CiviCRM, Free CRM for Nonprofits

Calling CRM “no longer a prerogative of the business world,” the Indian publication The Economic Times reports that a free software has been developed for the use of the non-profit sector.

Called CiviCRM, it is designed “to enable the non-profit sector to keep in touch with their contacts and manage information about donors, donations, employees, volunteers and beneficiaries of their services,” according to TET.

It can be redistributed and improved upon by its users, and has a basic donor database product that accepts online donations, records contributions and manages receipts and thank-you-notes.

CiviCRM creates an online donation page for accepting donations online. It can also track donations, transactions, events and correspondence. There’s also a built-in mass mailer which can send out as many as a million e-mail on one click.

Any computer literate can operate the software effectively with just three hours of basic training, Micha Mach, a Polish software developer who was part of the software developing team said.

David Geilhufe, founder of the Social Source Foundation, says “CiviCRM is very flexible. You should plan and think through how you are going to use the system before implementing things in any specific way.”

The current version of the product has profiles and online contribution pages can be displayed to and accessed by users, and introduces CiviContribute, a product for accepting, tracking and managing online and offline contributions including cash and in-kind donations.

It allows organizations to accept online donations and have them automatically recorded in their donor database, and there are custom fields available for activities and contributions.

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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