CiviCRM is an open source, web-based constituent relationship management system designed to meet the needs of advocacy and nonprofit groups.
It consists of various groups of functions.
At the heart is a 'constituent relationship management' (CRM) which may be thought of as Contact database on steroids.
Whilst users of Drupal are called 'Users', those same people in the parallel universe of CiviCRM are referred to as 'Contacts'. 'Contacts' and 'Users' are synchronised. All 'Contacts' are Drupal 'Users' but not all 'Users' need be 'Contacts'. They will be if they have joined a group or newsletter but if they are only there as a contact name and address, they probably will not be.
CiviCRM has several component parts
From SVA's point of view the most important of these are; of CiviCRM to manage your events and their participants.
- CiviMail which is a mass-mailing component of CiviCRM which allows us to track open rates and click throughs. Reference: CiviCRM .
-
CiviEvent which is a component of CiviCRM to manage our events and their participants.
Reference: CiviEvent Admin, CiviEvent - Phase 1 Specifications. - CiviReports which will be a component of CiviCRM to provide preconfigured reports on CiviCRM data. Reference: CiviReport Phase 1 Specifications. (In development.)
- CiviMember which is a component of CiviCRM which provides flexible membership management for your organization, along with convenient online signup and renewal. Reference: CiviCRM .
There is also
- CiviConference which is a Drupal contributed module for CiviCRM that creates a product type "Conference Ticket" which allows attendees to register for related events in CiviEvent during the checkout process. Reference: Drupal contributed modules .
- CiviContribute which is an online fundraising and donor management component of CiviCRM which enables you to track and manage contributions to your organization. Reference: CiviCRM .
CiviCRM can be difficult to understand at first as it is more than a database or section of a website. It is a complex management system.
How to;
Add a new 'Organisation' contact to the Database
Add single or multiple contacts to an organisation
Add a new 'Individual' contact to the Database
