/koumbit-civicrm-aegir-2011-03-07-1.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1299476244000
Make today the day you step up to support CiviCRM and all the amazing organisations that are using it to improve our world - http://civicrm.org/contribute

akinsey

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Re: Multiple distinct organizations
October 06, 2011, 01:57:32 pm
Quote from: Eileen on October 06, 2011, 01:48:47 pm
I think that if there is no information sharing you would probably look at separate civicrm DB instances.

Yes, there's no information sharing.  Right now they're all hosted in the same database, but each record is tied to only one client.  If a member of one client updates their mailing address then it'll only be updated in one record, even if that person exists in multiple groups. 

So if I'd need to install a separate civiCRM instance for each client, is there any existing tool that allows me to pull information from multiple instances? 

For example, we send out weekly and monthly reports to all of our clients listing donations for that time period.  Would I have to roll my own custom reporting tool?

If so, how easy is it to query the CiviCRM database externally?

akinsey

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Re: Multiple distinct organizations
October 06, 2011, 02:00:42 pm
Follow-on question: Can I also write to the DB externally?

That is, if I had a file that contained donation information for 10 separate groups could I write a script that added the appropriate entries for each group or would I have to manually log in to each instance and import the file?

Eileen

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Re: Multiple distinct organizations
October 06, 2011, 02:09:17 pm
You would probably look at using drush for that
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Dave Greenberg

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Re: Multiple distinct organizations
October 06, 2011, 06:38:24 pm
Depending on what you mean by writing to DB externally - CiviCRM includes a comprehensive API that can be accessed in a number of different ways:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/civicrm/ch066_api/
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviCRM+Public+APIs
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akinsey

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Re: Multiple distinct organizations
October 07, 2011, 05:59:11 am
Thanks everyone! 

You've all given me a lot of helpful information that should make my analysis of alternatives easier.  The API looks fairly easy to manage, which is what I was hoping for.  If I have to come up with a script to read/write across multiple instances, having an easy-to-use API is essential. 

I know this is outside of the CiviCRM realm, but does anyone know if drush plays well with Aegir?

Eileen

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Re: Multiple distinct organizations
October 07, 2011, 12:16:04 pm
drush is an integral part of aegir - if you look for bgm on IRC he's an aegir expert
Make today the day you step up to support CiviCRM and all the amazing organisations that are using it to improve our world - http://civicrm.org/contribute
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  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
  • Old sections (read-only, deprecated) »
  • Support »
  • Pre-installation Questions (Moderator: Dave Greenberg) »
  • Multiple distinct organizations

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