Using CiviCRM to change the world... one city at a time

CiviCon North-West Europe 2016

Kevin Levie  |  26-05-2016

KevinLevie

kevin@levity.nl

Topics

  • (Who am I? Where am I? Who are all these people?)
     
  • Woonreferendum as an example of how CiviCRM can be used to run social campaigns and grow their support base
  • How tech lowers the hurdle for activists and organisations to use local and national referendums 'for good'
  • Pros and cons of running Wordpress + Gravity Forms + CiviCRM and (desirable) future developments
  • A short look at campaign tools like CiviEngage & CiviVolunteer that are out there and that you can start using right now

Petitions and referendums

  • Citizens' Initiatives: 40,000 signatures in NL (nuclear weapons PAX, Pharaoh of The Netherlands), ECI: 1,000,000 signatures
     
  • Referendums in NL: EU Constitution 2005, Ukraine april 2016
  • Referendum as a campaign strategy: non-binding corrective ref. requires 300,000 signatures (or a parliament majority)
  • Local referendums: 10,000 signatures in Rotterdam, 27,000 in Amsterdam, similar rules for city or district polls elsewhere
     
  • New in NL: collecting signatures online (GeenPeil), lowers the hurdle for activists and organisations to organise referendums
  • Inherently conservative, or usable for progressive causes?
    (immigration, 'NLexit'  vs  TTIP, healthcare cuts, housing)
  • GeenPeil code on Github (in Go), OpenECI, Woonreferendum (Wordpress+CiviCRM, code will be available soon)

Woonreferendum

  • Social housing in NL: large sector used to provide good housing to large part of the population, now increasingly only accessible to low income households
  • 'No city hates their current inhabitants as much as Rotterdam': 194.700 'affordable' homes in 2000, 167.600 in 2014, city proposing further reduction to 148.000 by 2030
  • Referendum campaign supported by local tenants' and residents' organisations and political parties (esp. the SP)
  • We need to get 10,000 citizens of Rotterdam who are eligible to vote to support the referendum petition by June 22
  • Demo time!

 

Live site: woonreferendum.nl    Demo site: wpcivi.levity.nl

Background information in Dutch: medium.kevinlevie.nl

Doing a world of good

  • NGOs often stuck between Excel sheets and Mailchimp,
    and vendor lock-in / expensive SaaS CRMs
  • CiviCRM offers a way out: used at more and more organisations for memberships, donations, mailings, etc.
     
  • Next step: integrating CiviCRM with digital campaign strategy
  • MAF and Amnesty doing interesting work (donor journeys, automation, data analysis, ...)
  • Not that many examples (that I know of) yet of European social issue or election campaigns using CiviCRM
  • Data-driven campaigns still in its infancy in Europe generally, compared to US presidential elections 2008 / 2012 / 2016
    (Dutch parties slowly adopting lessons from Obama 2008)

Doing a world of good

  • Ideally, CRM and digital presence are centre of campaign, central means to engage more people both online and offline.
    'Make digital pivotal'.
     
  • Drupal / Wordpress + CiviCRM can be powerful toolset to build strong online campaigns, experiment with what does and doesn't work, systematically grow support base and dataset
     
  • Tools you can start using (or help develop) right now:
  • CiviCampaign + CiviSurvey / CiviPetition / CiviEngage (demo)
    Surveys, phone-banking, petitions, get-out-the-vote
  • CiviCampaign Dashboard (Systopia, demo)
  • CiviVolunteer 2.0 (currently only working on Drupal?, demo)
    List volunteer roles/needs, sign up, day rosters, log attendance
  • CiviRules, custom extensions (E-Advocacy US, Woonref, ...)

CiviCRM + Wordpress

  • Drupal+CiviCRM: currently better support and more features (Webform, Views). But WP integration has come a long way.
  • 25% of CiviCRM installations worldwide run on Wordpress
  • 26,4% of all websites worldwide run Wordpress (= opportunity)
  • Non-technical users + capitalism = curious ecosystem
    (but commercial plugins/themes still licensed under GPL!)
     
  • WP Profile Sync
  • WP Member Sync (roles/capabilities), BuddyPress (untested)
  • CiviCRM hooks usable from WP plugins, WP Admin Utilities
  • Shortcodes for profiles, petition, events, user dashboard
     
  • Basic Gravity Forms integration plugin (CiviVIP)
  • Contact Forms 7 -> remote Drupal installation (CiviCooP)
  • Woonreferendum forms: Gravity + custom handler plugin

In conclusion

  • Non-profits and political parties really do need nerds
    and a digital campaign strategy to change the world
    (and nerds should want to change the world)
     
  • Wordpress + CiviCRM is a viable option for many (smaller) organisations, especially if they already use Wordpress
  • Extensions like CiviCampaign and CiviVolunteer provide useful functionality that many organisations aren't yet aware of
     
  • Possible future developments (would need client funding): improving (Gravity) forms integration for Wordpress, making CiviCampaign more useful in non-US contexts, etc, etc...

"Web servers have only interpreted code, in various ways... the point, however, is to change the world."

CiviCon North-West Europe 2016

Kevin Levie  |  26-05-2016

KevinLevie

kevin@levity.nl

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