Overview

This area is meant to assist any Jewish organization in taking full advantage of CiviCRM, the CiviCRM ecosystem,  and to share/discuss best practices. Login to post comments or update this area.

Audience for this document:

Most of the information below is intended for a power user of CiviCRM,  or somewhat geeky person, or a person who likes to learn and get their hands messy. If you do not have the time or expertise to tackle this cookbook, then get CiviCRM as a turn-key solution, and/or hire a CiviCRM professional.  Note: Just because someone can download CiviCRM and load it into Drupal or WordPress, does NOT mean they are a CiviCRM professional or expert.  If you plan to hire a turn-key service or professional, always get references from clients who they have helped with CiviCRM that are similar to your organization. 

Get this as a turn-key hosted service:

Turn-key providers are listed at:  https://civicrm.org/hosting-providers  (Most of these providers also offer training and professional services)

Hire a cook:

CiviCRM professionals are listed at: https://civicrm.org/partners-contributors

Suggested Extensions:

• Hebrew Calendar https://civicrm.org/extensions/hebrew-calendar  - Handles yahrzeits, Hebrew birthdays, bar/bat mitzvah dates, yahrzeit letters, yahrzeit reminders,  and much more. 
  
  
• CiviVolunteer https://civicrm.org/extensions/civivolunteer - Handles any almost any method of dealing with volunteers or shift-based assignments. Can be used for event volunteers, organizing meal deliveries, life cycle tasks, high holiday volunteers, aliyot, shomrim shifts, tutoring signups, and more. You can allow people to select the time/shift that works for them, or a person can be assigned to a shift, or a combination. 
  
  
• CiviBooking https://civicrm.org/extensions/civibooking - Handles reserving high holiday seats, booking the social hall, reserving the mikvah, and similar. This can handle free reservations, paid bookings, deposits, and much more. (For simply tracking high holiday seating, a priceset field can be used)
  
  
• Event Helper https://civicrm.org/extensions/event-helper - Provides custom searches for paid events and for events using pricesets. 
  
  
• Fancy Tokens https://civicrm.org/extensions/fancy-tokens
  
  
• Content Tokens https://civicrm.org/extensions/content-tokens
  
  
• Family-Friendly https://civicrm.org/extensions/family-friendly
  
  
• Outbound email infrastructure(end users use CiviMail and CiviCRM email tools as usual): 
  • SparkPost   https://civicrm.org/extensions/sparkpost-email-extension-for-civicrm
  • SendGrid     http://sendgrid.com (No extension needed, its a SMTP service provider)
    
    
•  Prevent users from overwriting their record https://civicrm.org/extensions/no-overwrite
  
  
• Allow people to donate/pay an extra percent on any  paid event or contribution page ( such as 3% to help defray credit card fees) https://civicrm.org/extensions/percentage-price-field
  
  
• Aggregate contributions by household https://civicrm.org/extensions/aggregate-household-contributions-report
  
  
• Financial summaries and tokens https://civicrm.org/extensions/financial-summaries

Suggested Content Management System Modules/Plugins

For Drupal7:

Calendar module - Hebrew Calendar for Drupal7 Displays Hebrew dates, holidays, and more on a Drupal calendar. (This is the standard way calendars are created with Drupal Views) This module is a fork of the popular "calendar" module for Drupal.

Recipes:

• Typical registrations/forms - Use the native CiviCRM profiles within event registrations, within contribution pages, or as a stand-alone profile forms. Main limitation with native profiles is that all data collected ends up on the contact record, and  the participant record. There is no option to create CRM relationships, or other more complex requirements.
  
  
• Youth/family/complex registrations/forms - Get children registered for school, camp, field trips, let a potential member join your organization by filling out a single form for their entire family, etc. Completely replaces products like WuFoo forms, RegPack, GoogleForms, and other form builders that end up generating a lot of manual labor because the data collected is not integrated into your main systems.  With CiviCRM and webforms, all the data collected ends up automatically in the proper place in your back-office. 
  • Drupal7 people: follow the recipe at: https://civicrm.org/blog/sarahgladstone/recipe-for-handling-youth-registration-with-civicrm
  • WordPress people may want to look at the following WordPress plugins
    • "GravityForms" plus https://shop.civivip.com/civi-plugins/gravity-forms-integration/
    • "ContactForm7" plus https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7-civicrm-integration/
  • Joomla people: Is anyone still using Joomla? Switch to Drupal7 or WordPress already. 
    
    
• Sending SMS/Text messages: Setting up a SMS Provider for CiviSMS - Perfect for communicating with your on-the-go members, parents, event participants, and anyone else. While this requires an account with an SMS service provider, some providers do NOT charge any monthly fees. So you can set it up now to have in place for emergencies. 
  
  
• Approaches for integrating CiviCRM and your General Ledger: Approaches for CiviCRM and General Ledger Integration
  
  

• Using CiviCRM as an accounts receivable system:  Using CiviCRM as an Accounts Receivable System

Bleeding Edge:

• Connect CiviCRM to Zapier. This allows you to click-together CiviCRM with any of 500 other applications/systems.
  • Overview of Zapier:  https://zapier.com
  • List of applications/systems supported by Zapier: https://zapier.com/zapbook/
  • Integrating CiviCRM With Zapier
  • Proof of concept CiviCRM-Zapier extension: https://github.com/mercimukwe/cm.mercimukwe.civicrmzapier

Still Needed:

•  Can someone write up/blog about their exact steps for GravityForms or ContactForm7 and WordPress + CiviCRM?