CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hello everyone,

I'm currently running a non-profit organization and we're experiencing lots of problems regarding membership management. In the past 3 years, we've changed 3 times the way we manage our members since no software seems to suit our needs and our wallet. I'm personally using FileMaker Pro at work, which is a great solution but way too expensive and complicated for people who don't know it. We've used some specific softwares and some generic ones as Excel, Access, etc. But the fact that every member of our team is in a different place doesn't help. Plus, we lose lots of members just because our secretary sometimes doesn't see a membership comes to an end and doesn't warn the member. So, we would like a sort of automatic email reminder sent before the membership ends.

We're now trying to look for a solution that would enable us to work wherever we are. For the past few months, Google has been a sort of best friend to me to help me find that solution. It seems CiviCRM is very powerful. Unfortunately, there's not much information available on the internet and I can't find some answers to my questions.

First, I must let you know that we're already running a WordPress website. This website has all the information about our organization and enables people to become members online. But basically, all they do is send us a form and pay with PayPal.

So, I would like to fully understand how CiviCRM works. I see it's fully compatible with WordPress, but is it a sort of plugin which runs only in the background (within the administration panel), or is it a sort of standalone solution which would just use WordPress in our case? In short, can we install CiviCRM on our existing website or do we need to create another website that will just concentrate on CiviCRM? I hope my question is clear enough. I'm asking because I don't want the whole membership management to be visible on our website, I just want it to run in the background and be visible by our staff only.

Thanks a lot of your help.