2. REAL WORLD EXAMPLES CiviCRM is used by all shapes and sizes of organisations that are located all over the world. Some have no paid employees, while others might have several hundred. T heir needs range from very simple to fairly complex. In this chapter, we will have a look at real world examples of how organizations are using CiviCRM. T hroughout this chapter you will see references to CiviCRM features such as CiviEmail, CiviMember, CiviPledge, CiviCRM Profiles and others. T hese are all components of CiviCRM and we have included references to them so you can become familiar with the language of CiviCRM; however, it's not important to understand the finer detail of these features at this point.
A SPECTACULAR PERFORMANCE
T his example shows how clubs can use CiviCRM for summer camps, regular classes and other events. Wellington Circus T rust in Wellington, New Zealand is run entirely by volunteers. T hey have a mailing list of 500-600 people and run blocks of classes in circus skills such as trapeze and hula hoop. T hey also host events. For safety reasons, the T rust needs to gather information about who to contact in the case of a student being injured. T he T rust processes about 200 enrolments a year. Prior to using CiviCRM, the T rust maintained a Microsoft Access database, but data entry was time-consuming, keeping information up-to-date was difficult and emailing the resulting contact information to the tutors on a regular basis was challenging. T he treasurer wanted members to be able to maintain their own details and wanted the tutors and volunteers to be able to access member's contact details from anywhere.
What They Did After some research, the T rust decided that CiviCRM could enable them do the things they needed to do, and as soon as the system was up and running they began to make the most of it. T hey up online enrolment for circus skills classes with the CiviEvent component, and decided to pay a commission to a payment processing company so that credit cards could be used for online class payments. T hey also used CiviEvent to set limits on the number of students that could enroll in a given class. T o track emergency contact information, custom data fields were created and added to a profile that was used as a form for event registration. T his information was then stored in CiviCRM. T hey integrated CiviCRM with Drupal and set up user accounts for every contact in their database. T he system's users were then instructed on how to use the Drupal 'reset my password' link to gain access to the system for the first time so that they could then update their own information. CiviMail was implemented to contact tutors, volunteers and students. Since the T rust applies for grants from funding bodies, they enabled the CiviGrant component.
The Results Simply by implementing CiviCRM, tutors and volunteers can now access and manage information from anywhere in the world where they have internet connectivity.
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