CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Background:

We are trying out civicrm in a non-profit organization. The Orgnization has structure as follows:
a. National Level .This has states in it
b. State Level. This has has districts in it
c. District Level. This has cities or towns in it.
d. City Level . In a city we have members who work together to raise funds or conduct Awareness programs

My approach:
I built Contact Sub-types of Nation, State, District, City. I have used Relationships to relate each City to District and then District to State, States to the Nation.
Question1: Is this a good design? Are there any other ways to do it?

At National level we have fund raising goals for different types. Like Old-age-home fund, Orphan hostel fund, Awareness Fund and some more.
These goals are distributed among 'states' to raise it. States distributes it to City. The Members in the city then raise funds for each type. Whenever a member donates his donation it should be added to the City. Sometimes the group of members donate without identifying individuals.
Sometimes the City or State leaders donates just to meet his Goals.

Question2: How can I set up Fund goals for the Nation, each State and each Citiy. And whenever a donation happens at any level it should add up to the Goals of the higher level of organization. That is, all donations from Cities add up to the achieved goals of States. Same is with States and Nation.

I am also concerned of how the approach will help in Reports

Thanks for the response Lobo.

You asked:
1. can u explain the reasoning behind using contact sub-types? not sure i understand how that helps

Here is how I think it will help:
1a: Each sub-types City/District/State can have distinct Relationship Types so that they can be linked in the hierarchy. We can have relationships like City1 'is city of' State1.
1b: The office in the City have designations that apply only to City level offices. Similarly with Districts and States. So a Sub-type can help make distinct Relationships for each Level.
1c: Having contact sub-types would help in having options open for custom data. Plus, I think it would help in delegating the Fund Goals from State to District and then to City.
 
2. can u give us an idea of scale. i..e how many cities/districts/statess and approx how many contacts / city?

As of now, there are 700 cities. A City is divided it into smaller cities if it reaches 150 members. A smaller city is  managed as a regular city. We call it East City1, West City1 ... There are Cities with as low as 10 individuals. And there cities that have 140 members. On an average a City has 25 members.
Districts: 80
States: 8
Total members 15000.  Expected to Grow at 15% to 20% in next 5 years.

3. whats the permissioning model? who accesses the db?
I am not sure I understood it right.
As of now only the staff would use civicrm. At some point we would want to open it for Office holders in each City, District and State. Then for all Members.

I am working towards becoming a civicrm developer so that I can do the custom code as required.
I will be contributing back in terms of cash and code as I build them.
The quality of software( and documentation) you and your team has developed and released as open source is great example. I am working to be a part of it.

Thanks again.

This organization has its own structure of States. It does not align with the political States. It is simply a division of the country into East State, West State, South East State...  and so on.  Same is the approach with District and City.

If we use civicrm groups then there would be 700+ groups. And each year another 100 gets added. Having so many groups appears to be too large.