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One central place for managing all ECF contacts

Since its foundation in 1983, ECF, European Cyclists’ Federation, has had one goal: To promote cycling as a sustainable and healthy means of transportation and recreation. Their roots are in Europe, but the challenges they face are global. ECF believes the bicycle is a solution to many of the world’s woes. They therefore have an ambition to export both theirs and theirs members’ expertise worldwide.
In October 2014, ECF was looking for help to implement CiviCRM for its staff in Brussels. They needed to import the existing database, to set and host CiviCRM. As well they wanted some training sessions and design of 7 newsletters templates.
  • Background

    Provide a CiviCRM solution to the federation to manage all bicycle users’ organizations worldwide under its umbrella, the 80+ member NGOs and, networks of academics, cities, national bicycle officers and industry supporters, accessible by the 20 staff members in Brussels.

  • Challenges
    The main challenge was the integration and management of their extensive and inter-related contacts (people, partners, organizations). At that time, ECF has four different databases with 25.000+ contacts.
    The solution should been web-based, accessible by the entire ECF staff, and provide contact import and management functions in a user-friendly, intuitive environment. It should worked as tool to rationalize the contacts and provide longitudinal references to interactions with these contacts.
    Other functionalities required were mass mailing, online forms, online payment capabilities, and hosting solution, alongside user support and basic once-off training.
  • Functionality
    Among the requirements, they needed to unify its database to improve the management of contacts, members, mailings and campaigns. ECF database consisted of:
    • A SQL database in German (Alphaoffice) which could be exported in csv with 15.000 entries.
    • MailChimp lists with more than 10.000 entries.
    • Several lists of contacts in excel sheets including MEPs approximately with 2.000 entries.
    • Lists in Outlook with less than 200 contacts.
    To manage this communication, they moved from the use of Mailchimp to CiviMail with customized newsletter templates based in previous examples. CiviMail is a tool for handling mass email campaigns that provide reports on the results and effectiveness of those emails. The combination of CiviMail, CiviCampaign and CiviEvent povides ECF a complete solution.

CiviCRM implementation was overseen by consultants from iXiam, led by Project Leader Luciano Spiegel, in collaboration with the ECF Communications Officer.

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Provided By: iXiam Global Solutions

We are an international digital consulting agency that works with nonprofit organizations pursuing a social good. You have a mission. We’ll help you get there faster. At our core, we are committed to solving your needs using open source technology.

We’ve seen almost everything thrown our way in a wide variety of projects and sectors. We firmly believe in understanding each client’s needs to help further their mission. Whether it is increasing staff / volunteer efficiency, fundraising strategies, enhancing your web presence or making data more usable again, we work with each client to solve their unique challenges. In the end, iXiam is a committed partner with each organization we work with.

Since 2007 we’ve collaborated with NGOs, Medical Associations, Universities, Federations and UN departments. We are based in Spain and the United States with over 350 implementations in 47 countries with languages including Spanish, English, French and Greek. We approach each project with an open-mindset, ready to listen and eager to share our expertise with you.

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CiviCRM is an open source project that develops and maintains software for nonprofits. Our mission is to ensure that any nonprofit organization, regardless of budget, size or mission, has access to a world-class CRM.

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CiviCRM’s only shareholders are the users, contributors and supporters that make up the CiviCRM community.

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