A strong creative strategy for interacting with supporters and sustaining that engagement over time requires robust tools.

rayogram has assisted many clients in deploying Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) solutions over the years. Two years ago we gave ourselves the mandate to find an open-source solution that we, and our non profit clients, could invest in over time.

Our clients were looking for a holistic solution that would capture every interaction with an individual constituent into one, detailed record - donations, event registrations, mailing list subscriptions, membership renewals and more.

We were looking for a highly customizable, Web-based, open-source solution that plays well with the open-source Drupal content managment solution.

The solution we evaluated and committed to was CiviCRM. CiviCRM is built on Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMPP) - one of the most stable and scalable web/data technologies available. LAMPP powers some of the largest data stores and Web sites on the internet including Yahoo!, NASA, The Associated Press and Youtube. Non profits relying on the CiviCRM solution include The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Amnesty International, American Friend Service Committee, The Conservation Fund, The New York State Senate and many more.

CiviCRM is a Web-based, open source, international solution designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.

The Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) 2009 Data Ecosystem Survey Report ranked CRM solutions as follows:
:: CiviCRM 3.85
:: Salesforce 3.67
:: Raiser’s Edge 3.62
:: Democracy In Action (DIA) 3.25
:: Convio 3.22

An earlier Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) survey identified the top four CRM solutions as CiviCRM, Convio, Salesforce and Kintera (now Blackbaud) respectively. CiviCRM received the highest overall ‘grade’ and the highest ranking for users’ willingness to recommend it. The survey graded CRM systems on their:

:: quality and reliability
:: after sale support
:: ability to deliver on promises and deadlines
:: usability and value for the price
:: implementation time

The largest number of respondents represented organizations focused on Community improvement/Capacity Building, Civil Rights, Social Action/Advocacy and Education.

Our commitment to CiviCRM includes sharing documentation, innovative user-interface modules, case studies and suggestions for future releases. We have committed a new user-interface and supporting code structure to version 3.1. We also host civiCRM's monthly New York City meet ups and annual developers camp.

If your organization is considering a CiviCRM deployment, please tell us more about your project to begin the dialog!