Re: CRM recommendation: CiviCRM

[Jeff Schroeder <jeffschroed gmail com>]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 8:20 AM, Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org> wrote:
> The CiviCRM team has offered to help. Who should I put them in touch with?
>
>> Donald Lobo said...
>>
>> We'd be happy to help and assist the GNOME foundation with the CiviCRM
>> implementation :) I'm the CiviCRM lead developer and we definitely would
>> like to see you'll use the software effectively :)
>>
>> You can contact us on IRC / forums (http://forum.civicrm.org/). We did
>> note a GNOME developer asking questions on the CiviCRM channel (we were
>> offline at that time, but a few community folks took care of him :)

I asked a bunch of questions about CiviCRM on their channel but am far
from being considered a gnome developer. Would installing this on
label be ok? If not does anyone have any other suggestions? Can I get
a few people to agree with that? If so I'll work on it tonight.

> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org> wrote:
>>
>> GNOME Sys Admin team,
>>
>> How do we move forward with this?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Stormy
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Jeff Schroeder <jeffschroed gmail com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org> wrote:
>>> > Jeff - I believe you had the action item on installing a CRM system
>>> > once one
>>> > was picked.
>>> >
>>> > From an infrastructure point of view (security notices, bug fixes,
>>> > etc), do
>>> > you have any opinions?
>>> >
>>> > Thanks.
>>> >
>>> > Paul
>>>
>>> Hey paul, thats news to me :)
>>>
>>> It looks like you are looking for Sri or Alexandro:
>>> http://live.gnome.org/SysadminTeam/Meeting20090814
>>>
>>> If you need help setting it up or what not I'd be more than happy to
>>> help this weekend. When poking around and asking on #civicrm about it,
>>> Nathan Kinkade of the Creative Commons Tech team answered several
>>> questions about it. A standalone version of civicrm exists but isn't
>>> really supported. That leaves us with the choices of using Drupal,
>>> Joomla, or writing integration to our new Plone CMS. Another guy on
>>> IRC mentioned they use Drupal only for CiviCRM which is also an
>>> option. If you want my opinion, lets do it.
>>>
>>> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> > From: Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>
>>> > Date: Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 2:58 PM
>>> > Subject: CRM recommendation: CiviCRM
>>> > To: GNOME Marketing List <marketing-list gnome org>, GNOME Foundation
>>> > Membership Committee <membership-committee gnome org>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > GNOME Marketing Folks & Membership Committe,
>>> >
>>> > We'd like to use a CRM system to track finances, donors, sponsors,
>>> > members,
>>> > etc.
>>> >
>>> > I'm recommending that we use CiviCRM, http://civicrm.org, and I'd like
>>> > your
>>> > feedback. (Note that one way to do this would have been to install all
>>> > the
>>> > CRM systems or to get demos of all of them. I didn't do that. I read
>>> > about
>>> > them, talked to people and checked out their webpages.)
>>> >
>>> > Here are some of the reasons I think we should use CiviCRM (over
>>> > SalesForce,
>>> > SugarCRM,Oracle, SAP ...)
>>> >
>>> > CiviCRM is used and well liked by a number of other free software
>>> > organizations:
>>> > * QuestionCopyright.org
>>> > * opensourcematters.org
>>> > * Wikimedia
>>> > * Wikipedia
>>> >
>>> > Here are the things we need it to do (that it does):
>>> > * It's free software: under an open source license (GNU AGPL) and
>>> > developed
>>> > in an open source model with a community.
>>> > * We can install it and support it ourselves. (Several people voiced
>>> > dislike
>>> > with the hosted some where else model.)
>>> > * Configurable - you can add and edit your own fields for every type of
>>> > person you are tracking.
>>> > * It has community support as well as paid support options. (We'd do
>>> > community support but if the Foundation grows a lot, at some point it
>>> > might
>>> > be good to be able to hire back up support for the sys admin team.)
>>> > * Integrates with Paypal and Google Checkout.
>>> > * Automated mailings to donors (so we can thank them automatically,
>>> > send
>>> > receipts, send annual reminders, etc. Comes with features like groups
>>> > and
>>> > not resending to the same people, tracking click-throughs, handling
>>> > bounces,
>>> > etc.)
>>> > * track people (members, volunteers, sponsors and donors)
>>> > * track donations and subscriptions - it tracks in-kind, cash, and
>>> > volunteer
>>> > time
>>> > * track events (not sure we would use this)
>>> > * import and export contribution data to/from other systems like an
>>> > accounting package (I don't know if it works with gnucash but I assume
>>> > with
>>> > some work we could make that happen if it doesn't already)
>>> >
>>> > It has lots of features that might be fun to have like:
>>> > * "Allow constituents to create their own personal fundraising pages
>>> > linked
>>> > to an organization campaign. Supporters add their own add content, and
>>> > can
>>> > choose to include a progress bar and an 'honor roll' of contributors.
>>> > Supporters are given 'soft credit' for each contribution that comes in
>>> > through their fundraising page."
>>> >
>>> > It was designed for nonprofits.
>>> >
>>> > What it doesn't do:
>>> > * document managent (Currently the board, Rosanna and I do not have a
>>> > good
>>> > place/way to put contracts like for our insurance, 401K plan, etc.) It
>>> > does
>>> > integrate with Joomla! and Drupal so I don't know if something could be
>>> > done
>>> > that way.
>>> > * track action items (Currently Rosanna and I need a way to sync and
>>> > track
>>> > action items and the board manually tracks action items in the
>>> > wiki/board
>>> > meeting minutes.) It doesn't do any project management that I can see.
>>> > It
>>> > was suggested that you could use "activities" to manage tasks. I looked
>>> > at
>>> > it a bit and I think that would work.
>>> >
>>> > Areas where it might be weak:
>>> > * Integrating with snail mail (and Rosanna sends out gifts for Friends
>>> > of
>>> > GNOME)
>>> > * Managing prospects (the only prospects we keep now are sponsors and
>>> > that
>>> > number is suffiently small that we aren't doing lots of things to it
>>> > automatically)
>>> > * Accounting integration
>>> >
>>> > You can try it out here: http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/. It seems
>>> > relatively intuitive.
>>> >
>>> > I think it would make life easier for me, Rosanna, the treasurers and
>>> > the
>>> > Membership Committee. It would make it much, much easier to track our
>>> > Friends of GNOME donors.
>>> >
>>> > Best,
>>> >
>>> > Stormy
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > marketing-list mailing list
>>> > marketing-list gnome org
>>> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > gnome-infrastructure mailing list
>>> > gnome-infrastructure gnome org
>>> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-infrastructure
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jeff Schroeder
>>>
>>> Don't drink and derive, alcohol and analysis don't mix.
>>> http://www.digitalprognosis.com
>>
>
>



-- 
Jeff Schroeder

Don't drink and derive, alcohol and analysis don't mix.
http://www.digitalprognosis.com