Using CiviCRM to communicate the mission of the AFSC
American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee is a non-profit Peace and Social Justice organization with locations throughout the United States and in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. It is a practical expression of the faith of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), committed to the principles of nonviolence and justice. For more information please visit our website: www.afsc.org
Background
The AFSC has 9 Regional offices in the United States. Each Regional Office is responsible for several Area offices and constituent data is maintained separately by each office. The initial promise of this project was to provide one CiviCRM database per Region that would contain all of the constituent data for the entire Region.
Challenges
Lack of internal resources (staff) to allow for consistent and singular focus.
Solution
CiviCRM was chosen as a solution because it is web based, "free", has great community support, provides the ability to send mass e-mailings, has a tremendous amount of "out of the box" functionality and because the developers listen to the community and are committed to making CiviCRM better and better over time. Several other solutions were evaluated but CiviCRM came out on top!
Functionality
Web based access to each site, managing constituent groups, sending volume emails, ability to interface with our web site and to collect information entered on forms for e.g. newsletter sign-up; snail mailings and data export for mailings.
One staff member, one part-time consultant with little knowledge of CiviCRM and a consulting firm that we used for hosting and for technical aspects of the project.
