Connect

Building connections with people and with organisations, and managing those contacts effectively, is a critical element of advocacy and campaign work that is often overlooked or under resourced. Many NGOs and community groups are seriously hampered in achieving their mission through having to make do with inadequate contact management systems. The lack of affordable tools means community organisations may have to deal with contacts being split across e-lists, outlook groups, Yahoo groups, mailman lists, spreadsheets and databases. Others are tied to proprietary products that don't quite match their needs, or have a system that is limited to a single person sitting at the right computer. And crucially in the 'connected age', many are not benefitting from online features that can make managing an organisations contacts much easier. Features such as being able to renew members directly from a link in an email - without requiring members to remember their passwords - or getting fundraising projects running smoothly without masses of admin work landing on over-stretched office staff or volunteers. We have been working with CiviCRM which is an open source contact-customer-client relationship management tool that grew from the Howard Dean US presidential nominee campaign.

CiviCRM

CiviCRM is a powerful, multi-featured, web-based product that allows you to record and manage information about your members, clients, volunteers, activists, donors, staff and customers. CiviCRM is open source, so it is freely downloadable without licensing fees. It is an affordable and cost effective solution compared to most proprietary vendor offerings. Since it is open source, you can run it yourself or make use of our professional support and if your needs aren't being met by one provider, there are alternatives. Being web-based, multiple users can use the system securely at the same time, from different locations, with different permissions. It can work with any website but has been developed specifically to integrate directly with Drupal and Joomla, the increasingly popular open source Content Management Systems. As well as Drupal and Joomla we have used CiviCRM effectively with WordPress and can provide support for WordPress and CiviCRM integrated sites. (Read more about CiviCRM) We have done a number of installations for NZ organisations and have supported several community and international developments. We are very happy to run through a demonstration of what CiviCRM can deliver for your organisation. Read more about CiviCRM, download our CiviCRM Information Sheet (PDF), or find out more about the full functionality at civicrm.org.