View source for Training: Introduction to CiviCRM

Facilitated by Dave Greenberg, [http://civicrm.org CiviCRM] Product Manager

This session will offer an overview of features and components, and discuss how nonprofits can define and assess their requirements in evaluating CiviCRM as a possible fit for their organization. Dave will also demo CiviCRM in action, with examples of live sites.

NOTES


Civicrm developed because the nonprofit sector needed a solution that could be localized, translated, and central repository for constituents.  The problem previously had been that people within an organization had been spread all over in spreadsheets and other documents.

An important part of the evolution was that it became a Drupal module.  Now it integrates directly with Drupal and Joomla.  

THE INTEGRATION

        works by users get automatically get listed as a contact.  registering for events, telling a friend all gets tracked in civicrm
        ie donor management 
        people build other modules especially in drupal using civicrm's api.  for example an ubercart module that integrates with civicrm so that you can track users with purchases.

STANDALONE VERSION ALSO less than 10% of people use standalone version

examples of organizations - none of these require coding
    collect constituent information - amnesty international using drupal.  when you sign up on site.  civicrm has injected fields in drupal registration form and my account section.  these can be viewed in any of 12 languages.  
			
    online contributions - conservation fund - can configure online contribution pages like graphics, donation structure, and profile information.  these can be campaign specific.  paypal, google and others to take payments. they don't store credit card.  models are paypal pro must have ssl connection and google checkout and paypal standard and go to other site to finish process.  information gets put into database.  now pledging mechanism with reminders for cyclical donations.  also recurring payments.  the problem with recurring payments is that the credit card numbers are not stored.  can do promotions with donations.  in next version 2.2, people can create their own fundraising pages which will track who's helping.  

	membership signup nyama - different membership types, how long is the person a member, different rules
	online event registration - prader willi research - paid and free events, pay by credit card or pay later, track users
	public directory - sangonet / prodder directory of south african ngo's - searchable and exposed data


most people who use civicrm use it as their donor database.  civicrm is at 60-70% of fuctionality of solutions like etapestry.

question about capturing sensitive data . frontline defenders behind firewall

discussion about advantages to salesforce - better admin area, open source, data is yours, salesforce doesn't have campaign management, internationalization, salesforce has good workflow management, though

integrated with drupal roles and permissions

case management module coming up to track cases.  configurable with xml.  activity based story telling model.