Drupal South | Modules Unraveled

024 Dave Greenberg and CiviCRM - Modules Unraveled Podcast

Photo of Dave Greenberg

Dave Greenberg of CiviCRM joins me this week to talk about CiviCRM and how it integrates with Drupal.

Here is the show outline:

  • I’ve heard of CiviCRM, and seen it at DrupalCon, but really have no idea what it is or what it does. Can you enlighten me?
  • Is CiviCRM a Drupal module? It has a project page, but says not to download it from there. Why is that?
  • How does CiviCRM integrate with Drupal?
  • Is CiviCRM only for Drupal?
  • The guy that asked me to have you on the show said something to the effect of “The Webform CiviCRM integration is the new hotness right now.” Are you familiar with the Webform CiviCRM Integration? (http://drupal.org/project/webform_civicrm)
    • How might this integration affect CiviCRM?
    • Is that something that could it be brought into CiviCRM core?
  • Are there other cool modules which provide integration between Drupal and CiviCRM?
    • Views integration
    • Organic groups integration
    • Member / group -> Drupal roles
    • Calendar integration
  • How extensible is CiviCRM? What approaches are available for extending and customizing it?

Use Cases / Who uses CiviCRM

  • I’ve been told that CiviCRM is great for NFPs. How can they use CiviCRM?
    • Fundraising and donor management
    • Events and courses (paid and free registration)
    • Membership programs (Site memberships? Organization memberships? Both?)
    • Case management
    • eMail and SMS blasts (I’ve had some clients request SMS functionality, how does that work? Is there a third party SMS service you have to use?)
    • Surveys and petitions
    • Grant-making
  • What other types of organizations could benefit from/currently use CiviCRM?
    • Advocacy, government entities and agencies, trade associations, educational institutions, clubs …
  • Can you share some examples of organizations we may of heard about who are currently using CiviCRM with Drupal?

Questions from Twitter:

  • @drupleg asked: “CiviCRM seems to be on the periphery of the CRMs they support, do CiviCRM developers contribute to core #drupal #wp #joomla”
  • He also asked: “Considering the new #drupal.org distribution hosting - are there any plans for a #CiviCRM distribution on d.o?”
    • @civicrm replied: Check CiviCRM Starter Kit: http://drupal.org/project/civicrm_starterkit Thanx to @kreynen for getting this going
  • He also asked: “Are there any plans/what would be the hurdles, to make #civicrm an app http://drupal.org/project/apps? @openpublic+@civicrm = powerful”