Overview
One of the important tasks of each chapter is to maintain the on-line membership list. Each member is a contact record and has associated membership records with optional contribution records which list amounts paid. Creating, maintaining and working with contact records for members and others is the main focus of CiviCRM Contact Management. ARCS uses the normal CiviCRM contact records with some special custom fields. CiviCRM was developed especially for membership organizations and has extensive support for on-line membership renewal, reminders, etc.
In addition to the regular CiviCRM documentation, ARCS has customized documentation and videos to help chapters with their membership management.
National Newsletter Tag
The ARCS regular newsletter is sent automatically to all ARCS Scholars and Members. In addition, if you have contacts you would like to receive the regular ARCS National Newsletter just tag the contact with the "National Newsletter" tag. Detailed directions on how to set this tag can be found here.
Written Documentation
ARCS Contact Management (2016) - Very complete manual prepared especially for ARCS by Diane Might of the Phoenix and Utah Chapters. This manual covers creating new contacts, editing existing contacts and explains each field available. In additon there are sections on creating and adding contact records to groups and managing special tags that can be added to contact records. Note that this manual was prepared using a previous version of CiviCRM, so the menus look different, but the functionality is unchanged.
Membership Management (2016) - Diane Might of the Phoenix chapter has also shared her detailed documentation for managing memberships. Although your chapter may use a slightly different process, the information for using the CiviMembership and CiviContribution modules is very detailed and very helpful. There are six chapters:
- Membership Management Basics
- Update Online Membership Contributions
- Manage Membership Renewals
- Manage Membership Login and User Accounts
- Create Board Group for Transition Email
- Reconcile Web Contact Data and Hard Copy Roster Data
Videos
Database Management Overview (2020, Beth Wainwright, 1:19:23) This overview covers the basics of using the CiviCRM database to manage contact records.
CiviCRM Overview (2019, Sue Dintelman, 1:01:22) - Overview of CiviCRM use by ARCS. The PowerPoint slides for this webinar are available here.
CiviDesk Contact Management (2014, Susan Engeman, CiviDesk, 2:01:16) When we initially started working with CiviDesk they provided a series of training sessions customized for ARCS. Although these videos are getting old, they still contain good information on using CiviCRM for contact management. The slides are here.
CiviDesk Membership Management (2014, Susan Engeman, CiviDesk, 1:55:06) Another video by CiviDesk training especially on membership management. The slides are here.