CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi
Civi does lots of things really well but when it comes to faith groups like churches/mosques/synagogues etc there are some gaps in functionality. My hope is that we can see these gaps plugged over the coming years as the functionality our sector needs is also really useful to lots of other Civi users.  There have been some steps forward recently which I wanted to let you know about.

Recurring Events
Lots of faith groups run events which recur eg a toddler group each week in term-time, courses (marriage, Parenting, Alpha) which may run for several weeks twice a year or church children's groups which run every Sunday. At present you can't handle such events easily in Civi so I've started a Make It Happen campaign. You can read all about it at http://civicrm.org/blogs/lindseym/recurring-events-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-time-%E2%80%98make-it-happen%E2%80%99  Please comment on the blog as that will help to generate interest.

An added feature of this project is the ability to record attendance for Civi groups. Our church has many groups which meet mid-week and attendance is a key indicator of engagement. New developments will enable you to record and report on attendance for your groups... see which ones are thriving and which are declining. This could also be used as a simple way to deal with youth groups, Sunday children's groups etc. Lots of possibilities.

Please consider helping to fund this campaign. Even if it's only $20-50, every little helps to edge us nearer our goal. You can donate at http://civicrm.org/content/make-it-happen

Groups View
Our groups are clustered eg a pastorate is made up of 4 mid-week groups; our hospitality team has 4 teams within it to cover different Sundays. We use Civi to hierarchy our groups but you can't view them in a hierarchy easily. To solve that we've developed a view which shows groups in their hierarchy along with the number of people in the group and an option to see the names of contacts. It also has a graph which shows the growth/decline of a group over time.

You can read more about this at http://civicrm.org/blogs/lindseym/new-features-extension-civi-groups  In the coming months we hope to develop reporting facilities for groups (much like some of those available in Civimember). We're doing this because we like the ease of Groups when you're dealing with hundreds of groups but need some additional functionality to help us track changes. 

I hope you find these features useful. Please use this topic to share ways in which you've developed Civi to meet sector-specific needs.  Thanks!

Lindsey