No need for ACT! when you got CiviCRM
Stand in the Gap Ministries
Stand in the Gap Ministries is a prayer-based, church-driven, small group movement, focused on helping a neighbor rise above overwhelming life challenges through a loving, spiritual family experience. Stand in the Gap Ministries fills the gaps: in the social service system, in the ministry of the local church, and in the lives of individuals. In 2011, Stand in the Gap Ministries was recognized as the self-sufficiency category winner for the prestigious Oklahoma Nonprofit Excellence (ONE) Awards, which honors the best of Oklahoma's nonprofits. Stand in the Gap Ministries struggled with the challenges of making ACT!, a salesforce CRM, accommodate their fundraising management needs. Not only was ACT! inconsistent with their management needs, they had no means of allowing concurrent users to access the database as it was managed from the Admin's desktop. During the initial consultation meeting, SITGM quickly discovered the benefits of CiviCRM and how it was going to be the right choice to integrate with a custom Drupal site.
Background
Donor Depot implemented the development project in three distinct phases as this was going to be a major shift in how the client managed data and learned to interface with powerful web technologies like CiviCRM and Drupal. Our first priority was to set up CiviCRM, configure the gateway, publish an online giving form, and train the client on the core features of CiviCRM. The second phase of the project required us to migrate ACT! data onto the new platform. We spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the data and importing files. At the conclusion of the second phase, we re-directed our energies back to training and educating SITGM on how CiviCRM manages information. The final phase of the project required us to develop a custom Drupal theme. As soon as the theme was loaded, we shifted our attention towards training SITGM staff on how to manage site content.
Challenges
There were two major challenges we faced: Cleaning up data and importing records from ACT!. Although not directly related to a challenge with implementing CiviCRM, we experienced a third challenge of customizing a Drupal module to support an accordion style sub nav.
Solution
CiviCRM offered SITGM a robust suite of flexible tools that integrated with their web-based fundraising objectives.
Functionality
SITGM wanted seamless integration with Drupal to capture data and payment transactions e.g. contributions, newsletter registrations, event registrations.
Project images (click to enlarge)
SITGM Team: Francois Cardinal, Danielle Stendahl, Sister mary Clare Buthod Donor Depot Team: Chris Ruhlen, Blake Fite, Joshua Walker and Matt Jones.
