How CiviCRM helped The Conservation Fund

The Conservation Fund is the nation's foremost environmental nonprofit dedicated to protecting America's most important landscapes and waterways for future generations. My company, Phase2 Technology, architected a robust online fundraising solution for the Fund that included Drupal and CiviCRM.  Special attention was made to implementing the Drupal CMS from a unified perspective, incorporating the needs of all of the regional separate program sites into the overall spectrum of website feature offerings.  CiviCRM was used to implement the donation engine for the site.  The Conservation Fund collects donations for various programs, so CiviCRM search and exporting capabilities are critical to the success of the organization. Some highlights of the CiviCRM solution are:

• The entire Conservation Fund web network, including 7 program sites, comprises over 10 unique CiviCRM contribution types and pages.  The Conservation Fund exposes different pages depending on the various donation campaigns they undertake.  Contribution types are used to differentiate donations during the reporting process so that money is routed to programs correctly.
• Donations taken online can be one time or recurring.  Recurring donations are a major source of income for the Fund, so supporting this type of transaction was crucial to the success of the fundraising solution.
• Through the Go Zero Carbon Calculator individuals can calculate their carbon footprint and determine how much to donate in order to offset their CO2 usage.  Donations are processed through our custom built web service that utilizes the contribution API to enter donations into the CiviCRM backend.
• Through the Evan Almighty Forest individuals can purchase a tree in a virtual forest for $5.  Donations are processed through our custom built web service that utilizes the contribution API to enter donations into the CiviCRM backend.  The Conservation Fund has a partnership agreement with NBC Universal Studios to go "Green" using sites like Evan Almighty, developed by Real Pie, and others to come.  Read more about how NBC Universal Studios went "Green" for the Evan Almighty movie, and Get On Board Now! 
• All donation financial transactions are processed through our custom built payment processor which uses PayJunction as the online merchant.  This payment processor has been contributed back to the CiviCRM project and is available for use in version 1.9.
• Custom BIRT reports were used to satisfy the Fund's unique reporting requirements.  These reports are used for exporting data that is imported directly into their pre-existing fundraising accounting system, Raiser's Edge.  The reports we developed have been contributed back to CiviCRM and can be found here.

It is important to know that in the analysis phase of the project, we looked at a number of alternatives, including using one of the many online fundraising services.  After taking all things into consideration, including budget, functionality, flexibility, and maintainability, it was decided that CiviCRM using CiviContribute was the best solution for The Conservation Fund. Michael Morris is a Senior Solution Architect at Phase2 Technology in Alexandria, VA. Phase2 Technology is a leader in web software solutions in the civic community, and has helped many nonprofit organizations improve their web presence and fundraising capabilities.