CiviCRM Documentation Survey Responses

Kieran Lal at CivicSpace distributed a survey collecting info on folks current CRM processes, and their needs. This was done to help inform the development of documentation for CiviCRM.

b>Please tell us how you have managed your community/organization contacts in the last month? : We use a Filemaker database to track donors and contacts. In addition to the usual name/address/phone, etc., e've created fields called "status," "interests" and "special treatment." "Status" refers to the contact's relationship to our organization (major donor/foundation/media/member/board member, etc.) "Interests" refers to things they're interested in that relate to our mission (for example, environment/media/women's issues/health, etc.). "Special treatment" is for things like "don't phone," "don't give out name," etc.

We also have a related table of "lists," similar to CiviCRM's "groups." For example, we might have a list of "recipients of July 2004 fundraising appeal."

We use a related table of "donations," which is linked to the contacts table by a unique contact ID. The information we store for each donation includes date of gift, dollar amount, and "activity," "purpose" and "source" (three categorization/tagging systems that we have adopted).

We use a single comment field in the contacts table to summarize our history of experiences with a contact. If we have a conversation of significance, we'll add an additional note in the comments field. We don't use the database to schedule and log meetings and phone calls the way CiviCRM does. However, we're interested in trying out the CiviCRM approach, because (1) it would make it easier for everyone on staff to share the information over the web; and (2) hopefully it would eliminate some of the ways that individuals in our organization are tracking contact information OUTSIDE the database (which means that most of this information never gets logged in the database at all).

Some of of those non-database tracking systems include:

Each staff member keeps a separate list of email addresses in his/her email client.
We have a web-based "message log" that staff in our office use to record phone messages.
Visitors to our website register to receive email bulletins.
Our executive director keeps a personal list of major donors, foundation contacts, etc.

We don't currently have a system for tracking relationships between contacts such as "friend of X," "employee of X," etc. This sort of information currently ends up in our comments field.

FINALLY: I volunteer for a second organization that has systems and needs very similar to what I have described above, but with one additional type of contact: investors. This organization (the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua) solicits investments in the Nicaraguan Credit Alternatives Fund, which lends money to support economic development in low-income Nicaraguan communities. Tracking investors and their investments is different than tracking donors. For one thing, we have to be much more careful to avoid errors. Each investment requires follow-up, in the form of periodic payments of interest and the eventual return of principal to the investor. For this class of contact, therefore, we have developed a separate "investments" database that is actually more complex than our contacts database. Like donations, however, it is related to the contacts database via a unique contact ID. If we adopt CiviCRM as a solution for this organization, I think one of our biggest c!
hallenges will be figuring out how to relate contacts to investments (which probably cannot be handled within CiviCRM and will therefore require some sort of custom-coded solution).

Describe your organization and what your role within that organization is. : My title is research director, but I also designed our database and have been webmaster for several years until recently.

Who currently enters and updates your community/organization's contacts? : We have an office assistant who handles mostly clerical and data entry tasks, including maintaining the database. Other staff members access the database and sometimes enter information as well.

What tools do you use today to manage contacts? : (1) We use Filemaker as our main information repository. I like the simplicity of use and the ability to quickly modify the database by adding a field or a script. The fact that it sits on a hard drive on a computer in our office also makes it easy to do backups or to make a temporary copy of the database when we need to massage or extract data for some special purpose. The main drawback to Filemaker is that we haven't been able to use it effectively for sharing information among staff members via the internet.

(2) Civicspace: We've been collecting user contact information when they register but haven't done anything with it yet. It seems that we'd need to do additional coding before we could use this information effectively. I tried the Civicspace massmailer module when it first came out but couldn't get it to work properly and haven't tried it again since. Maybe it's working better now.

(3) Apple's OS X Address book application. I like the simplicity and the ability for individual staff members to sync contact information via a .Mac account. We're in the process of setting this up so that everyone on staff will have common access to everyone else's email contacts. At present, however, we haven't figured out how to integrate this information with our Filemaker database. We're hoping that moving to CiviCRM as an alternative to our Filemaker solution will also make it possible to sync our Apple address book with CiviCRM.

(4) We use a very simple, homebrew web app that I wrote for logging phone messages. I wrote it so that messages would get stored electronically rather than winding up on vanishing scraps of paper, but it doesn't integrate with any of our other information systems.

(5) We use Mailman for running our email bulletin. It works okay, but the interface is confusing and clunky, and since the listserv is run by our web hosting service, we have to go through them if we want to export the names. There's also no way to create sublists (for example, by interest). We're planning to migrate away from Mailman and will probably use Democracy in Action for awhile in its place, eventually migrating to CiviCRM if it works as well as we're hoping.

What works with your existing contact managing tools and what does not? : We're able to store and locate addresses of our donors, subscribers, media contacts. We know how much each donor has given, and we can select lists according to various categories (mostly location and interest) when sending out email appeals. We're able to run an email list.

Right now one problem is that we have multiple information systems that aren't well integrated.

We'd like to be able to send out action alerts and track responses.

We'd also like to enable people on our contact list to contact EACH OTHER, without violating their individual privacy.

Do you have any feedback to help the documentation volunteers meet your needs? : Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton (http://civicspacelabs.org/home/user/63) on 4 October, 2005 - 12:47pm

Please tell us how you have managed your community/organization contacts in the last month? : email and lis serves
we invite and inform through listserve- activities result from invitations

Describe your organization and what your role within that organization is. : Founder, manager and volunteer coordinator/communications director

Who currently enters and updates your community/organization's contacts? : data volunteer (both)

What tools do you use today to manage contacts? : creatied Filemaker program-
costs a lost to create- and training other users is difficult, timeconsuming.
We'd like a more user friendly system where everyone can use, and one person controls input and entry

What works with your existing contact managing tools and what does not? : We are still experimenting...too soon to know what works well-
Our contacts should be precise- like target mailings...good sorts and specific interests- with feedback loops built in
too bulky and creaky; need to be an expert to get what we want out of it. Need user-friendly formats and mechanics
We'd like to be able to sort and contact by specific task and interest;

Do you have any feedback to help the documentation volunteers meet your needs? : FileMaker is what we are developing- and others we have looked at were too involved and hard to modify for our uses...we are starting from scratch and there should be a simple nonprofit contact model---like money-management software...

Please tell us how you have managed your community/organization contacts in the last month? : I have taken a file of contacts from a database on a website and converted them into the same format used for our membership file used in Excel. I have also taken that Excel file and used a postal code lookup to append federal and provincial ridings, and contact info for related Members of Parliament and Members of Provincial Parliament, to the Excel contacts. We have sent a mass email using phpList to the list.

Describe your organization and what your role within that organization is. : Fair Vote Canada's mission to reform the voting system in Canada federally and in all provinces and territories so that it is fairer. This involves instituting some form of proportional representation. I am currently Chair of Fair Vote Ontario (membership approximately 1300). I am also providing technical IT support, while other people manage email lists, webmastering, and updating our membership list. It so happens that I am also assisting in migrating our website from backend cms to civicspace cms.

Who currently enters and updates your community/organization's contacts? : The Executive Director. I assist with batch quarterly/semi-annual updates of riding info for each contact.

What tools do you use today to manage contacts? : Excel, in house postal code to provincial riding and postal code to federal riding lookups, manual procedures for migrating data from backend cms into Excel using phpMyAdmin, etc.

What works with your existing contact managing tools and what does not? : Terribly time consuming. Web not integrated with membership or contact list. Some problems sending mass emails from Outlook reported by Ex Dir. phpList is not used really since too complicated for Ex Dir. What works: simple uses of Microsoft Office applications, since they are known.

Do you have any feedback to help the documentation volunteers meet your needs? : Tech docs for installers, also MARKETING DOCS to explain & sell

Please tell us how you have managed your community/organization contacts in the last month? : Prior to CS, it was all in excel spreasheets. We also had a mailman mailing list.

Describe your organization and what your role within that organization is. : registered Virginia PAC, formerly Tidewater for Dean, now Tidewater for Democracy. We've launched a new site called Hampton Roads Coalition, which is intended as a place where various local progressive groups can get together and communicate with each other. I am the webmaster for both sites and am on the board of TFD. I am also webmaster for the Tidewater Young Democrats, which has just gotten started, and will likely use CiviCRM for them, too.

Who currently enters and updates your community/organization's contacts? : Secretary. A signup sheet is passed around at our meetups and events and that is all entered into an Excel spreadsheet.

What tools do you use today to manage contacts? : Excel. Nothing else as far as I know. Obviously, we aren't really putting the data to use yet, and we'd like to change that. CiviCRM looks like the tool most likely to help us do that, despite it's overwhelming complexity.

What works with your existing contact managing tools and what does not? : Pretty much everyone knows how to use it, also mail merge functions. Not much else, though.

Do you have any feedback to help the documentation volunteers meet your needs? : We need a basic overview and "getting started" guide.

Please tell us how you have managed your community/organization contacts in the last month? : We organize our contacts into specific groups and are careful to keep our members separate from other types of contacts. This is important to us. Our groups include - registered users (members of our organization), supporters and "other".

We also want to empower members of our organization to poll our membership. We want to be able for them to easily use saved search criteria to generate lists and target mailings to members in a request for volunteers, RSVP for events and walk/call lists.

So far, we have not used the relationships within our site, but I see this as a very important tool.

When you say activities, I'm not quite sure I understand your meaning. However, here's what I gather from it. Specifically, it is wonderful to be able to provide custom profiles for specific purposes.

Without CivicCRM for example, modifying the user profile form, the same profile was used when requesting volunteers. It is wonderful to be able to generate custom profiles for our contacts. This also makes it easier for a novice user to input data. Having extra data fields on the profile form is confusing.

The most frequent thing we do with our contacts is to generate mailings to a target audience.

Describe your organization and what your role within that organization is. : Progressive Populist Caucus of Texas (an affiliate of PDA). Webmistress / technologist.

Who currently enters and updates your community/organization's contacts? : I do currently, however, we want to empower our regional folks to do this in the future.

What tools do you use today to manage contacts? : We are currently using the contact manager within Civicspace and brute force Excel to parse our data into useful formats.

The contact manager is a good start. However, CivicCRM provides much needed added functionality like the ability to generate custom profiles for contacts and specify sources for use with other modules. It's nearly impossible to keep from polluting your data when all data is entered / derived from a single source and there's no way to separate it.

We still use Mailman for lists however and the lack of integration is very painful. I have yet to find a provider that provides the ability for us to use Elmz to integrate mailing list functionaility with Civicspace. I realize there are providers out there, but the setup for this is difficult and in my case, my provider did run Qmail / Elmz, but on different servers to distribute the load. According to the documentation, it states that Elmz must run on the same box as Apache to function.

Writing a Mailman API to integrate the forum_mail module would be so wonderful. Mailman has far superior features.

OpenNGO has done a great job of integrating with the community and the advanced docs are very good (and appreciated!)

What works with your existing contact managing tools and what does not? : I know the contacts are managed successfully when a novice user has the ability to locate their target group, export the data for their own use without help of an administrator.

The only limitations with the current contact manager is the inability to generate custom profiles and for the various modules to specify a source of contacts to use. That's been difficult.

Do you have any feedback to help the documentation volunteers meet your needs? : Great job all!

Submitted by macdoggie (http://civicspacelabs.org/home/user/957) on 30 September, 2005 - 5:38pm

b>Please tell us how you have managed your community/organization contacts in the last month? : onlne email database, offline spreadsheets, pieces of paper, address books, and whats left of my memory. Unfortunately this allows me to only effectively manage between 50-100 people. Our organization has currently 1600 contacts, so a lot is slipping through the cracks. Activities are managed on an activity by activity level, with sign up / sign in sheets. Those sheets of paper become the basis for future recruitment, etc.

Describe your organization and what your role within that organization is. : Statewide grassroots political campaign. I am the campaign manager with a volunteer advisory board of 25, a steering committee of 6, core volunteers of maybe 40, and general volunteers of 1600. I am currently the sole staffer, we have a very tight budget. This will grow to a fundraiser, field director and communications director over the next few months. OUr organization is "temporary, in that the election is in a year and a half, but like all good grassroots groups, an effective campaign, can lead to a lasting and effective coalition afterwards.

Who currently enters and updates your community/organization's contacts? : Primarily me, but also volunteers. I am primarily looking towards CS and CiviCRM for the ability to have volunteers do their own data entry. AKA, they manage their own information by self registering, etc. Having one database with volunteers entering in their information saves me considerable time from having to do data entry from filled out volunteer cards, etc. I also love the abbility to have a dedicated "data entry"account with specific permissions so I can track who changes what, etc.

What tools do you use today to manage contacts? : Pen and Paper: Honestly, it is still the fastest tool in organizing, and it forces you to spend more one on one time with volunteeers. The down side, your brain is the only processor, so it is more difficult to see trends, relationships, hard workers, etc.
The key other tools in order: phone, personal email, personal letter, blast email, blast letter.

What works with your existing contact managing tools and what does not? : One thing lacking from existing tools is the easy ability for "thank you's" to get lost in the cracks. If you dont say "thank You" volunteers quit saying "yes."

Do you have any feedback to help the documentation volunteers meet your needs? : Having a few "How do I..." basic tutorials would be very helpfull. Also, a terminology explanation, I am still not sure of profiles, tags, groups. I guess I personally need to know how to easily get the basics running. I.e., code all the volunteer data entry fields (circulate petitions, make phone calls, walk neighborhoods, host a party, etc.) and track volunteer activities.

From my experience there are 4 levels to every succsefull volunteer event:
1. Recruitment: Informing volunteers about the details of the event, and how to be involved.
2. Reminder: Making sure volunteers know that you know they signed up for the event.
3. Sign-In: Making sure volunteers know that you know they were there at the event.
4. Thank You / Flake Follow-up: Thanking Volunteers who actually attended the event, and telling no shows that they were missed.

Volunteers need to be asked, rewarded, motivated and recognized for their work. The biggest danger in online campaigning is that we loose the personal thank yous and recognition that happens in the offline world.

Finally, I am less concerned about the "groupware" functions like group calendars and more interested in making sure the basics are done right. If I don't know who my volunteers are, who shows up after saying they will, who flakes, and who has done what, then I really still don't know my volunteers. The data has to be able to paint a picture of each volunteer and groups as a whole.

Do you have any feedback to help the documentation volunteers meet your needs? : Sorry, one more thing, in the real world there should be no difference between users and contacts. Wether someone is a member of my site or not, they still have a relationship to my campaign. Even if they never volunteer, donate or take any other action, the mere fact that they registered for my site shows they have taken a step a majority fo voters will not do. Thus, I want them in one database. I guess I look at it as three resources on a campaign: Money, People and Time. People are people are people, users vote, contacts vote, whatever, they are all people, so any solution needs to recognize and treat them as such first off the bat. Can you tell I am frustrated with the concept of Users versus Contacts? Politics is about people, the more we get away from that, the worse off we are.

Submitted by archnemysis (http://civicspacelabs.org/home/user/2123) on 6 October, 2005 - 11:57am