CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

... Yes criminal, it's right for you...



Well, I am working with a nonprofit organization to set up a new website for them (obviously). Their needs for this website are:

1. Clean membership database & management

2. Event calendar with registration module for those events (whether it be free registration or paid registration. Also, would like for it to work with site members and non-members).

3. Donation module, usable by members and non-members

4. Mass email module

5. Photogallery

6. Blog


As I understand, CiviCRM should help us with #1-4, but I have a few questions on how exactly it works. Can non-members sign up for events? If someone signed up using the CiviCRM tool, could they also be promoted as a member to post on the non-civicrm blog module?

My biggest question however, is how is payment for events and donations handled? Could someone explain the details of this? Can non-members pay/register for events? Is the actual payment done on our site or are members linked to a different website? How are credit card payments handled? And, would paypal cost for us - and if so, how much?
Also, if there are any other bits to this process that I am unaware of, I would appreciate knowing.

I have a lot of questions on how this works..  Any help with these would be appreciated.

Oh, btw, I am using Joomla 1.5 and Drupal 6 - I am using both because they are very different in how administration is done, so I decided I'd like to try out both and make the website.. then let other members who would also be administering the site vote on which they like more.

Anonymous visitors (what you mean by "non-members" I think) can make donations and register for events. They can also signup for a user account  at the same time. Permission to "post in a blog module" (for example) would be assigned to folks with user accounts within your CMS admin (Drupal or Joomla).

Regarding payments - credit card transactions are always handled by your "payment processor" and CiviCRM has integration for several of them (PayPal, Authorize.net, PayJunction, Google Checkout, etc.). Costs vary by processor - so you should check out their sites. Also the user flow is different for different processors. For some, the transaction happens "in the background" and the user stays on your site. For others, the user is taken to the processor's site to enter their card info (or log in to their account w/ the processor) - and then returned to your (CiviCRM) site. In both cases the person's info and the payment are recorded in the CiviCRM database. However, credit card data is never stored by CiviCRM.

Excellent, this should work. Thank you so much!

I will have to look into payment processors now. Does CiviCRM have an option for "paid membership" and recurring membership fees? Or is that entirely up to the payment processor?

Thank you very much for your help