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Author Topic: A small but growing nonprofit considering civiCRM  (Read 2062 times)

pauleisen

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A small but growing nonprofit considering civiCRM
July 25, 2008, 07:12:43 am
Greetings,
I am with a new and small nonprofit (less than 1 year-old and less than $200,000 in revenue) called the Center for Citizen Leadership (www.citizenleadership.org) and we are looking for a good customer/donor relationship management system.  Our main issue is that we have volunteers who need access to the system across the country - so we need a more sophisticated set-up than an Access database.  Our basic needs include inputting contacts, recording donations and ability for newsblasts.  As we develop our website further, we want to integrate more web 2.0 features and allow for integration with our CRM.

I've looked at quite a few online options and would like to use the open-source module if it's feasible.  We have little technical expertise on staff, but I have a friend who is a computer engineer who is willing to set up our CRM solution for free.  He told me about SugarCRM and then I found civiCRM.  In the future we would like to integrate our CRM with our website - but we don't have the money to make that happen at this point.

Here are my main questions:
- How much initial set-up time would it take a good computer engineer to set up civiCRM for our organization?  How much ongoing technical support?
- Are the reporting functions that aren't built in easy to add on if you are not a computer engineer?
- In general, is civiCRM a good option for a nonprofit with minimal resources for technical support?
- Is civiCRM a good option for an organization that wants to just start off with basic customer relationship management but then add features as we grow?

Thanks for any input you may have.

-Paul
« Last Edit: July 25, 2008, 09:13:46 am by pauleisen »

geilhufe

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Re: A small but growing nonprofit considering civiCRM
July 25, 2008, 12:42:05 pm
Tough questions.

In general, CiviCRM is a very good solution for your situation with one caveat. If the internal data screens + exporting to excel do not provide the reporting that you need, you will need to either have or hire high quality technical resources to build the reports you need. For the most part, Excel should be fine for smaller organizations with pretty sophisticated needs (but you need someone with a good head for databases and excel).

On to the specifics:

(1) How long: For someone familiar with LAMP applications (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) AND able to read instructions, setting up XAMPP+Drupal+CiviCRM on a existing Virtual Private Server (without CiviMail, CiviReport) will take about a day. The more important part is configuring CiviCRM to do what your organization wants to do. Depending on complexity that could be 10s or 100s of hours. Use the online demo to plan... http://demo.civicrm.org

(2) Reporting requires installing CiviReport
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviReport
Or understanding the custom search framework.
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Custom+Search+Components

(3) No database is a good option for a nonprofit with no/minimal technical resources... that's the reason that the most charities store data on Post Its and in Excel. Having said that, as far as web-based solutions go, it is pretty good once it is set up and running.

(4) CiviCRM is by far the best solution for starting off and growing in different web 2.0 directions. That is primarily a function of being open source and designed well.
Drupal and CiviCRM consulting, strategy and configuration
http://www.social-source.com/

ksyed

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Re: A small but growing nonprofit considering civiCRM
August 07, 2008, 12:05:22 pm
I am an intern at a non profit in Erie, Pennsylvania.  www.ebizitpa.org.  I have recently graduated from college back in may in MIS and have little experience with CMS.  It took me less than 1 day to have a go daddy server, drupal and civicrm up and running.
I could not believe how flawlessly everything came together.
There are a lot of resources on the online forums to help the installation become a breeze.

geilhufe

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Re: A small but growing nonprofit considering civiCRM
August 08, 2008, 04:01:38 pm
ksyed-

Thanks for the note. If you have a few minutes, could we trouble you to write up a case study on the wiki? I especially like the word "flawless"  ;)

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Case+Studies

Drupal and CiviCRM consulting, strategy and configuration
http://www.social-source.com/
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