Managing everything with Civi and WordPress
British Humanist Association
The British Humanist Association works on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical lives on the basis of reason and humanity. We promote Humanism, a secular state, and equal treatment of everyone regardless of religion or belief.
We needed a CRM that was intuitive, powerful, fast, easy to access from anywhere, and didn't require expensive integration with our WordPress-based website. Civi ticked all those boxes. We now manage our contacts, memberships, donors, contributions, events and mailings using Civi, and we're very happy with it.
Background
Previously we'd been using separate systems, and syncing data between them was a challenge. For example, our mailing lists lived in one place, and our contact database in another, and so required manual processes to make sure both were up to date. Civi looked like it could integrate everything, without requiring expensive custom work to link with our website. Civi was also open-source, so we could delve into the code and figure out problems for ourselves.
Challenges
Migrating our data, setting up Direct Debit processes, and recreating all the proprietary website functionality that allowed people to join / donate / change their details etc.
Solution
Civi "Just Works" with WordPress. It has an active community and forums, and enthusiastic users. It has a good reputation, and seemed to be able to handle everything we wanted. It's also open-source, which fits with our general ethos.
We evaluated other CRMs, but Civi was by far the best fit.
Functionality
People needed to be able to join our organisation via credit card or direct debit, and update their details once they'd done so. We needed to accept donations and membership payments via PayPal. And we wanted people to be able to register and pay for our events.
Internally, our admin staff needed to be able to quickly and easily view and update contact records, send emails through the system, and see full histories of an individual's dealings with the organisation.
Project images (click to enlarge)
We worked with NFP Services to help with the initial setup and data migration, while staff trained up.
