CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi,
I am a complete Newbie when it comes to CiviCRM and CRM's in general. I have been reading the excellent user and setup guide, but was hoping someone could check my logic before I head off in the wrong direction and let me know if there is a better way of doing things.

Organization Info
Our organization exists to market an education program in a public school and then collect ongoing funds from enrolled families to support the program.
We collect Registrations of interest (ROI's) for the program up to 10 years out and filter them through to the school 3 years from entry for them to complete their enrollment processes.
Once a student is enrolled, families must remain Family members of our organization in an appropriate category based on the number of household children enrolled and pay the fees due.
Other interested members of the community can also become Supportive members.

My thoughts to setup:
Each family would be registered as a Household with individuals connected for the parents.

ROI details (which relate to the student) would be established as Cases so that I can track all steps from application to final enrollment.
 - Should I connect these to the household or create individual records for the children and connect to them? I have no need to contact children directly, only parents.

I need to be able to gather data based on Year of entry requested - a list of all students requesting entry in a particular year


Can I create triggers in the Cases that would automatically upgrade a family's membership? Eg. from Prospective to Enrolled

I also need to manage Volunteer interest and want to capture what area of expertise that they have. Would this best be done using a group or tags or both?

I appreciate any feedback you can give me.
Thanks
Ali