The only reason I’m writing this section of the lesson is because I want to let you know how much more you can do with CiviCRM. I hope this inspires you to learn more about CiviCRM, and help organizations with the knowledge you acquired.
CiviReport is the component that allows you to create and view brief summaries of your data. this component integrates with other CiviCRM components. For instance, you can generate a list of contacts in a group or with a certain tag, create a monthly summary of the contributions you received, etc. And these reports can be emailed directly from CiviCRM or exported.
CiviCase primarily works with the “Activity” tool in CiviCRM. It documents more complex interactions between you and your constituent or staff. The “Activity” function allows you to keep records of interviews, meetings, phone calls and more, and schedule followups. By using CiviCase and Activity, users increase efficiency and have better workflow.
When you’re organizing a campaign, a lot goes into it. You gather a group of people to work on the campaign, send out emails to your supporters, plan events to raise fund, etc. You already know how to do all of them on CiviCRM, but you kind of need something to connect them together to be more organized. Well, that’s when CiviCampaign comes to save your life. According to the CiviCRM Users Book, “CiviCampaign lets you link together events, mailings, activities, and contributions under one “umbrella” so that you can track the progress of all your efforts towards one programmatic goal or campaign.” CiviCampaign also include two other components: CiviSurvey and Civipetition.
If your organization gives out fund or grants, like the Everett Program does, you know CiviContribute is not enough to keep track of your monetary flow. It also helps you keep track of the application process, applied amount, received amount, and more.
It is a pity that we had such limited time to work with CiviCRM, and I only could cover so little. CiviCRM is a truly powerful tool for non-profit organizations and I encourage you all to explore the CiviCRM Books, which includes a Users Guide, Documentation Wiki, and Developers Documentation, on your own to gain better and more thorough understanding of CiviCRM.
After 9 weeks of using CiviCRM, I believe you have gained a decent understanding of how to use most of the tools, and how to work with the system. However, to learn is one thing, and to teach is another. Given the situation that many of you will be working with your partner organization and help them transferring to using CiviCRM, it is important for you to acquire the skills to give clear explanation and instructions. What you’ll need to do for this final, is to develop a short lesson for one of the topic/tools that are listed down below. Some of the tools/topics are new and have not been taught, because that’s what you might face when you’re working with an organization; they might want you to figure out something you don’t know, and you will need to know where to find the answer, digest it, and present it to the organization. To be fair, for the ones that we’ve already touched on, I will assign new elements in the lesson. Each topic is linked to the CiviCRM Users Book, which should be the primary resource to get answers from. Your projects will all be graded by Yang.
Posted in: Lab Lessons
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