CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am trying to figure out if CiviCRM will meet our membership management/event needs. We currently have a WordPress site that is developed using subdomains.
 
We have a national site where members register, pay, and select a home chapter (mostly city based). Once paid, members can visit the site of any chapter they like. Each chapter has its own site (Events, photos, About, etc) hosted on a subdomain which is created off of a Chapter Template site in WP. The main site doesn't currently have a need for event posting, but we might add that in the future. When events are posted, or otherwise as needed, the chapter organizers need to be able to email the members only in their chapter (as opposed to emailing the entire organization). We also need the option of emailing the entire organization.

1- Will CiviCRM  meet these basic needs?
2- Is it possible to direct funds collected to different places?  For example: have event fees go to the chapter organizer and have membership fees go to the national organization (We currently use Paypal, but are not opposed to alternatives)
3- It looks like there are many types of users - is it possible to have users subscribe to get on a mailing list without having full access to the site?
4- Is it possible to have visitors to the site see, for example, the event calendars for each chapter without actually allowing them to click through to the event page to view details or register?
5- Can this be configured to send out automatic emails when members register and need to renew?
6- Is it possible to send a notification based on chapter selection to the organizer of the chapter that someone has signed up/needs to renew?
7- Is it possible to email only members who have registered for an event?
8- How difficult will this be to implement? I have a computer science degree, but my specialty is data warehousing, not web development
9- Where is the best place to find tutorials/documentation on setting up this kind of functionality?

I appreciate your help!!

I am trying to figure out if CiviCRM will meet our membership management/event needs. We currently have a WordPress site that is developed using subdomains.

We have done a number of systems with multiple subdomains, each wired in to civi in a multisite configuration. The outcome of this is that each 'domain' becomes an ACL (access control) sub-system in civi. This means that chapter managers logging in via their chapter site will have access ONLY to those contacts who are in 'their' ACL group - and hence are limited in terms of who they can email etc. This would then deliver much of what you are asking about - but that is Drupal. I can't speak for what is possible with multisite set up on WordPress - and it may be that the above fundamental access control is not critical for you.

Also I don't see you mentioning how many chapters are involved - some of the requirements (at least in WP) might require a profile per chapter, which may not be too big a pain if you have eg < 20 but could be a big pain eg if > 50

2- Is it possible to direct funds collected to different places?  For example: have event fees go to the chapter organizer and have membership fees go to the national organization (We currently use Paypal, but are not opposed to alternatives)

Depends what you mean by 'go'. If you use a different eg PayPal account for each then yes it would funnel through to different bank accounts - but not sure if you mean the actual transfer of the money or the bookkeeping / reporting side. The latter should be fine even without "domain based ACL".

4- Is it possible to have visitors to the site see, for example, the event calendars for each chapter without actually allowing them to click through to the event page to view details or register?

The approach in Drupal would be to use the civi 'domain' value to restrict a listing of events for each sub site. No idea how you do this in WordPress but you might just need a custom field on Events that indicates the chapter 'owner'

Hopefully you either can step around the domain ACL stuff, or that it is available for WP and I am just blissfully (or typically) ignorant about such matters.