CiviCRM: manage community contacts, relationships, and activities

The CiviCRM module stores information on the universe of people associated with a community and on their interactions such as emails, donations, petitions, events, etc. It can act as a stand alone contact management system or it can be integrated with mass mailer, volunteer management, petition, and event finding. CiviCRM enables organizations to maintain all these activities in a single database, creating efficiencies and new opportunities for communities to better communicate and benefit from relationships with their community members.
The CiviCRM module allows you to create contacts, or import them from other sources. You can record relationships between contacts, such as indicating they live in the same household. There are two types of groups of contacts. You can create static groups which have a set list of contacts. You can also create dynamic (smart) groups based on characteristics that contacts have in common. For example, you could create a group of all contacts who live in California AND who have volunteered for your organization within the past year. The CiviCRM module also allows for tagging for less formal categorization of contacts or groups. You can easily extend CiviCRM to record community member information which is specific to your community or organization using custom fields. For example, you can create a set of fields to track volunteer skills and preferences. CiviCRM profile gives you a way to allow community members ('users') to update their own information, as well as share some of that information with others. Finally, you can configure custom activity types such as volunteering or attending events.

You can:

• read the CiviCRM Administrator Guide.
• enable CiviCRM blocks at administer >> blocks.
• read CiviCRM access permissions and set access permissions at administer >> access control.
• find contacts by name, email address, group membership and or tagging at find contacts.
• do complex searches based on tags, group membership, location, activities and custom fields at advanced search.
• create or manage groups at manage groups.
• import contacts from other sources at import contacts.
• create or administer tags (e.g. organizer, foundation, environment...) at civicrm >> admin >> tags.
• create or administer relationship types (e.g. household member, board member, spouse...) civicrm >> admin >> relationship types.
• create or administer location types (e.g. home, work, school...) civicrm >> admin >> location types.
• create or administer activity types (e.g. house meeting, intake interview...) at civicrm >> admin >> activity types.
• create or administer custom data fields (e.g. volunteer skills, emergency contact info...) civicrm >> admin >> custom data.
• create or administer civicrm profile (i.e. what contact data is collected during user registration) at civicrm >> admin >> civicrm profile.

CiviCRM integration with EventFinder

EventFinder is integrated with CiviCRM in the latest release. The level of integration currently available is:

• event registrants are recorded as individuals in the database
• registrants are tagged as event participants
• an action is recorded on an individual's record saying he or she registered for a certain event, including the title of the event

There is also a lot of experimental functionality developed using CiviCRM betas that extends this a great deal further. When I get the change to port it, you will get the following as well:

• users with permission to create events will be able to make lists of people to invite and send trackable email invitations (all data stored in CiviCRM)
• suggested events (recommends other events based on common registrations between CiviCRM individuals)

CiviCRM integration with Location

CiviCRM is integrated with the location module through location fields in CiviCRM profiles. If any of the following following CiviCRM profile fields are populated in a users account profile fields they will be synchronized with the location modules.

• Street Address
• Supplemental Address 1
• City
• State
• Postal Code
• Country

CiviCRM integration with MassMailer

CiviCRM module is integrated with Mass Mailer to allow mailings to be sent to CiviCRM groups. It also allows for contact management through mass mailer.

• MassMailer has a default mailing list from CiviCRM called all contacts.
• Mailings can be sent to CiviCRM groups, and contacts added to mass mailer mailing lists will be added to CiviCRM.
• Mass Mailer respects CiviCRM's do not contact properties for groups
• Mass Mailer allows for users to unsubscribe from a mailing list through mass mailer and prevent mailings while still maintaining membership in a CiviCRM group.

CiviCRM integration with the profile module

CiviCRM's Profile functionality allows you to integrate and extend Drupal User screens with your contact management requirements. It also gives you tools for collecting and sharing contact information with community members and visitors.

You can:

• configure user registration forms to include standard and custom CiviCRM fields
• allow users to maintain some or all of their own contact data and find other contacts with shared characteristics
• make a subset of CiviCRM data available for searchable listings
• create custom 'sign-up' forms to collect contact information from site visitors

More information:

• CiviCRM Quickstart - Website Integration
• Configuring CiviCRM Profiles