For nonprofit organisations, it’s essential to have your operations backed by strong digital infrastructure. This is where a robust CRM can prove an indispensable tool that helps maintain strong relationships with donors, volunteers, and members.

CiviCRM is a perfect example of a system that can carry out this task. An open source CRM, it’s specifically designed for nonprofits, civic organisations, and advocacy groups. In this article, we will delve into what CiviCRM is, explore its features, and review its performance and updates as of 2024.

What is CiviCRM?

CiviCRM is an open source CRM platform tailored to meet the unique needs of nonprofit organisations. 

Unlike proprietary CRM solutions, CiviCRM is community-driven, meaning it's developed and maintained by a global community of users and developers. This collaborative approach ensures that the software continually evolves to meet the changing needs of its users, with features designed by the very nonprofits that need them.

Key Features of CiviCRM:

CiviCRM is capable of achieving many different things, but at its basic level, it is specifically designed to handle the following needs:

Contact Management

  • Efficiently and clearly store all contacts connected to your organisation in one place
  • Track and manage interactions with all types of stakeholders.
  • Comprehensive contact profiles that include communication history, relationships, and custom data fields.

Event Management

  • Plan and organise events with ease.
  • Features for online event registration, payment processing, and attendance tracking.

Fundraising and Donations

  • Manage donation campaigns, track donor history, and generate detailed reports.
  • Integration with payment processors.
  • Track major donors, corporate donors and legacy donors

Membership Management

  • Tools for managing memberships, renewals, and tracking engagement.
  • Customisable membership levels and automated renewal reminders.

Email Marketing

  • Create and send targeted email campaigns.
  • Analyse open rates, click-through rates, and other engagement metrics.

Case Management

  • Track client interactions and manage service delivery.
  • Structured and automated workflows for handling cases from start to finish.

Grant Management

  • As a grant giver, track processes from application to fund distribution.
  • As an applicant, build a pipeline to easily track activities and deadlines.

Reporting and Analytics

  • Generate detailed reports to gain insights into organisational performance.
  • Customisable dashboards for quick access to key metrics.

CiviCRM in 2024: A Review

As we step into 2024, CiviCRM continues to be a vital tool for nonprofit organisations around the world. And don't just take our word for it! The recent Charity CRM survey demonstrated the very same.

Let's take an in-depth look at its performance, new features, and overall effectiveness.

Customisation and Flexibility

CiviCRM's open source nature means it is highly customisable. Organisations can tailor the system to their specific needs without the limitations often found in proprietary software. In 2024, new extensions and plugins have been introduced, offering even more options for customisation. The active community continues to contribute to a rich library of extensions, ensuring that CiviCRM can adapt to new requirements as they arise.

Performance and Scalability

Even faster Performance has been a key focus for the 2024 updates. CiviCRM can handle even the largest of datasets with more efficiently, ensuring smooth operation even for organisations with extensive records. Scalability improvements mean that as an organisation grows, CiviCRM can grow with it, maintaining high-performance levels regardless of the number of contacts managed.

Enhanced Integration

CiviCRM’s ability to integrate with popular CMS platforms such as Drupal as part of its core design remains a key strength. In 2024, its integration capabilities have been expanded further to include more third-party applications than ever before. This allows nonprofits to build a more cohesive and efficient digital ecosystem.

Security and Compliance

With data security becoming increasingly important, CiviCRM has continued to enhance its security features in 2024. Regular updates and patches are released to address potential vulnerabilities, and the platform complies with major data protection regulations such as GDPR. Organisations can trust that their data is protected, and their CRM practices are compliant with legal standards.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • Open source and Community Driven: Technically free to use (no licensing fees) and driven by the community’s continued innovations
  • Comprehensive Feature Set: Extensive and ever growing tools for contact management, fundraising, events, and more.
  • Flexible and Customisable: Extremely flexible and able to be tailored to meet specific organisational needs.
  • Strong Integration Capabilities: Works well with popular CMS platforms and third-party applications.

Cons:

  • Hosting Costs While there are no licensing fees by default, you still need to figure out how to host your site or get someone to do it for you.
  • Upgrades & Compatibility: CiviCRM will not update itself automatically with security updates - you need to manage this and ensure compatibility between any extensions you are using.
  • Advanced Customisation Requires Technical Expertise: While many things are easily configurable within CiviCRM, if you want that truly bespoke implementation you’ll need coding or database management skills.

Enter CiviPlus

CiviCRM is a system Compuco has been working with for almost 15 years. It’s an amazingly flexible CRM that many of our clients have achieved remarkable success using. But, as noted above, not everyone has the expertise to install, host and manage this amazing CRM. This is why we looked to minimise these challenges and make CiviCRM more accessible than ever before. So no matter your size or budget, you can have powerful enterprise grade software.

Enter CiviPlus. It’s everything we love about CiviCRM, plus a whole lot more! Whether you’re new to Civi or an existing CiviCRM site, it’s designed to give you all the power and flexibility you need within a simple package, with hosting, security and compatibility handled by us. And it’s even got a bespoke self service portal attached, something especially useful for membership organisations! 

If you’d like to talk to us about how CiviPlus could help your organisation, you can request a chat here.

Conclusion

CiviCRM continues to be a leading choice for nonprofit organisations seeking a comprehensive, flexible, and cost effective CRM solution. The improvements and updates in 2024 have further solidified its position as a top-tier tool for managing constituent relationships. Whether you're a small nonprofit or a large advocacy group, CiviCRM offers the features and scalability to support your mission effectively.

If you’re looking for a new CRM and are interested in CiviCRM or CiviPlus, why not check out our tips on how to choose a CRM or get in touch with us! We’d love to chat and share our expertise about the best route forward for your organisation.

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