Alternatives

Migrating and managing tens of thousands of donors and members

Alternatives

Alternatives' mission is to create a world where international solidarity, environmental rights, democratic rights and human dignity are universally respected. Alternatives has carried out hundreds of successful projects in over 30 countries since 1994 and has sent over 1,000 interns overseas. It also plays an active role in campaigns and democratic spaces at the regional, national, and international levels. This project enabled Alternatives to consolidate all their information about donors, those signed up to email lists, and those participating in events or campaigns. In addition, the integration of CiviCRM with their (Drupal-based) website allows individuals to make donations, become members, update their information, indicate their interests and download their tax receipts without needing assistance from a staff member. To make this possible, tens of thousands of contacts and many more donations were migrated from Donor Perfect and extensive configurations were made.

Organizational focus
Education
Environment
Political
Organization type
Non Profit

Background

To enable a more effective and more automated management of the most common daily interactions with members, donors and other contacts. To enable to organization to better target its ongoing communications with various contacts.

Challenges

The migration of tens of thousands of contacts and all their donations, recorded in different ways over a period of almost 20 years, presented some interesting challenges. The adaptation of CiviCRM to manage automatic monthly donations with Moneris was also a rewarding challenge.

Solution

In this case, Koumbit, already had extensive experience in the use of CiviCRM and recognized the extent to which this solution is very well tailored to the needs of an organisation like Alternatives. CiviCRM's management of memberships, campaigns, and large numbers of individual donors are particularly well adapted to this case. In addition, one of the objectives was better integration between Alternatives' (Drupal-based) website and the management of information about members. CiviCRM can integrate with different kinds of websites, but it is particularly good at integrating with those that are Drupal-based. Finally, the open source development of CiviCRM is focussed on use cases very similar to that of Alternatives. Upcoming improvements to the platform will surely be helpful to this organization.

Functionality

The ability to manage complex donor information, including data used for fundraising campaigns, was key to meeting the needs of this type of organization. The ability of Alternatives staff to export relevant data when needed was also important.

Project images (click to enlarge)

The project was carried out in two phases, with different personnel for each phase. The team at Koumbit that worked on the data migration was in particularly close contact with the individual at Alternatives who manages information about donors. Integration between CiviCRM and Alternatives' website were largely carried out in communication with the Executive Director of the organization.