Upcoming Events
San Francisco CiviCRM Meetup - February 8th, 2012
February 8th, 2012
Come meet others from the Bay Area who are interested in, using or developing (more...)
UK usergroup - London meetup
February 8th, 2012
Come and meet others from the UK that are using CiviCRM or are interested in (more...)
Chicago CiviCRM Meetup
February 17th, 2012
Please join other CiviCRM users, administrators, and developers in the Chicago (more...)
London user and administrator training
February 23rd, 2012
A comprehensive two day hands on training course covering the configuration, (more...)
CiviCRM Seminar - London
February 23rd, 2012
NfP Services free seminar
CiviCRM London sprint Feb 2012
February 27th, 2012
Following the CiviCRM training here in London, we will have a CiviCRM code (more...)
Philadelphia - CiviCRM Meetup for Q1 2012
March 13th, 2012
UK South West - CiviCRM Meetup
March 20th, 2012
Come meet others from the Area who are interested in, using or developing for (more...)
[Bristol, UK] user and administrator training
March 21st, 2012
A comprehensive hands on training course covering the configuration, (more...)
San Francisco user and administrator training
March 29th, 2012
A comprehensive two day hands on training course covering the configuration, (more...)
CiviCRM Usability, Test and Code Sprint - San Francisco (March 2012)
March 29th, 2012
This usability, code and test sprint is targeted at CiviCRM users and (more...)
CiviCon 2012 San Francisco Bay Area - April 2nd 2012
April 2nd, 2012
CiviCon is THE annual event bringing together the people who use, develop, (more...)
CiviCRM Documentation, Test and Code Sprint - after CiviCon San Francisco (April 2012)
April 4th, 2012
This sprint is targeted at CiviCRM users and developers who want to work on (more...)
CiviCRM Components
Tools for engaging your supporters...
Let's Make CiviPledge More Useful!
- Not Just a Contact Database
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These optional components give you more power to connect and engage your supporters.
civiCASE
Case management for clients and constituents.
civiCONTRIBUTE
Online fundraising and donor management.
civiEVENT
Online event registration and participant tracking.
civiMEMBER
Online signup and membership management.
civiMAIL
Personalized email blasts and newsletters.
civiREPORT
Report generation and template management.
As cap10morgan noted in a recent blog, non-profits and open source solutions are a natural partnership. CiviCRM has been a fabulous gift to the organization that I lead, Trinity Episcopal Church. It allowed us to move from a FileMaker database accessible only to our office staff to a robust solution accessible to most of our membership. (We constantly remind ourselves that not everyone's online!) We are still using a FileMaker/CiviCRM hybrid solution however and CiviPledge is our roadblock.
Pledge accounting is central to our contribution accounting - 92% of our income is from pledges. Is your organization's income weighted toward pledges? Do you use CiviPledge? If not, what's missing for you? Join the discussion on our forums or edit the specification on our wiki page.
For us there are two deal breaker features missing:
- Accepting pledge payments that differ from the expected payment amount.
- Printing a report of the contributors regular and pledge directed contributions in a given time span.
CiviCRM's target users are non-profit organizations. I have to believe that there isn't an organization in our user base that wouldn't simply say "thank you" to a pledge payment that was "short" of the expected amount. I have even more confidence that a payment exceeding the expected amount would be just as acceptable! Our current model in CiviPledge only accepts a payment amount of Pledge/n for Pledges with "n" payments.
We are working around this issue by recording Pledges in CiviCRM, but then posting pledge payments to CiviContribute using a defined contribution type of Pledge. We then export Contributions and Pledge data to FileMaker, which links the two data sets, calculates pledge balances, and prints reports. This means that our online users can see their contributions on their CiviCRM dashboard, but not their pledge balance.
I'm beginning to think that what CiviPledge needs is a development roadmap, adding a couple critical features each release. Now you know what I would add next... what's important for you? Join in the process today and help us build a better solution!!
Comments
Civi pledge improvements
As a small nonprofit, Civi has been wonderful for us. I'm very, very grateful to the community of developers; we never could have afforded to pay for a commercial system (and I rather like the open source community more).
I've just started experimenting with CiviPledge, so I don't have much input. But, the two items FatherShawn mentioned are absolutely essential. I'm betting any nonprofit administrator would say the same. We definitely need the capability to select a time span then generate a printable report of contributors/pledgers. In fact, I've noticed this is lacking in CiviContribute, and it's really quite important. I wish I could offer more direct help, rather than just asking for someone else to do it, but my skills are limited.
Thanks so much for all you've done with this software.
Reports coming soon ...
Phase 1 of CiviReport is scheduled for inclusion in our next release - and will include Contribution and Pledge reports. You can preview the specifications here.
One great way to contribute back to CiviCRM is by posting a quick "story" describing your organization and your experiences using CiviCRM on the Showcase forum board (successes, issues, lessons learned - all good).
Also think about resources and sponsorship ...
FatherShawn:
Great blog post and a good start to building momentum around a specific component and seeing what are some crucial features missing and what needs to be developed in the short/medium/long term. Does help the core team and developers a lot to get immediate feedback from folks who are using it on a regular basis
In addition to a roadmap, would be really cool if folks would also pledge either sponsorship dollars or developer resources. As CiviCRM grows as a team and product such community contributions will indeed help bolster and support the product. To some extent we see our task as planting seeds and various non-profit communities help the seed sprout, grow and flourish :)
lobo