E-mail
By outlining what you plan to do with your contacts, you can start identifying configuration issues. Common goals that CiviCRM supports include:
1) Track contact information (addresses, emails, phones, etc.). Are there going to be multiple users? Should some contacts be accessible to some users but not others? Will you send letters to these people? Will you send emails? Will you call them on the phone?
2) Understand relationships and segmentation. Do you need to know different groups of contacts (donors, board members, etc.). Why is your particular segmentation important/ what do you do with the segmentation? What types of relationships do you track (employee relationship between an individual and an organization or a subsidiary relationship between two organizations, for example).
3) Allow actions to be taken by using targeted lists of contacts. What actions do you need to track (whether they volunteered, attended an event for example)?
 | Example: Define what you are going to do with your contacts OpenNGO registrants/ community members is probably a single group of individuals. I probably want to communicate with them via an occasional newsletter. They should be able to manage their own subscriptions, so I'll need two groups... the universe of community members plus the subset that have opted in to the newsletter. |
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