By venkat-rk on

I am intrigued that the Drupal Association has chosen not to use CiviCRM for raising donations and memberships, but instead gone ahead and sponsored two new modules that do exactly what CiviCRM has been able to do for several versions now.

Is CiviCRM seen as not capable or buggy or complex? It would be very interesting to know what the reasons are.

Comments

Amazon’s picture

Amazon commented
  1. Both the fund raising board members of the Drupal association wanted to use it for fund raising as it's the best open source solution available.
  2. The Drupal association is currently using PayPal. This costs a percentage of all donations to the Drupal association. If the Drupal association was using CiviCRM donations could be done with Google check-out which is free for 2007 allowing the Drupal Association to keep more money.
  3. CiviCRM is fully internationalized which would allow donation pages to be in multiple languages to reflect the many languages used by the supporters of Drupal. Drupal is not fully internationalized.
  4. CiviCRM has paid memberships integrated which would allow us to allow automatically enable paid memberships when the pricing is set. By using contributed modules we could automatically grant new Drupal roles to people who have paid for Drupal association memberships.
  5. CiviCRM has premium contributions which allow for memberships to be included if a donation exceeds a certain amount. It also allows for premium gifts to be given for donations above a certain amount. e.g. a Drupal pin
  6. CiviCRM has CiviEvents which would allow for paid registrations for the upcoming Drupal conference in Barcelona
  7. CiviCRM supports 5 different kinds of payment types, which would allow more people from around the world to pay for the conference, make donations to Drupal, and to pay for Drupal memberships.

If you would like to try CiviCRM you can create a free site to organize and raise money for your organization here: Create an account on CivicSpace Labs and create your site

If you would like to see a demo try: CivicSpaceOnDemand demo site
Username: demo, Password: demo

Cheers,
Kieran
Drupal Association fund raising board member

Kieran Lal

mlncn’s picture

mlncn commented

Subscribing...
~ benjamin, Agaric Design Collective

benjamin, Agaric

boris mann’s picture

boris mann commented

Did I mention there is a need for more helpers in various threads? :P

@Amazon: I don't remember there being a "let's not use CiviCRM discussion"...let's get it installed.

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

Excellent summary of the reasons why D.A. should use CiviCRM. Couldn't have been put better.

It's also a relief to know that there was no, 'Let's not use CiviCRM' discussion. Looking forward to the shiny, new, CiviCRM-enabled association web site;-)

My coding skills are non-existent, but if there is anything I can do to help this happen in terms of time or other volunteer effort, I am very willing.

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Previously user Ramdak.

tdimg’s picture

tdimg commented

To add to the discussion, I'm wondering why the existing paypal module lm_paypal wasn't utilised / extended to fit the needs? My issue here is that I'm still using Drupal 4.7 on one of my sites and I don't have the time to update it, yet would be in need for the "Fee" aspect of the new module and the subscription aspect of lm_paypal - but I don't want to end up using two different modules / paypal frameworks to achieve this.

Walt Esquivel’s picture

Walt Esquivel commented

It often seems there is more than one way to perform a function in Drupal; often there are several!

So I concur with your comment. It appears to me that the Drupal Association could have used CiviCRM with Google Checkout, or the new modules mentioned above with PayPal, or perhaps the lm_PayPal module, or...

Sometimes, this is what makes things difficult, and I'm a believer that, often, less is better. With so many choices and variations, it's easy to get confused. Hence, I end up agonizing over the many choices.

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

Christefano-oldaccount’s picture

Christefano-oldaccount commented

http://civicrm.org/node/225

The Drupal Association is rolling out its membership package. They are using CiviCRM and CiviMember to manage their members.

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

Yes, I saw that in the planet feed and was pleased.

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Previously user Ramdak.