[HacktionLab] CRM systems for a charity

Fri Nov 11 12:54:28 UTC 2016

Well said, Helen. Having written most of the CiviCRM plugins in the WordPress plugin directory (as well as the one that integrates it with WordPress itself) I agree wholeheartedly with your experience. CiviCRM requires technical competence and plenty of maintenance to self-host. It will, however, scale with an organisation as it grows, which may be an advantage in the long run.

Cheers,

Christian

> On 11 Nov 2016, at 12:38, helen varley jamieson <helen at creative-catalyst.com> wrote:
> 
> 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/ <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> 
>>> <mailto: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/ <http://icaris.co.uk/>) or Harlequin
>>>     >   (http://www.harlequinsoftware.co.uk/software/crm/ <http://www.harlequinsoftware.co.uk/software/crm/>
>>>     <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.creative-catalyst.com/>
> http://www.upstage.org.nz <http://www.upstage.org.nz/>
> We have a situation, Coventry! <http://www.wehaveasituation.net/?p=1402>
> 24 November 2016
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