Packt Using CiviCRM 464pages software manual

- Build a CRM that conforms to your needs from the ground up with all of the features that you want
- Develop an integrated online system that handles contacts, donations, event registration, bulk e-mailing, case management and other functions such as activity tracking, grants, reporting, and analytics
- Integrate CiviCRM with Drupal and Joomla!
- Build solutions from the ground up with the help of easy-to-understand steps from practical use-case scenarios.
- Plan a constituency relationship management strategy with ladders of engagement that will improve how your organization realizes its mission

CiviCRM is a web-based, open source CRM system, designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental organizations. Elected officials, professional/trade associations, political campaigns and parties, government agencies, and other similar organizations are among its growing number of enthusiastic users. This book shows you how to harness CiviCRM’s impressive array of possibilities as you develop and execute performance-critical CRM strategies.

This book will help you become familiar with the structure and main functions of CiviCRM. It will guide you in developing and successfully implementing a CRM strategy for your organization using detailed explanations and practical examples.

Using CiviCRM walks you through developing a CRM Implementation Plan that is suited to your organization's size, culture, and needs. Readers will take away many constituent relationship management best practices and the knowledge of how to implement them with CiviCRM. Benefits of Using CiviCRM will be felt across your organization, and help it better achieve its mission.

Overall, your organization will interact with constituents more effectively and handle staff growth and transitions by tracking all contacts and interactions with them in a system shared across the organization. Gathering and analyzing data about your constituents and their interactions with your organization will better inform your decisions.

If your organization fundraises, you’ll be able to raise more money and reduce costs by identifying qualified prospects for targeted fundraising initiatives. We show how to attract new prospects and convert them to donors using online, direct mail, telemarketing and direct contact channels Using CiviCRM. You’ll learn why and how to set up and then grow your monthly donor program, as well as improve the frequency, average donation amounts, and retention rates of your donor base.

With this book you’ll be able to reduce the burden on administrative resources by providing online payments and self-service options for event registrations and membership renewals. You can increase the likelihood your existing subscribers will become more involved with your organization, ensure more of your members show up to volunteer, identify potential leaders and steward their volunteer activities

Finally, you'll be making relevant information easily available that quantifies what a great job you've been doing, including the number of hours that volunteers gave to your organization last year, the number of cases managed, or the number of new viral signups from your latest urgent action e-mail.

This easy-to-understand book will guide you through building a well-formulated and well-executed CRM system that meets your organization's needs perfectly.

<b>What you will learn from this book :</b>
- Create a successful CiviCRM implementation project
- Install and configure CiviCRM in Joomla! or Drupal, understand advanced configuration options, and review the upgrade process in detail
- Get comfortable with the CiviCRM interface and understand the basic contact functionality and concepts to perform various contact records-related operations
- Collect data, organize it, and import it into the system to ensure smooth functioning of your projects
- Use CiviCRM to communicate efficiently and track case history with constituents.
- Build an integrated system to solicit, retain, and manage your donors and members through robust management and reporting tools for administrators
- Take advantage of the many CiviCRM tools for generating both simple and complex event structures and managing registrants through every phase of the project
- Integrate the grant management process with your other constituent management activities, making your organization a more efficient and productive financial support provider
- Make reports using the various templates to retrieve, display and analyze your data

<b>Who this book is written for</b>
This book is for project implementers, organization leaders, staff, and volunteers in advocacy, non-profit, and non-governmental organizations, elected officials, professional/trade associations, political campaigns and parties, government agencies, and other similar organizations who want to implement CiviCRM in a manner tailored to their organization's size, culture, and needs. It addresses CRM strategists, implementers, administrators, and end users looking to become power users in communicating, fundraising, managing events, memberships, grants, cases, and people-resource management.