[HacktionLab] CRM systems for a charity

[helen varley jamieson]

CiviCRM is very good, but i wouldn't call it a "lightweight CRM"; it's
potentially very powerful & requires quite a bit of maintenance to make
it work.

i used CiviCRM previously for a small organisation, we didn't have a
regular budget for maintaining it so it just about all fell to me & a
couple of other volunteers. we struggled for some time to maintain it,
since it enabled us to do a lot with our member database, however
ultimately it was too much work for volunteers to maintain & just became
more & more broken as we couldn't keep up with everything. we were
running it in tandem with a drupal website & unfortunately the same
thing happened with that, we just could not manage to keep it going. in
the end we ditched everything & moved to wordpress & had to let the idea
of an online database go (& at the moment this organisation is kind of
in hibernation).

i run another site with drupal & thought about adding CiviCRM, but i
realised that again it would end up being me voluntarily maintaining it,
& it requires too much time.

so if you have the infrastructure & resources to support CiviCRM then
it's great. many big organisations such as greenpeace use it & for
members it can be quite easy to do stuff like update a profile, sign up
to events, pay membership fees & so on. but you really need to have the
people who can maintain it.

h : )


On 11/11/16 12:53 39PM, ekes wrote:
> On 11/11/16 12:48, U wrote:
>> Thanks for the suggestion, it does look decent. The organisation here is not on 
>> open source systems, in fact it is quite rooted in .net / windows and sql servers.
>>
>> The other thing is they're looking for something UK based with a solid 
>> infrastructure of support behind it. Already ruled out Salesforce and Dynamics.
> There are quite some organisation that do CiviCRM hosted. I've not used
> any so can't vouch for them. Well I know of an instance hosted by
> GreenNet, but...
>
> anyone in the West had experience of
> https://www.circle-interactive.co.uk/ they're listed and
> talk-the-right-talk for 'solid infrastructure and support'.
>
>> On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 11:29 AM, ekes <ekes at aktivix.org 
>> <mailto:ekes at aktivix.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     On 11/11/16 12:22, U wrote:
>>     > I'm doing some work for a UK charity who are looking at migrating to a new CRM
>>     > system. They're looking at Icaris (http://icaris.co.uk/) or Harlequin
>>     >   (http://www.harlequinsoftware.co.uk/software/crm/
>>     <http://www.harlequinsoftware.co.uk/software/crm/>).
>>     >
>>     > I wondered if anyone here had any experience of using either of these systems,
>>     > working with those companies?
>>     >
>>     > Any suggestions on a relatively lightweight CRM that you might recommend for
>>     > managing a few thousand contacts would also be appreciated.
>>
>>     For something straightforward, but tailored to Charity/NGO, I can't see
>>     any reason not to use CiviCRM.
>>
>>     For more complicated, brain hurting, functionality... then I understand
>>     why people go for SaaS (Salesforce), or M$ (Dynamics), but for
>>     straightforward contact, campaign, donation blah management Civi does do
>>     it (and the code isn't completely horrid any more).
>>
>>     ekes
>>
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>
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-- 
helen varley jamieson
helen at creative-catalyst.com <mailto:helen at creative-catalyst.com>
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.upstage.org.nz

*We have a situation, Coventry! <http://www.wehaveasituation.net/?p=1402>*
24 November 2016

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