By geeproud on

Hello,

I've recently become web director of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer - Washington DC. (www.rpcvw.org)

We are a small non-profit with about 500 members and 2000 contacts that need to be managed.

We currently are using www.Memberclicks.com (which charges roughly $2000 a year for poor service). I'm familiar with Drupal but I am surveying my options before I commit a lot of time with one approach.

Our needs:

- Recurring Dues Payment and Membership Management
- Easy import of CSV data + automatic starting of recurring annual membership via CSV dates (we get members from a third party)
- Registration for Events, both paid and unpaid.
- Easy Event Management (via email, website, third party websites)
- Easy communication via email blasts, ability to select email recipients based on certain characteristics (country served, state lived in, type of work, etc)
- Social Community (organic groups based on country served, type of work, etc)
- Dynamic website functions (blogging, video, easy editing - WYSIWYG)

Questions:

1 - I know about CiviCRM and its amazing. But it seems like it is for managing large groups and constituents. Its almost more complicated than what we need plus I don't know how it works with building a social community which is a focus of ours. Should we use it?

2 - Is Ubercart an option? It can setup recurring fees but can it determine memberships based on whether the person has paid?

3- We collect dues once a year from each member (500) and have around two paid events a year. We don't need something too complicated for managing the payments and membership. What would be the simplest and easiest way for us (the next person may not understand Drupal, etc)?

4 - Is Paypal pretty much the accepted payment option? For a small volume person like us, what is the best option?

5 - CiviCRM, Ubercart or something else? Any advice would be lovely.

Thank you all and I appreciate any advice you might have.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x, Drupal 6.x, Drupal 7.x

Comments

aitala’s picture

aitala commented

I am very much in the same boat.. Additionally, I would have a need to be able add offline members to the membership database as a large fraction of my folks send in payment by checks.

I think Ubercart is a definite requirement. I am not sure about CiviCRM.

Eric

__________
Eric Aitala - ema13@psu.edu
Penn State

224b8605113373e086cb27708ff301ba18ce394db1996e7e22928e4555e0d20b1b6cecc7f67c9bd9e536cb915779c485

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented
  1. I've not used it, but civicCRM might be overkill for you. From what you describe, drupal can do it no problem.
  2. Yes-- definitely check it out, I believe it can handle everything you describe.
  3. I would use the module drupal uses for it's events: http://drupal.org/project/signup, there's also an ubercart integration: http://drupal.org/project/uc_signup
  4. I would say paypal is probably the easiest.
  5. covered above
lobo’s picture

lobo commented

I think CiviCRM is a good match for your needs. Most of our user base is organizations of your size and scale. With the recent usability improvements in CiviCRM v3.0 and also with the book (http://en.flossmanuals.net/CiviCRM), i think the ramp up curve has decreased a bit (or maybe even significantly)

There are modules that integrate with organic groups, so you can still use those. Your first few requirements are managed out of the box in CiviCRM

However I do think that irrespective of what direction you go, you will spend a fair amount of time and hours on setting / configuring and getting things the right way. Depending on your "hourly" rate, the total amount will be more than $2K :)

lobo

Disclaimer: i'm a core developer of CiviCRM

vitis’s picture

vitis commented

subscribing