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Artist and Educator JJ Tiziou Uses CiviCRM to Foster Community in Philadelphia

Last updated: 24 Oct, 2025

JJ Tiziou is an artist and community organizer in Philadelphia. He sought help from Tadpole Collective after his prior CRM platform (Artful.ly) was abruptly discontinued. He chose Tadpole & CiviCRM because working with open source software aligns with his community values, and those of his project Walk Around Philadelphia, a pilgrimage experience around the city’s edge that JJ facilitates.

Tadpole worked with him to set up detailed registration forms for these events, which allow people to sign up to join group walks, or check off sections of the route that they complete in their own time.
In addition to the events, JJ uses follow-up surveys to collect feedback from participants about how to improve the program. The CiviCRM system that Tadpole built allows him to automatically email event participants with links to the feedback surveys, as well as create reports that can be shared with grantmaking organizations that provide funding – helping him further grow the program.

JJ has seen enormous interest in these walking events since their launch, and his CiviCRM system has been instrumental in supporting this growth. In the next phase, we will help him build a dedicated website for the Walk, with new features to support the initiative as it evolves from an artist’s project into a small organization that is embracing the entire city.

Challenges

  • A need to gather and organize detailed information
  • Data access and privacy concerns

Impact

CiviCRM’s robustness and versatility continues to provide new ways to expand his program offerings

Tadpole Collective

Organizational needs and challenges vary, which is why we use CiviCRM and WordPress to build customized, highly functional AMS solutions for managing constituent relationships, accepting donations, handling event registration, offering membership programs, and streamlining email and newsletter communications. Our AMS runs on your organization’s website, consolidating digital operations on a single platform.

Our founding members met while working within the WordPress community in 2011 and a year later came together to form Tadpole Collective. We’ve been working with CiviCRM since its earliest integration with WordPress and have deep knowledge of both products. Today, we remain committed to the CiviCRM project and community, contributing our efforts to multiple CiviCRM teams on enhancements, extensions, bug fixes and upgrades — one of our principals is a maintainer of the CiviCRM/WordPress integration which ensures ongoing compatibility with WordPress. Our clients benefit directly from our foundational involvement and expertise.