Re: CRM recommendation: CiviCRM

["Jaap A. Haitsma" <jaap haitsma org>]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 21:58, Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org> wrote:
> 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.
+1 from me

For missing functionality we could always decide to code it up ourselves

Jaap