CiviCRM as a Low Cost Donor Management System

This review mirrors the format and methodology employed by Idealwarein their Low Cost Donor Management Systems (April 2009) report. At the time Idealware did not consider CiviCRM to be a donor management system.

CiviCRM
www.civicrm.org

CiviCRM is an open source project founded in 2004. CiviCRM is one of the most feature rich and integrated donor management systems including integrated events, mass email and personal campaign pages. CiviCRM is a free download and can be installed by an individual with moderate technical knowledge of web-based applications. Many organizations elect to hire a CiviCRM consultant to set up, configure and maintain the application. A number of supporting businesses have emerged in the CiviCRM ecology including CiviSMTP to handle bulk mail delivery, hosting providers and implementation consultants.

The Basics

Technical Setup: CiviCRM is installed on a web server and is accessed via a web browser. CiviCRM can be installed within a content management system (Drupal or Joomla) or can be a stand-alone application. Pre-installed CiviCRM can be purchased from hosting providers as an online service.
Pricing: CiviCRM is provided as a free download under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE version 3. Consultants or hosting providers will generally charge you for their time to maintain the system, NOT for the software.

Adding and Tracking Donations:

Quick Search: Lets you quickly search the database for an existing person in the database based on name or email. With a single click from any screen, users can search by address, phone or any other contact including custom fields. CiviCRM also includes a full text search accessible with a single click from any page that searches all information in the database including donations, events, mailings, etc.
Quick Search on Custom Fields: Lets you use advanced search to find people based on data entered into custom fields.
De-duping: During data entry, you can check for duplicates before you save the record by clicking a single button. CiviCRM also provides a find and merge duplicate functionality to eliminate existing duplicates from your database. The rules for duplicate detection are user configurable.
Adding a Gift: One click away from any CiviCRM screen is a quick contribution entry screen that allows you to enter contributions for new or existing contacts in a single screen. Donations can also be entered from a contact record.
Batching Gifts: The system does not automatically batch gifts together for accounting system reconciliation. CiviCRM users will generally create a custom field to achieve this functionality.
Gift Quick-Entry Interface: The system does not provide a quick-entry interface to eliminate the need to re-key data keying in a large number of gifts. CiviCRM users will generally enter the information into a spreadsheet and import it as a batch into CiviCRM to achieve this functionality.
Updating Donor Info via Quick-Entry: You can automatically create new donors using the contribution entry screen, but updating donor information requires searching for and editing the donor record.
Importing Gifts: Lets you easily map and import donor and gift information in standard (csv) file formats.
Adding Pledges: Lets you enter pledges for future gifts including the amount, user defined number of payments and user defined payment schedule. System automatically create the list of pledge payments for that pledge.
Viewing Pledges on Gift Entry: The system does not display open pledge payments to apply a contribution to on the contribution entry screen. An online form can be provided to users that will automatically record their contribution as a payment to their pledge.
Reminders for Pledges: The pledge dashboard displays pending payments or the user can run a report. The donor can automatically receive email reminders of pledge payments directing the donor to a special online contribution form. Contributions made on that form are automatically applied to pledge payments.
Matching Gifts: The system does not provide specific support for tracking matching gifts. CiviCRM users generally create a matching gift contribution type and add a custom field to track who the match is expected to be received from.
Other Gift Types: Supports tracking user configurable contribution types. Also provides specific support for in honor of/ in memory of gifts.
Campaigns or Funds: Allows you to assign contributions to a specific source. Split gifts are not supported.
Tracking Credit for Gifts: Lets you assign a soft credit to another contact. CiviCRM users generally assign credit to solicitors or staff members through custom fields.
Gift Notes: Lets you add free form notes to a gift.
Organization Gifts: Lets you assign gifts to organizations or households.

Managing Donor Information

Multiple Contact Methods: You can track unlimited addresses, phones and emails, label them with custom labels, mark the primary phone, email and address, and track donor's preferred communication methods. Email preferences are respected by the integrated CiviMail mass mail program.
Seasonal Addresses: CiviCRM does not support seasonal addresses.
Do Not Contact: Don not contact information is clearly displayed in red on the contact record.
Relationships Between Donors: Users can create custom relationship types and track relationships between individuals, organizations and households.
Bi-Directional Relationships: All CiviCRM relationships are user configureable as one way, two-way or directional.
Viewing Relationships: You click on the relationships tab to see all current relationships on top and past relationships at the bottom.
Householding: TBD
Staff Relationships: CAn be tracked with the basic relationships functionality.
Donor Notes: You can enter unlimited notes about a donor from multiple staff members.
Manual Communications Log: You can keep a log of all communications including phone calls and emails. You can email donors from within the application including attachments and HTML formated mail.
* Automatic Communications Log:* Automatically tracks all email communications.
Donor Dashboard: Lets you see all donor activity on a single screen including group memberships, contributions, events, memberships, etc.
Giving Totals: Lifetime number, total and average of all gifts, including all gift records accessible in one click from the donor record.
Donor Source: Allows tracking of the source of a donor.
Organizational Profile: Allows you to create an organization record and record all the employees of that organization through relationships.

Prospecting and Proposals

Prospecting Workflow:
Ticklers:
Creating Ticklers for Others:
Donor Research:
Reporting on Asks:
Finding Your Prospects:
Proposal Tracking:
Foundation Interest Tracking:

Permissions

Permissions:
Field Level Permissions:

Mail-Merging Letters

General Mail Merge Approach:
Flexibility of Letter and Thank You Templates:
Personalizing Letters:
Tracking the Letters Were Sent:
One-off Thank Yous:
Batch Processing of Thank Yous:
Mail-Merging Gifts Strings:
Defining Group to Mail:
Printing Labels:

Emailing

One-off Email:
Defining Group to Email:
Merging Data into Emails:
Merging Gift Strings into Email:
Graphical Emails:
Scheduling Emails:
Email server:
Unsubscribes:
Email Reports:
Automatic Emails:

Querying

General Querying Approach:
Querying Based on Giving:
Querying Any Field:
Complex Queries:
Expanding Queries:
Saving Queries:
Taking Actions on a List:

Reporting

Standard Reports:
Giving Reports:
Comparing Campaign Success:
Reporting on Pledges:
Ad-hoc Reports:
Custom Fields in Ad-hoc Reports:
Saving Reports:
List of Favorite Reports:
Exporting Reports:

Tracking Events

Event Registrations:
Tracking Guests:
Table Details:
Nametags:
On-site Registration:

Tracking Other Built-in Interactions

Volunteer Interests:
Volunteer Work Tracking:
Membership Tracking:
Other Interactions:

Customization

Customizing Values:
Custom Fields:
Renaming Fields:
Moving or Deleting Fields:
Custom Constituent Interactions:
Vendor Customization:
Access to Source Code:

Integration

Existing Integrations:
Data Export:
Data Import:
Programatic Integration:

Accounting Support

Existing Integrations:
Approach to Batching:
Reconciling a Batch:
* Controlling Reconciled Donations:*

R3. Ease of Use

Ease of Use for Novices:
Speed for Expert Users:

Support and Training

Training:
Manuals and Documentation:
Support:

Installation and Maintenance

Installation and Maintenance:

Product Background

History:
Clients:
Sustainability:
Roadmap: